The decline in home ownership both in the cities and in the rural
districts of the United States has been observed with considerable
anxiety because of the effect upon our national welfare and upon
the citizenship of the country. One writer says:

Farming is a permanent business; it is no "fly by night"
occupation. ... No man can pull up stakes and leave a farm at the
close of the year without sacrificing the results of labor which
he has done ... The renter who ends harvest knowing that he will
move in the spring, will not do as good a job of hauling manure
and fall plowing as he would were he to stay; nor does he take as
good care of the buildings and other improvements ...

The cost to the farming business of the country each year for this
annual farm moving-week mounts into the millions of dollars. And
the pity of it all is that practically no one is the winner
thereby ... The renter loses, the landlord loses, the general
community and the nation at large lose. [Footnote: W.D. Boyce, in
an editorial in THE FARMING BUSINESS, February 26, 1916, quoted in
Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, p. 651.]

Tenant farming also places obstacles in the way of community
progress in other ways.

The tenant takes little interest in community affairs. The
questions of schools, churches, or roads are of little moment to
him. He does not wish to invest in enterprises which will of
necessity be left wholly ... to his successor. In short, he is in
the community, but hardly of it. [Footnote: B.H. Hibbard, "Farm