The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 26, 1925, Page 11

: © Statistical Background of the Agrarian Question in the U. S.| (Continued from page 1) approximately 40 per cent, or between four, and four and a half million, are propertyless workers. This is the agricultural proletariat, the basic stratum for the revolutionary move- ment in the rural districts, It is, in turn, due to historic and economic differences, to be divided into many groups, each of which presents dis- tinet problems; such as, -(a) the “hired hands”: of isolated farmers, more or less fixed as to residence, very conservative. and dominated by the employing .farmers almost com- pletely (probably the Jargest single group); (b) the.Negro,.farm workers of the southern cotton states, the most submerged and exploited crea- ture in America; (c) the wage work- ers on “large scale” farms (not a large group as yet, but growing fast- er than any other group in agricul- ture); (d) the ‘migratory workers, who follow the harvests, having no fixed residence; (e) workers engaged in agriculture in the summer and in- dustrial pursuits in the winter (differ- ing from thé migratory workers in having a fixed residence); (f) mem- bers of the family of “farm owners”; and so forth. Of the total of 6,448,343 operators of farm establishments in 1920, there were 2,454,804 tenants as against 3,- 993,539 owners and managers. It is among the two and a half million tenant farmers that will be found the largest number of the semi-proletar- ian elements, according to Lenin’s classification. Almost one-third of these are Negroes, in the south,. num- bering 714,441; many of the others are former “owners” in the process of being squeezed out of agriculture as independent operators; the tenant farmers, as a whole, while continu- ously increasing in number, occupy a most unstable economic position; which is more and more becoming a disguised form of wage slavery. The following table shows the constant growth of tenantry in the United States for the past 40 ‘years: Percentage of All Farms 1920 1910 1900 1890 1880 Owners and * Managers ......61.9 63.0 64.7 71.6 74.4 Tenants ........0000. 38.1 37.0 35.3 28.4 25.6 The approximately four million “owners” of farms present every vari- ation of social stratification possible. And it is only indirectly that we can arrive at an approximation of the rel- ative numbers of “poor,” “middle,” and “well-to-do” farmers. The census of the U. S. was not designed for the purpose of bringing out the facts of class division in this country, It is possible to get some degree of light on the question by an examina- tion of that great institution of Ameri- can private property, the “farm mort- sage.” The mortgage is the first step in the dispossession of the farm own- er from his land, it is the invasion of “outside capital” into the domain of. the free and independent produc- er.. And there is no doubt that to a large degree the-extent and rate of growth of farm mortgages in the Unit- ed States is an indication of the num- ber and rate of incredse of poor farm- ers in relation to the tetal farming population. In 1890, the first census report on mortgages, the percentage of all farms which were reported as free from mortgage, was 70.9 per cent, In the year 1900, this had fallen to 66.5 per cent. At the last census, in 1920, only 52.8 per cent of all farms were reported as free from mortgage. Thus there is only slightly more than 2,000,000 farmers, of whom we can definitely say that, in their over- whelming number, they represent the middle and well-to-do farmers of America, who, with their families, con- stitute the backbone of the bourgeois social system in the rural districts of America. The first approximate classification which must be made, in view of the foregoing, in our efforts to develop che fundamental groups within the agricultural population, would be as follows: Group in the Approximate Percentage year of 1920 Number of Total Workers 41 Tenants . 23 Mortgage rs 1,800,000 16 Full owners and. MANAPErs iivn...ccceee 2,200,000 20 Approximate total 11,000,000 1 Size of Agricultural Establishments. | pegs of the foregoing groups could be analyzed with any degree of exactness, only if data was available for each group as to the size of the undertakings, the yarious degrees of technical. development as shown by number of head of livestock, amount of machinery, buildings, etc. Unfortu- nately, such classified information is not available, so it will be necessary to use another, indirect method, of superimposing the classifitation by size and technical development of all farms, upon the classification by land tenure. The average number of acres in each tenant-operated farm ig 107.9 acres. This is almost exactly two- thirds of the size of the average own- er-operated farm, which is 162.2 acres. There are approximately two and a half million of these tenant-operated farms of a little over one hundr acres average. ¢ Size-groups of all farms (without regard to tenure) with comparison of 1880, 1910, and 1920, are as follows: Number of farms Size group 1920 Under 20 acres...... 