William James, the Harvard psychologist, used to say in his class-room:
“I must fight the devil and his wiles, for God needs me. I may help
save the day.”
In the same room, the next hour, Josiah Royce, the philosopher, would
say, “I must set my heel on Satan’s neck, for God’s victorious spirit
is in me.”
Whichever of these two schools of moral action one belongs to, one is
bound, you see, to fight the devil and his guile; and in country life
this is no joke, for as it turns out, the devil waved a mighty wicked
wand over the American farm tenant when he jockeyed him on to the land
into the shoes of the departing farm owner. It was a devilish, cunning
trick to decoy the owner, body and soul, into town and into the town
church--away from the little country church of his fathers. It was,
however, the meanest lick of Satan against the peace of the tenant
to bewitch him into flitting from farm to farm and from community
to community. And now the situation has come to such a pass that,
unless the American church has the grace and backbone and subtlety to
outgeneral the devil in his game, the devil wins; for in matters of
religion, the landless man is between the devil and the deep sea.
“_Churches Detour--Tenants Ahead_”
It is old stuff, in a way, this cheerless story of farm tenants
and religion. Pick up, as I have done, either at random or quite
methodically, booklets, chapters, articles, or pamphlets dealing at
first hand with the farm tenant, and the tale of his religious handicap
runs drearily, hopelessly to the same sad end. For example, take
this rather mild statement from a member of Roosevelt’s Country Life
Commission:
“The farm owner who has moved to town and is renting his land cannot
be expected to be a real, vital force in the rural church. Nor can
the tenant who has a one-year lease, or whose tenure is uncertain, be
expected to cultivate the Christian graces by intimate fellowship
with his neighbors and associates; in other words, to take root in the
community and become a part of it.”
“Why, then,” it will be asked, “try to dress up the outworn subject
again?”
The plain answer, without any apology, is simply this: The farm-tenant
case, as a phase of religion in eclipse, has not yet cast an image on
the American mind. The American church,--and I class together all the
Christian bodies in this sweeping term,--the Christian conscience of
the American church has apparently reversed itself and “passed by on
the other side” of this bedeviled situation. Now such an attitude, such
collective behavior, is ruthless, well nigh unforgivable, and in fact
incomprehensible. Words must continue to be spoken until the church
ceases to detour around the tenant.
_The Flood of Tenancy Unabated_
And first of all, in order to see the gravity of the case as it stands,
one must sense the resistless character of the sweeping flow of tenancy
itself. Decade by decade the flood has risen. In 1880, 25.6 per cent.
of the farms in the United States were tenant farms; in 1890, 28.4 per
cent.; in 1900, 35.3 per cent.; in 1910, 37.0 per cent.; in 1920, 38.1
per cent.
If one looks a little closer at the regions where the flood is
highest--almost over the dikes, so to speak--the truth strikes home a
little stronger. In the east South-central States, containing Kentucky,
Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, the percentage in 1880 was 35.2; in
1890, 38.6; in 1900, 49.1; in 1910, 52.8; in 1920, 49.6. In the west
south-central area, containing Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas,
the percentage in 1880 was 35.2; in 1890, 38.6; in 1900, 49.1; in 1910,
52.8; in 1920, 53.2. In the west north-central area, containing, as a
very vital part of American agriculture, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri,
North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, the percentage in 1880
was 20.5; in 1890, 24.0; in 1900, 28.6; in 1910, 30.0; in 1920, 34.1.
When the United States Census Report for 1920 came out and was scanned,
it was discovered by every one that in the decade between 1910 and 1920
the flood of tenant farms had in number gone down in some States a
little, as in Alabama and Mississippi, a fact which brought a decline
in the east south-central area from 52.8 per cent. in 1910 to 49.6 per
cent. in 1920. But lest the friends of agriculture in America should be
put under ether by this disclosure, Dr. C. L. Stewart, now professor
in the University of Illinois, while a member of the United States
Department of Agriculture, in a statement entitled, “The Persistent
Increase of Tenant Farming,” called attention to the fact that the
bare number of tenant farms is a less accurate index of the sweep and
meaning of tenancy than the acreage involved and the value of that
acreage:
“When measured on the basis of acreage and value, the number of rented
acres per thousand and the number of dollar’s worth of rented land per
thousand was not only higher (in 1910 and 1920) than that shown on the
preceding basis (number of rented farms), but has been growing at much
faster rates during both of the decades since 1900, especially during
the decade just ended.... In the light of this analysis, the tide of
tenancy is shown by the latest census to have continued with little or
no abatement.”
