hall be secured to the
acre, are technical problems of agriculture. In this New World, with
expensive labor and still with cheap land, we cannot yet afford to
produce the high yields of some of the Old World places,--it may be
better to till more land with less yield to the acre. But all this is
aside from my present purpose; and this purpose is to suggest the very
real importance of making it possible for an increasing proportion of
the people to have close touch with the earth in their own rights and in
their own names.

We recognize different grades or kinds of land occupancy, some of it
being proprietorship and some of it tenancy and some of it mere
shareholding. Thus far have we spoken of the partitioning of the land
mostly in its large social and political relations; but to society also
belongs the fertility of the land, and all efforts to conserve this
fertility are public questions in the best sense. In America we think of
tenant occupancy of land as dangerous because it does not safeguard
fertility; in fact, it may waste fertility. This is because the practice
in tenancy does not recognize the public interest in fertility, and the
contract or agreement is made merely between the landowner and the
tenant, and is largely an arrangement for skinning the land. It is only
when the land itself is a party in the contract (when posterity is
considered) that tenancy is safe. Then the tenant is obliged to
fertilize the land, to practise certain rotations, and otherwise to
conserve fertility, returning to the land the manurial value of products
that are sold. When such contracts are made and enforced, tenancy
farming does not deplete the land more than other farming, as the
experience in some countries demonstrates. It is hardly to be expected,
however, that tenant occupancy will give the man as close moral contact
with the earth and its materials as will ownership; yet a well-developed
tenancy is better than absentee farming by persons who live in town and
run the farm by temporary hired help. The tenancy in the United States
is partly a preliminary stage to ownership: if we can fulfil the moral
obligation to society in the conserving of fertility and other natural
resources, tenancy may be considered as a means to an end. Persons who
work the land should have the privilege of owning it.

It may be urged by those who contend that land should be held by
society, that this regulation of tenancy provides a means of
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