The Problem of Inheritance in American Land Tenure

Abstract

A few years ago a visiting Japanese scholar asked whether we Americans had a theory of land In trying to answer this question it seems to me that we have in the familiar ladder an explanation, principle or if you will, of American land tenure. By tenure we have in mind not merely but the whole range of the conditions and status through which many of our farmers pass. Like Shakespeare's hero of the seven ages, they play many parts in their progress from wage-earner to retiredfarmer-landlord, in fact, as many as six in some cases. This situation is more or less peculiar to America. Great Britain before the World War serves as an example of almost opposite conditions. Instead of each man playing many parts, each one played only one part and he stayed in his assigned station. Landlord, farmer, laborer were almost completely separated in their functions. But there are many variations in foreign countries and it is not wise to generalize too much. In theory, there is an ideal system of tenure based on the agricultural ladder. In this system there is a flow of men from the lower stages to the higher. At any given time a certain proportion of farmers will be found in the hired man stage, a given percentage will be tenants, another part encumbered owners, and so on. This is what is implied by the phrase normal percentage of tenancy. However, these stages in American land tenure are not fixed. They can be shifted, omitted or modified by social and economic institutions according to our conception of a land tenure policy. Our land and reclamation policies no doubt had in mind the largest possible number of home owners, but tenancy has come to be a part of our system of land tenure. Is this inevitable ? Shall we go farther with it and separate the function of land ownership completely from that of operation?