In sober truth, this flood-tide of tenancy is no mere passing
phenomenon in the adolescent experience of America, but is a settled
characteristic now being wrought into the texture of American life.
As a social and economic force, tenancy is here to stay. Statesmen
may well build their dikes higher against it; but American religious
leaders--the makers of ecclesiastical policy--must from now on
gravely take farm tenancy into their reckoning, or assume spiritual
responsibility for its continued religionless character.
_Locating the Devil’s Quarry_
Let us draw a bit closer to these tenant folks and look them in the
eyes. There they are, in round numbers two and a half millions of
tenant operators; or, perhaps, better reckoned for our purpose as
twelve millions of people, counting all persons in the tenant families
both old and young. But, as almost everybody knows, there are a few
vast differences among tenants, and we must sift a little and sort out
the group that the devil is laying his finger on and claiming as his
own.
A tenant who is a son or daughter of the landlord, or otherwise
related to the landlord by blood or marriage, is without question
not only a privileged person and his family a privileged family
among tenants, but, what is more to the point, living on family
lands as he most generally does, the “related tenant” is so often an
owner in prospect with a deed “in escrow” as the law would put it,
that while nominally a tenant, he is an owner in thin disguise, and
virtually has in the community the status of an owner. The census does
not declare what percentage of the twelve millions of tenant folk
belongs to this favored class; but whatever the percentage is, it is
obviously decreasing with the decreasing percentage of owner-operating
families. Representative studies made by the United States Department
of Agriculture indicate that 23 per cent. of the tenant population
belongs at present to this group. If we accept this estimate, then, in
1920, there were 2,760,000 persons in the families of “related tenants.”
To protect my story against the will to exaggerate the landless
element, let us call the total number of “related tenants” three
millions; and then let us deduct this whole group from the twelve
millions of tenant folks. This leaves nine millions of tenants
unprivileged by birth or marriage in respect to land.
Lest any one should feel, furthermore, that I am trying to make, under
cover, a case of the colored tenant,--whose situation is confessedly
special and should not, for obvious reasons, be confused with that of
white tenants,--let us sift and sort again and take out three and a
half millions of colored tenant folk, old and young. The residuum is
five and a half millions of white tenants. This is the group that has
swelled in numbers during the past four decades. This is the group
that is all the time spreading over more and more acres, all the time
creeping on to more and more valuable land. This group of landless
men, women, and children (I do not mean to say that this is the only
landless group of white farm people, for the agricultural-labor class
makes another story), occupying more and more the strategic positions
in agriculture and country life, contains the devil’s quarry.
_Tenants On the Go_
We must add one more particularly distressing feature to our general
picture. In December and January in the South, or in March in the
North, there is a great stir among these tenants, for moving-time
has come. During the year between December 1, 1921, and December 1,
1922, according to a statement put out by the U. S. Department of
Agriculture, entitled, “Farm Occupancy, Ownership, and Tenancy, 1922,”
“nearly 663,000 shifts on farms exchanging tenants” occurred of which
“nearly 250,000 tenants were indicated to have either discontinued
farming for some other occupation or moved out of their communities.”
In this exodus, poverty tags along, poverty carrying in her apron
all the witch’s ills--hard luck, dimmed lights of the mind, illness,
inferiority written in behavior, stolid despair, indifference to
improvement, insensibility to refinements. In the South, poverty hangs
on to the coat-tails of the “Cropper”--him of the lowest estate of the
tenant. In 1920, according to the United States Census Report, there
were 227,378 white croppers, more than one million white cropper folk.
Behold a host, comparable with the host of Israel on the way to Canaan.
The roads are filled with teams, with jags of household belongings,
with led or driven cattle, horses and mules, with loads of women and
children. A small nation is folding its tents and moving on ere its
tents have fairly got pitched. White tenants alone,--and mind you, out
of the group of five and a half millions of landless people,--an army
of 1,375,000 souls; and of these, more than a half a million going
across the border of the community into a strange land for another
short sojourn. This is the picture you will see every year--over a
quarter of all tenants moving, and ten per cent. of all tenants moving
into strange associations among strange people.
