Sec. 10. #Compensations of the farmer’s life#.  In bare monetary terms the average farmer’s family gets a labor-income less than that of the ordinary wage-earner in a factory, and it is only by the aid of the wealth-income that it appears to fare as well or better.  Even the few largest incomes made in farming are small in comparison with many of those made in commerce, transportation, and manufacturing.  The great mass of farmers of the nation are hard-laboring men, poor in the eyes of the city dwellers.[9]

But this much is certain:  the farmer’s income in monetary terms has on the average much larger power to purchase the main goods of life (material and psychic goods) than it would have in town.  Equally good house usance would cost more in nearly all towns, and much more in larger cities.  Retail prices of the same food and fuel even in small towns would be much greater.  The necessary outlay for clothes to maintain the class standard is much less for farmers than for city dwellers.  Moreover, in the use of horses and carriages, and now of automobiles, and in the free control of his own time—­in many elements of psychic income—­the farmer is on a parity with men in other occupations of double or quadruple his income expressed in monetary terms.

Tho the farmer’s working day in the busiest season of summer is very long compared with that of factory or office workers, his working day at other seasons is usually much shorter than the average urban worker’s day.  The farmer’s life is nearly always free from the excessive pressure, haste, and competition of city life, and the value, to many a man, of the more natural and wholesome conditions of outdoor life and outdoor work are hardly to be measured in terms of even the most untainted dollars.

Sec. 11. #Ownership and tenancy.# Since 1880, when the first figures on farm tenures were collected, the proportion of farms operated by owners has steadily decreased.

Percentage of farms operated by
Owners Cash tenants Share tenants

1880 ............   74.5             8.0            17.5
1890 ............   71.6            10.0            18.4
1900 ............   64.7            13.1            22.2
1910 ............   63.0            13.0            24.0

These statistics arouse fears that the class of independent farmers operating their own farms is gradually giving way to a tenantry in America.  But in some respects the figures are misleading unless carefully interpreted.  The increasing proportion of tenants is due not so much to owners falling into the class of tenants as to the hired laborers rising into the class of tenants.  The number of male operating owners compared with all male workers (not merely with all farms) has remained almost constant at about 42 per cent; while the per cent of hired workers has decreased from 43.3 (in 1880) to 41.4 (in 1890) and to 34.6 (in 1900).  Most hired men on farms are farmers’ sons; the city boy does not adapt himself readily to farm work.  Most hired men of native stock become tenants, and finally owners.  Only 11 per cent of the hired workers in agriculture (in 1900) were over 35 years of age.