Definition
In a condition of poverty as a result of inability to meet tax payments or other financial requirements for one's land holdings.
In Context
- ""I was offered a thousand acres, the other day, at twenty-five cents an acre," remarked the doctor. "The owner is so land-poor that he can't pay the taxes.""
- "[A]ll the rest of the surrounding land was owned by a Frenchman. . . . He was a land-miser. With no business capacity, old and opinionated, he was land poor, and it was an open question which would arrive first, his death or bankruptcy."
- "Altho' most of the planters were "land poor" and burdened by the heavy taxes of "Reconstruction," and altho' many Negroes, having abandoned hope of "forty acres and a mule" from the Federal Government, were now ready to buy ten acres and an ox, the sale of land to Negroes was generally reprobated."
- "Most ranchers are land poor—lots of land, but not much money."