_Outcasts From the Church_
In their recent study, “The Town and Country Church,” Dr. H. N. Morse
and Dr. de S. Brunner, of the Institute of Social and Religious
Research, have this convincing word to say about the church and the
farm tenant:
“The church in the country areas is not, generally speaking, the church
of the landless man. In a study of all the churches in 179 counties,
located in 44 States, the situation, which we believe is reliably
representative of conditions in the United States as a whole, is
this: The percentage of farm owners who are members of churches in
the South is 59.5, while of tenants who are members the percentage is
33.5; in the Southwest, of owners, 26.2, while of tenants, 9.2; in the
Northwest, of owners, 16.4, while of tenants, 7.4; in the Middle West,
of owners, 47.9, while of tenants, 20.3; in the Prairie, of owners,
55.6, while of tenants, 15.8.”
These two authorities on the farmer’s church, draw from their study of
the high and low tenancy areas in 175 counties this further conclusion:
“The larger the proportion of farm tenants in an area, the more
conspicuously unreached by the church is the landless man.” Here are
their figures, see for yourself:
“In counties where tenancy runs from 0 to 10 per cent., the percentage
of farm owners who are church members is 13.7, while the percentage
of tenants who are church members is 12.4; where tenancy runs from 11
to 25 per cent., the percentage of owners as church members is 26.8,
while of tenants, 19.8; where tenancy runs from 26 to 50 per cent., the
percentage of owners is 48.2, while of tenants, 23.6; where tenancy
runs over 50 per cent., the percentage of owners who are church members
is 63.6, while the percentage of tenants who are church members is
23.9.”
When we look into this statement, it is plain that in the low tenancy
areas the “related tenants” on “family lands” bulk large, and they
rank, as we know, with owners themselves; but when we get into the
high tenancy areas, we strike the core of tenants unrelated to the
landlord. Here is the mass of our 5,500,000 landless tenant folk, and
here is where the church has weakened and fallen down. Five millions
of these white landless tenants are in the high tenancy areas. And
applying this church study to our problem, while the church reaches 55
per cent. of the owners in these areas it reaches only 24 per cent.
of the tenants. That is, 1,200,000 of these landless tenants only
are inside the circle of direct religious influence, and 3,800,000
are outside. If these 5,000,000 persons had been owners of land, or
inheritors of land in waiting, the church would have reached 2,750,000
of them instead of 1,200,000; in other words here are 1,550,000 tenant
people who are outcasts from the church simply because they are
landless folk. And these outcasts--these religionless pariahs--are on
the increase from year to year as tenancy increases its hold upon the
nation.
_One Hundred Per Cent. Material for Religion_
It surely will not be misunderstood if a layman should call to mind
that the genius of Christianity is its perennial Gospel--just good
news--to the poor, the broken in life’s struggle. If a fitter multitude
than these tenants for the good tidings of the Christ can be found on
the face of the earth, I would like to learn of them. The ordinary life
of these outcasts, these wanderers from spot to spot seeking the sun
that refuses to shine, has precisely all of those breakdowns which the
Christian religion promises to repair--poverty, invalidism, death,
sin. It seems to me that these pariahs are just naturally made to order
for the kind of religion that the American church has to offer; but as
I see it, and I have looked this thing in the face from angle after
angle, they haven’t got a ghost of a show at it the way the church
system of the country at present works out. Speaking straight from the
shoulder, the devil wins, unless--And where is the person who will rise
and name the great “unless” that can fix this church system up and set
the heel of the church on Satan’s neck?
The history of the church, running back through the centuries, is,
as I read it, dotted with awakenings, with the rise of a thought, of
a hope-dream, with the rise of a man who out of the very fog and
blackness of popular waywardness, wantonness, unbelief, depravity, has
stood up and successfully denied that human life must be all to the
strong and that the poor must live unillumined. This has been the type
of man who has lit the torch of love and solicitude and faith in the
world that has lighted the race generation after generation. Is this
not the time in the life of the American church and this the occasion
in America for such a man to arise and call a halt upon the detour of
the church around the farm tenant?