These landlords have leased their land in accordance with mere
expediency. No plans have been made in the American rural economy for a
tenantry. The lease, therefore, throughout the United States generally
is for only one year. This gives to the landlord the greatest freedom,
and to the tenant the least responsibility. Neither is willing to enter
into a contract by which the land itself can be benefitted. The landlord
is looking for the increase of the values of land, and is ever mindful
of a possible buyer. Moreover, he is watchful of the market for the crop
and of the size of the crop, so that he desires to be free at the end of
the year to make other arrangements.

The tenant on his part is somewhat eager to do as he pleases for a year.
He expects to be himself an owner, and he does not expect to remain
permanently as a tenant on that farm. He reckons that he can get a good
deal out of the land in the year, and is unwilling to bind himself for a
long period. "The American system of farm tenantry is the worst of which
I have knowledge in any country."[11]

It is true that in some parts of the country leases of three and five
years are granted to tenants by the landlords. At Penn Yan, New York, a
reliable class of Danes secure such leases from the owners. I am aware,
also, that in Delaware, in an old section dependent upon fertilization
for its crops, where the land is in the hands of a few representatives
of the old farmer type who have held it for generations, that the
tillage of the soil shows specialization. The landlord and the tenant
co-operate. The leases, while they are for but a year, specify how the
land shall be tilled, how fertilized. They require the rotation of crops
and the keeping of a certain number of cattle by the tenants. The
landlord personally oversees the tillage of several farms. This seems
the beginning of husbandry, instead of exploitation of the land.

Another instance of the landlord who is more than a mere exploiter is
that of David Rankin, recently deceased. In the last years of his life
Mr. Rankin owned about thirty thousand acres of land in Missouri. It was
said in 1910 that he had seventeen thousand acres of corn. He had a
genius for estimating the values of land, the expensiveness of drainage,
and the possibilities of the market. He was an expert buyer of cattle,
and a master of the problems entering into progressive farming on a
large scale.

From his vast acreage Mr. Rankin so