The Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act

Abstract

With the enactment of the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act,' signed by President Roosevelt on July 22nd of this year, another feature was added to the new national land policy that has been slowly evolving under the New Deal. This act gives outright and specific legislative authorization for the continuance of the federal programs of rural rehabilitation loans and submarginal land purchase and development, which have heretofore been carried out under executive orders and financed by funds from appropriations for relief and work relief projects.2 It places these programs under the administration of the Secretary of Agriculture, and, at the same time, authorizes him to inaugurate a system of long-term mortgage loans to aid landless rural families in becoming farm owners. From some viewpoints the Act is more important as a declaration of policy on the part of Congress than as an instrument for immediate accomplishments. Nevertheless, it lays the first foundation stones, upon which may eventually be built a comprehensive land program. The following discussion of the Act has three purposes: (i) to present a resume of the legislative history of the law; (2) to describe its principal provisions which directly pertain to the promotion of farm ownership; and (3) to point out some of the obvious weaknesses of those provisions, and make suggestions for their improvement. Those sections of the Act which provide for rural rehabilitation loans to distressed families and for the purchase and development of land unsuited for farming will be only briefly mentioned. They are, however, very significant parts of the law. I