26
| Farms operated by managers: | ||
| 1900 | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 59,085 |
| 1910 | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 57,398 |
| Decrease | 1,687 | |
The whole movement is reactionary, away from progress toward feudalism. Here we have much land owned by one landlord and tilled by many tenant families.
Not let us separate the syllable Land, from Lord, retaining Lord alone; let us substitute serf for tenant, and we have in name what we have in reality—Feudalism.
Under feudalism the Lord took about one-third of the product of the serf. The modern landlord, thanks to the introduction of farm machinery, takes one-half of the crop produced by the tenant; and yet there are people who regard Landlord-ism as an improvement on plain Lord-ism.
While the county seat usurers, bankers and small fry capitalists are gleefully returning to the good old days when "Knighthood Was In Flower," the real capitalists have taken up a stragetic position and placed themselves in possession of the faucet through which the agricultural products flow into the world's markets.
Grain elevators, flour mills, cotton gins, packing plants, canning factories and market facilities are all the property of the greater capitalists. The possession of these means of production and distribution makes it possible for this class to take from the farmer all he produces. leaving only sufficient to allow him to reproduce his labor power and raise a new generation of farmers.
The farmer selling into and buying out of a monopolized market, finds himself in the identical position of the wage worker who sells his labor power under free competition with his fellow workers to the owners of capital. The only difference is that the wage worker sells his labor power direct to the capitalist while the farmer converts his labor power into products which he cannot turn into cash without first passing through the fingers of the gentlemen who cluster around thee faucet.
The pay envelope of the factory worker must contain the price which he must pay to the landlord for the use of a town lot, and the price of farm produce must be high enough to allow the farmer a sum large enough to pay land rent and sustain life.
In both cases the landlord appears as a pure parasite on industrial capitalist. The abolition of landlordism in the cities would undoubtedly result in an immediate benefit to the work-