796,535 20 to 49 acres.......... 1,503,732 60 to 99 acres............ 1,474,745 10040 174 acres........ 1,449,630 « 175 acres and over.... 1,223,701 Total 6,448,343 The technical equipment of these various size groups (leaving out the group 175 acres and over as definite- ly, well-to-do farmers and requiring no further analysis from us), is as fol- lows: Percent of total 1910 1880 in 1920 839,166 393,990 12.4 1,414,376 781,574 23.3 1,438,069 1,032,810 22.9 1,516,286 18.9 1,153,605 1,800,533 18.9 6,361,502 4,008,907 100 capitalism) two millions; ,while the well-to-do and rich farmers amount to about two and a half millions. These figures give us the barest ap- Average value per farm, by size, of technical equipment: Buildings 1920 1910 Under 20 acres........$ 967 605 20 to 49 acres........... 827 474 50 to 99 acres.......... 1,497 848 100 to 174 acres.... 2,245 1,182 Machinery Live Stock 1920 1910 1920 1910, $146 56 $ 306 195 193 16 434 270 412 156 834 522 712 241 1,414 869 Of the 800 thousand farms of 20 ¢@—— —___ acres and under, there could be very few with more than two horses and two cows (and if any swine, at the price of a horse or cow). The value of machinery allows of little more than a few plows, harrows, cultivat- ors, etc. When~we come to build- ings, however, we find the average quite high, higher than that farms of 20 to 49 acres. The explanation of this is without question that this class contains a very large proportion of middle or well-to-do farmers who do not depend upon the produce of the farm for a livelihood—who have, as it were, partially retired, or who have never been farmers in the full sense. There must be a much lower percentage of tenants in this size- zroup than in the groups over 20 and under 175 acres. More than two-thirds of the total number of farms are included 4 the groups 20 to 175 acres. It is from this group that must come most of the tenants and a large part of the mortgaged farmers, with much the heavier part of these poor-farmer ele- ments coming under the class of 99 Acrese and jless._ These latter farms will in most cases have 2 to 3 horses and 4 to 6 cows, while its stock of machinery is still quite limited. Tentative Estimate of Agrarian Groups, ROM the above we can make a tentative estimate of the principal groups, as containing landless and propertyless workers, four and a half millions; poor farmers (semi-prolet- arian and practically propertyless) two millions; middle farmers (econo- mically in.a dangerous position in America;' at this time, but formerly the most “substantial” citizenry of Youth Day on the Red Square in Moscow . proach, the first faint sketch, of the extremely complicated. problems in- volved i agriculture in the U.. S. Compared with Europe, for example, the acreage of American farms seems fantastically high; but the size which, in Europe, would indicate a rich peas- ant, in America would quite as easily indicate rent racked tenant or a land poor mortgaged farmer. There is further, for example, the extreme spe- cialization which has taken place in American agriculture, which cuts the country into quite distinct sections, each dominated by a different set of crops, different social conditions, dif- ferent stages of technical develop- ment, ownership, etc. In spite of (or on account of) the extreme productivity of American ag- riculture, it is true more clearly here than in any other country, that capi- talism never develops evenly and har- moniously. American agriculture is characterized by the most acute con- tradictions, brot about by the most uneven development of agriculture as compared with industry, uneven de- velopment of different branches of agriculture, uneven -deyelopment.-of agrarian districts, high ‘degreé bf $pé cialization in some respects together with a very low degree in others, the accentuation and aggravation of so- cial differences carried over from the past (Negro problem, etc.), and a hun- dred and one other factors which go to mold the groups, sub-classes and classes within the ‘rural population of America. In the next article we will examine the statistical outlines available for the several principal agrarian divi- sions in the.U. S. and the different problems which they present. ‘