e largely _real_. The
gross income of the average farm owner, measured in what it could buy,
evidently rose by more than 50 per cent, and his _real_ net income
nearly as fast. The average farm owner then was receiving a fair share
of the increase of the national wealth.

But farmers cannot profitably be considered as a single class. Tenants
are rarely at the same time landlords. Farmers paying interest are
usually not the same as those holding mortgages. A few of the debtors
may be very successful men who borrow only to buy more land and hire
more labor. But very few tenants are in this class. We may safely assume
that those who own without a mortgage or employ labor steadily with one
are getting _more_ than an average share of the national wealth, while
tenants or those who have mortgaged their land heavily and do not
regularly hire labor (except at harvest) are, in the average case,
getting less. Investments of borrowed money in the best machinery or
farm animals by a single family working alone and on a very small scale,
may give a good return above interest, but this return is strictly
limited unless with most exceptional or most fortunate persons.

Now the statistics of the increase of agricultural _wages_ show that
they rose in no such proportion as the increase of agricultural
capital--and the possibility of a farm hand saving his wages and
becoming the owner of one of these more and more costly farms is more
remote than ever. But there is a third solution--the agricultural
laborer may neither remain a laborer nor become an owner. If he can
accumulate enough capital for machinery, horses, farm animals, and seed,
he can pay for the use of the land from his annual product, he can
become a tenant. On the other side, if the value of the usual 160-acre
homestead rises to $20,000 or $30,000, the owner is easily able to make
a few thousand dollars in addition by selling his farm animals and
machinery and to retire to the country town and live on his rent.

It is evident that the position of most of these farm tenants is very
close to that of laborers. Though working on their own account, it is so
difficult for them to make a living that they are forced to the longest
hours and to the exploitation of their wives and children under all
possible and impossible circumstances. Already farm tenants are almost
as numerous in this country as farm owners. The census figures indicated
that the proportion of tenants had risen fr