Thus,Smith is in error.While his claim that"slave"cultivation is grossly wasteful may or may not be true,his view that,historically,for economic reasons sharecroppers have been gradually replaced by fixed-rent farmers,is wrong.One need only point out that share tenancy has not been replaced by fixed rent,and that in the United States similar share contracts predominate among leases of retail stores,beauty salons,gasoline stations,amusement park rentals,and even the much regulated oil and fishery industries.Indeed,the rarity of sharecropping in England as observed by Smith and later by Mill and Marshall might very well be the result of the freehold,under which a lease for life was enforced by law.Under a perpetual lease,the cost of enforcing a share contract may be so high as to make it undesirable,since tenancy dismissal is one effective device to insure against poor performance by sharecroppers.
It is,of course,difficult to evaluate Smith's influence over later writers on share tenancy.The tax-equivalent argument aside,what appears to have permeated the minds of subsequent English writers is the conviction that the British（fixed rent）system was more advanced and efficient than rental arrangements elsewhere.This conviction was reinforced by the famous Travels of Arthur Young.
Young was the secretary to the Honorable Board of Agriculture and Fellow of the Royal Society.Esteemed as an agricultural expert in England,he condemned the metayers almost every time they were mentioned in his Travels in France during the Years 1787,1788,and 1789.[11] Of the metayage system,Young wrote:
There is not one word to be said in favor of the practice,and a thousand arguments that might be used against it……In this most miserable of all the modes of letting land,the defrauded landlord receives a contemptible rent;the farmer is in the lowest state of poverty;the land is miserably cultivated;and the nation suffers as severely as the parties themselves……Wherever this system prevails,it may be taken for granted that a useless and miserable population is found.[12]
One hundred years later in 1892,however,a very different edition of Young's Travels appeared.The editor,Miss Betham-Edwards,author and officer of public information of France,took liberty to delete most of Young's condemnations of the metayers.[13] And to the only remaining statement that I could find-in which Young claimed that the metayage system"perpetuates poverty and excludes instruction"—Betham-Edwards added a footnote:"Complex as such an arrangement may appear at first sight,metayage must be counted as a factor of great importance in the agricultural prosperity of France."[14]
Betham-Edwards is not the only editor who challenged Young's judgment.Constantia Maxwell,who edited the Travels in 1929,made numerous corrections on Young's views in the lengthy"Editor's Notes."[15] Maxwell pointed out,with the support of many sources,that at Young's time in France there were govern-ment regulations on vine growing,heavy taxes,the aftermath of the wars of Louis XIV,and various political disturbances on the eve of the French Revolution.Certainly,Young was not ignorant of all this,and-even if we accept his view that French agriculture was"miserable"—it is difficult to understand why he blamed the metayers as the sole source of trouble.[16]
Young's condemnation of metayage notwithstanding,we find in his work one piece of evidence which seemingly is consistent with inefficient land use under sharecropping;namely the low rent of land in France as compared with England.[17] According to the tax approach,nonland inputs committed to land under share rent are less than under fixed rent,and thus given the same area of land the rental payment to the landlord will be lower.According to standard economic theory,ceteris paribus,rent will be lower if（a）the land is less fertile（which Young discussed ambiguously）,or（b）the cost of tenant inputs（or the wage rate）is higher（which Young would deny since the metayers were"miserably poor"）.But other things were,in fact,not equal.In addition to the political instability and regulations on farming at that time,which might well have discouraged investment in land and thus led to lower rents,a more significant factor,perhaps,is the reportedly heavy taxes imposed on the metayers.[18] Given the metayers'alternative earnings,however trivial,a higher tax imposed on the occupation will require that the landowners charge a lower rental percentage in order to keep the metayers at work.And this implies a lower rent per acre of land.
Whereas Young might have allowed his emotion to run away with his judgment,some of his observations could have hinted to later writers that fixed and share rents yield the same intensity of nonland inputs should the constraints of competition be equal.In particular,Young observed that the share percentages varied from place to place,and that the division of farm size was related to population pressure.[19] Yet to my knowledge the only subsequent economists who elaborated further on the division of farms under share tenancy are Richard Jones and John Stuart Mill.
Writing in 1831,Jones duplicated not only Smith's thesis of the development of leasing arrangements,but also Smith's conclusions.[20] Jones,however,elaborated on the adjustment of labor input through land size divisions.With more information at hand,and acknowledging Young's observations,Jones wrote:
While the metayer tenant pays nominally the same[rental percentage],his own share of the produce may be diminished in two modes:by his being subjected to a greater quantity of the public burthens:or by the size of his metairie being reduced.By this second mode of reduction,I am not aware that the French metayer suffered much……[21]
And he continued further when he came to the metayers in Italy: