Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1901 — GIFPORD’S LEASES. [ARTICLE]

GIFPORD’S LEASES.

Some of our readers residing in the Gifford district ,ask us to publish the gist of the recent decision of the Appellate court in the case of Gifford \jg. Meyers, taken up from Pulaski county. The decision in substance holds the iron clad lease which Mr. Gifford exacts from his “tenants” (we use quotations because the courts hold they are not tenants) as legal, and the Jasper circuit court held the same in a similar case tried here last spring or winter. Gifford has a clause in these long-winded, ironclad leases that he (Gifford) shall have the right to purchase the grain raised by the “tenants’’ after division is made, providing he will pay R 8 much ns other dealers are paying for like grnin. While this appears all right on its face, the “tenants” claim that it places them at Gifford’s mercy. For example, they need a little ready money to carry them along a few months until they can get their crop harvested and tlie division made. Gifford, they allege, will loan them no money on the crop, and other dealers will loan them nothing because the courts have held that they (the “tenants”) have no crop nor legal interest therein to mortgage or give a lien upon until after the division is made, and all liens or mortgage upon the ■ tenants” supposed interest- according to the lease he has signed—are void. Also, when they sell grain to Gifford, they claim, the grain is weighed by his agents, but the latter issue no checks for it. The “tenant” must wait until the weights are sent to Gifford’s home office at Kankakee, then await his pleasure in paying therefor. If they need a little ready money, it will be seen, even after the division of crops is made, they cannot haul a load of oats or corn to market and get the cash for it like any other man who has grain to sell, but must take it to Gifford’s scales and then wait from two weeks to as many months before returns are received from the head office, which is certainly a hardship. The decision in the case sent up from Pulaski, as we understand it, only applies to the disposition of the grnin before division is made, and has nothing to say regarding the “tenant’s” obligation to sell to Gifford aftei such division. That question will yet have to be determined. Following is the text of the decision in the above case ns published iu the Indianapolis papers at the time:

(li Where the owner of a farm executed a written lease for buildings thereon and lots surrounding them, and tlie grass and pasture lands thereon, at a stipulated rent, including tlie .work of raising crops on the cultivated land of such farm, reserving to himself all grain crops that should bn- gd thereon, but undertaking to pay bis tenant two-thirds of all such grain in payment for his work of raising it,subject to a deduction for all debts owing from tlie tenant to tiis landlord for rent or ot ,er demands, all grain raised on such cultivated land by such tenant was the property of the landowner until it was divided and the tenant's share delivered to him, and the purchaser'of such grain from the tenant before the division was liable to the landlord for its value in a suit lorconversion. without regard to the state of tlie account between such landlord and such tenant. (2). Such contract was not unlawful. and did not create the relation of landlord and tenant as to tlie cultivated ground (3 . It was not necessary that such contract should l>e recorded to give the landowner a right to recover such grain. Husking supplies of every conceivable kind at Lee’s, McCovsburg.