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_