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is comparatively small, the number of tenant cultivators has increased in a decade from 2780 to 4731, while the freehold families have declined from 61,528 to 57,081.
In Massachusetts the tenant families have increased from 3100 to 5206, while the freehold farmers have declined from 35,266 to 29,370.
Iowa, in the same time, has gained 3521 “owning cultivators,” but has also gained more than 16,500 tenant cultivators.
Georgia reaches the climax with a loss of 3844 “owning cultivators,” and an increase of 39,906 tenant families.
In short, everything points towards that landlord system which we thought we had escaped, and away from that system of personal proprietorship which we thought our stronghold.
The present writer well remembers to have heard precisely this change predicted, more than forty years ago, by that very able man Orestes A. Brownson, but the remark was received almost with derision.
No one could deride it now, however we may explain it.
In many cases, no doubt, the advent of the gentleman farmer is a positive gain to all the agriculture of the neighborhood.
He has travelled and studied more, even if he has worked less; he tries experiments for others, and runs
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