The effect of this process is upon all the life of country people. It has created its own class of men. There was no intention in the mind of earlier Americans that we should ever have a tenant class in America. The assumption on which all our ideals are built has been that we would be a land-owning people, but we are confronted with a tenantry problem as difficult as any in the world. The process of exploiting land has added to the social and economic life of the country the farm landlord, whose influence upon the immediate future of the American country community, church and school, in all sections will be great, and in many communities will be dominating. The exploitation of land has produced the retired farmer. He is a pure example of the weakness of the exploiter economy. Originally he was a homesteader, or perhaps a purchaser of cheap land in the early days. He expected not to remain a farmer, but hoped for removal to the East or to a college town. The motives which animated him were varied, but among them none was so prominent as a desire for better education than was provided for his children in the country community of the farmer type. So that at forty or fifty years of age he seized an opportunity to sell his land, as the prices were rising, and retired to the town with a cash fortune for investment. Immediately the economic forces to which he had submitted himself made of him a new type, for the retired farmer in the Middle West is a characteristic type of the leading towns and cities. Some whole streets in large centers are peopled with retired farmers. The civic policies of scores of small municipalities are controlled in a measure by them, so that journalists, religious leaders, reformers and politicians have very clear-cut opinions as to the value of the retired farmer. The analysis of this situation is as follows. While the land which he sold continued to increase in value, his small fortune began to diminish in value. The interest on his money has been less every ten years; whereas he formerly could loan at first for six and sometimes seven per cent, he cannot loan safely now for more than five or six per cent. Meantime the prices of all things he has to buy are expressed in cash,--no longer in kind as on the farm; and these cash prices are growing. In the past decade they have almost doubled. This means that he is a poorer man. His money has a diminished purchasing power and he has a smaller yearly income.