The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 19, 1924, Page 11

a 2) The Economie Condition of the Landless Farmers in the U. S. By LOUIS ZOOBOCK. Agrarian unrest is now spreading all over the country. The mortgages upon the farmers have more than doubled in a period of ten years; the number of those owning farms has greatly decreased while the number of tenant farmers has considerably risen. The farmers are on the brink of ruin. Financial capital is conquering agri- culture. The monopolists and ex- ploiters of this country, who control the machineny of the government, the presidency and the congress are re- sponsible for the distress of the farmers; they have brought to a con- dition where the income of the agri- cultural laborer is transferred to the pockets other than his own. A very careful statistician has estimated that out of every dollar of farm products sold to the consumer the farmers gets only 38 cents; that 62 cents of his dollar goes to the other agencies that handle the farm product before it gets to the consumer. It is generally es- timated that the cost of distribution of the varied farm products to the consumer range from 50 to 65 per cent. These estimates only partly tell the story of the farmers‘ distress. What is more important, is the growing speculation in land. Thru- out the country land is held for spec- ulative purposes. Financiers, bank- ers, etc., have contributed to the spec- ulative spirit—purchasing land with idie funds, deriving whatever income it yielded in the hands of tenants, and awaiting the natural increase in value. The effect of this speculative activity has been to raise the value of land far above the capitalization of its rent at the current rate of in- terest; many farmers were ruined and passed into the class of landless farmers. The same group of financiers have brought about a process of forced de- fiation which has overtaken the coun- try in the last few years. “During the autumn of 1920, while crops were be- ing harvested and when the farmer was looking forward to a winter of fair prosperity, the process of defla- tion began. Loans were called and renewals were refused.” Freight rates had, in the meantime, been raised so high that in many places the farmers’ products were allowed to rot on the farms because the freight rates were equal, if not exceeding, the price re- ceived for the products; if we add to this the increase in taxes of 126 per cent in the last 8 years, taxes which absorb one-third of the farm income, we get a complete picture of the farmers’ distress. Depopulation of Farms and Tenancy. The distress of the agricultural pop- ulation has led to two results: (2) many farmers left the country and moved to towns, thereby increasing the reserve army of unemployed, (1) it increased the number of tenant farmers. - Hard times on the farm are causing a rapid shift of population. In 1922 no less than 2 million people gave up the effort to get a living out of the soil and moved to towns and cities. To offset this about 900,000 left town for the country, a loss of 1,120,000 of the farm population. This exodus was accompanied by the ruin of the best farmers; in many cases they have been compelled to forfeit large sums of money as part payment on farms and finally have the mortgage take it all. The mortgageers then kept the farms idle for speculative purposes. Thus, in Michigan 18,230 farms were idle in 1922, and 11,831 in 1921. Of the 276,000 men on farms three years ago, 46,000 have since left; in Ohio, 60,000 farmers left the farms for the city up till June, 1922. In Minnesota, in 1923, 14,690 farmers were bankrupt and 4,959 have been forced to abandon their farms and the country, But the most alarming fact in American agriculture is the rapid growth of tenancy accompanied by the development of huge estates owned by corporations and operated by salaried managers upon a purely industrial system. It is the economic condition of the tenant class that we are mostly interested in. ‘The growth of tenancy in the United States may be illustrated by some figures. On the basis of num- ber of farms, tenancy increased 44.5 per cent in the United States between 1880 and 1910. The percentage of farms operated by tenants was 25.6 in 1880, 28.4 in 1890, 35.3 in 1900, 37 in 1910, and in 1920 out of every 100 farms in the United States, 38 were operated by tenants. The whole num- ber of farms operated by tenants in 1900 was 2,024.964 as compared with 2,454,804, The per cent of farms operated by tenants increased in all but two Southern States—Florida and Ala- bama; it increased in all states west of the Mississippi, except Nevada, Oklahoma and Missouri. Oklahoma tho a new state, has half of its farms operated by tenants. As a rule, ten- ancy is highest in the Southern and/ Western states, where in the last 10 years it increased most rapidly. Ten- ants now operate over one-fourth of the farms in half of our states, over 40 per cent of farms in 15 states, and over one-half the farms in eight states. In brief, 4 out of every 10 of the farms in the United States are operated by landless farmers. General Living Conditions. The tenant farmers are divided into five classes: (1) Share tenants, who farnish their own equipment and animals and pay a certain share of the prod- uct, as one-half, one-third or one- fourth, to the landlord for the use of the farm. (2) “Croppers”—share tenants, who furnish their work animals. This class prevails in the South. (3) Another class of share tenants “who pay a share of the products for part of the land rented by them and cash for other part.” (4) “Cash tenants”’—who usually pay eash rental. (5) “Stanting Renter”’—those who pay a stated amount of farm products for the use of the farms. No nation-wide investigation of the living conditions of tenant farmers has ever been made, but from the scattered studies made by different scholars we may deduce that the eco- nomic condition of