Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1878 — Six Million Farmers. [ARTICLE]

Six Million Farmers.

By the last census there were nearly 3,000,000 of farmers and planters who owned their lands. There were about an equal number of men who rented lands or worked as farm hands. In the South these were mostly freedmen, but in the North farmers’ sons. The number of land-renters in the North is small as compared with the number of landowes. The whole number of men who work land for a living, including tenants, hired laborers and farmers’ sons, is not far from 6,000,000, and represent about 5,000,000 of families, or more than half the total population of the American people. —Chicago Tribune.