EMIGRATION OF AGRICULTURISTS
All agriculturists thinking of crossing into Asia should first think well: Is there not some way of improving the home land and remaining on it?
Having become owners of your land at home (by the completion of purchase after the liberation from serfdom), it is possible to let part of it out to others, or by careful culture greatly increase the harvest, or you can mortgage it to the Peasants’ Bank and buy other land, either in your own or in a neighbouring province.
It is another matter when the land you possess is so little that there is none to let out or mortgage, or when it is difficult to buy suitable land at all near, when the land offered by Government or private owners becomes year by year less and the prices year by year higher.
Then it is worth while considering the question of emigration to Asiatic Russia, where there is still much space. The Government assigns land to the extent of 25-50 dessiatinas a farm or 8-15 dessiatinas for each male soul. Or it is possible to settle in a village or Cossack station by special arrangement, and lease land cheaply from settled colonists. To enable people to travel to such places the Government helps with cheap tariffs and money grants.
During the past seven years more than three million souls have firmly established themselves in this way, and in many places it may be said that the colonists have become rich and live in a more flourishing way than they did on the old lands at home. But it must be remembered that such results are not attained at once. It is not a little heavy labour, grief and poverty that have to be undergone during the first years in the new place. Not every family has the strength to bear such trial. It is reckoned that of every hundred families going across the Ural fifteen return to the old country after having failed to take root in the new. It is hard for families where the general health is weak, where there are not good working hands, or where there is no money whatever to start with. Such families would do better not to stir; better to work a bit more on the home lands till they get some means to take up new land and try and develop it.