the tenants is ex- tremely bad and that in many places he is far from being free. As a rule, the tenant is badly housed, ill-nour- ished, uneducated md hopeless. Year after year, he continues to eke out a bare living; in his despair he moves from place to place in the hope that something will turn up. Without the labor of the entire family, he is help- less. As a result, his wife is prema- turely broken down and his children remain uneducated and “without the hope of any condition better than that of their parents.” : A great number of the tenants are hopelessly in debt and are charged exorbitant rates of interest. “Over 95 per cent of the tenants borrow from some source and about 75 per cent borrow regularly from year to year.” | . Leases and Rents. The leases, concluded between the terlant and his landlord, are in many cases in the form of oral contracts. They run for one year and make no provision for compensation to the tenant for improvements which may be made upon the property. Further- more, the tenants are in many cases the victims of oppression on the part of the landlords. This oppression “takes the form of dictation of char- acter and amount of crops, evictions without due notice and discrimination because of personal and political con- victions.” This is especially true in the South and on the estates run by managers. In the South, where “cropper” ten- ancy prevails, the landlord has such complete control over the renter and the term of the lease is so short that the negro’as well as the white farm laborers are reduced to a system of peonage. There are at present 225,000 croppers in the Southern states. The difference between a “renter” and a “cropper” lies in the fact that where- as, the first “runs himself” the latter is run by his landlora. sfe possesses no property and has no permanent habitation. He is constantly on the move from place to place, cultivating one farm after another on “halves.” He supplies nothing except his labor and that of his wife and children. For years and years he was produc- ing cotton “on a pauper level at a pauper daily wage.” The “cropper” is the man “whom God forgot.” The condition of the renter ts not any better. In Texas and Oklahoma the conditions are unusually severe. In the former state, the one-crop and the chattel mortgage system works great hardships on the renter. “One crop and a chattel mortgage on it, and on the property used in produc- ing it, hold thousands of tenants in economic bondage.” In Oklahoma, tenancy is about as intensive as in any part of the Union. The leases are usually drawn in favor of the Jand- lords; rents are high and evictions are a frequent occurrence. “Framing-Up” Tenants. The 7 have been changed so that justi€es of the peace, before whom eviction cases are tried, are elected by “electric-light cities” in which the landlords live. The land- lords control the elections of the justices and the cases are decided in favor of the landlords. The juries before whom many of the tenant cases are brought are selected from the non-renting class, renters being quite effectually excluded. Again practically all renters are burdened with chattel mortgages as- sumed to carry them thru the season. “In the case of many renters who are close to bankruptcy, the landlords, bankers, etc., force or weedle them into auction sales, the goods being frequently bought in to the great dis- advantage of the renter.” Some large estates, such as the Scully farms in Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska impose rack-renting condi- tions on the tenants. Wm. Scully paid about 75 cents an acre for farni land when land was cheap in Illinois. He rented it to tenant-farmers at $4 an acre on condition that they would build good houses and barns at their Own expense. The contracts were mostly for a year at a time, but with | flied dadntintin tatiana tein ieee ee ~ ears out Russia with a moving picture Democratic Japan ........... aia The Famine in Germany. 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Scully lives, the contracts were kept; ‘when he died an executor of the estate came from Ireland “who dis- liked the farmers because they did not doff their hats to him.” To pun- ish them, he raised the rent to $10 an acre and “told those that aid not like it to get off, with the loss of improvements.” Absenteeism. This is only a typical example of the deplorable conditions which pre- vail on the huge estates operated by managers upon a purely industrial system. These estates are as a rule the property of absentee landlords, who are for the most part million- aires, residents in the Hastern states or in Europe. Some of the estates embrace within their boundaries en- tire counties and towns; they are a law in themselves; and the land- lords are the absolute dictators of the lives, liberties and happiness of their employes. It is industrial feu- dalism, pure and simple. Such are in general the economic conditions of the landless farmers. Some of “our” agricultural scholars, including well-known professors have tried to minimize the importance of the problem of tenancy. They con- sider tenancy as merely the first step on the “agricultural ladder,” as the first step towards farm ownership, but this only proves how little they have studied the problem. A con- crete analysis of the wages and other living conditions of the tenant farm- ers, which will be given in the next article, will conclusively prove that under the present conditions the ten- ant’s wish of acquiring a farm is hopeless. Landless farmers and homeless. city wofkers are a rapidly increasing body of people thruout the country. In 21 states of the Union and espe- cially in the industrial area north of Ohio and east of the Mississippi, they are now an overwhelming majority. Will this common condition of the landless at last result in a common- mindedness? LAER A TES ES TANTS camera. ».M. 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