om 23 per cent in 1880 to 37
per cent in 1910. Not only this, but a closer inspection of the figures
by States will show that, whereas in new States like Minnesota, where
tenancy has not had time to develop, it embraced in 1900 less than 20
per cent of the total number of farms, in many older States the
percentage had already risen high above 40. This increase of tenants
proves an approach of the United States to the fundamental economic
condition of older countries--the divorce of land cultivation from land
ownership, and the census of 1910 shows that three eighths of the farms
of the United States are already in that condition.

Land and hired labor are the chief sources of agricultural wealth, and
capital is most productive only when it is invested in these as well as
other means of production. That is, if the small farmer is really a
small capitalist, if he is to receive a return from his capital as well
as his own individual and that of his family labor, he must, as a rule,
either have enough capital to provide work for others and his family, or
he must get a share of the unearned increment through the ownership of
his farm, or long leases without revaluation. Farm tenants who do not
habitually employ labor, or those whose mortgages are so heavy as
practically to place them in the position of such tenants, are, for
these reasons, undoubtedly accessible to Socialist ideas--_as long as
they remain farm tenants_.

But now after discarding all the European prejudices above referred to,
let us look at the other side. Tenants everywhere belong to those
classes which, as Kautsky truly says, in the passage quoted in a
previous chapter, are also a recruiting ground for the capitalists. They
are more likely to be the owners of the capital, now a considerable sum,
needed to _operate_ a small farm (cattle, machinery, etc.) than are farm
laborers, and it is for their benefit chiefly that the various
governmental plans for creating new small farms through irrigation,
reclamation, and the division of large estates are contrived. And it is
even possible that practically all the present tenants may some day be
provided for.

By maintaining or creating small farms then, or providing for a system
of long leases and small-sized allotments of governmentally owned land,
guaranteed against any raise in rents during the term of the lease,
capitalist governments may gradually succeed in firmly attaching the
larger part of the struggling