[190] We read in a communication from the district of Voronezh that “there is hardly one-fourth of the live stock left.… Thanks to the enfeebled condition, as well as to the complete loss of the peasants’ horses, many among the landlords, and larger tenants, have secured live stock of their own.” The Agriculturist (St. Petersburg), No. 26, April 24 (May 6), 1892.
Says another correspondent, also a landlord: “This year the greatest part of the farm work was to be done with the landlord’s live stock, it being impossible to get peasants for the purpose, as they had suffered a heavy loss of horses.” (Ib., No. 33, June 12 (24), 1892.)
[191] Fertilizing and irrigation have become a necessity in Russian agriculture. Let us figure the expenses entailed by these improvements.
We know that manure is procured for the landlord’s fields by the decaying small farmer. The ruin of the latter necessitates an outlay of capital by the landlord for the purchase of live stock. Now, to fertilize the fields once in three years, 2 heads of big cattle are required per dessiatine of arable land, which would cause an expense of 78.96 rubles per dessiatine. (Cf., Statistical Reports for the Gubernia of Voronezh, Vol. II., Number II., App., pp. 44-45.) Here we have the Achilles heel of the Russian landed nobility. The land acquired by the peasants with the aid of the Peasants’ Bank sold at an average price of rubles 43.41 the dessiatine. (Herzenstein, l. c., p. 104). The cost of fertilizing alone exceeds the total value of the land; it could consequently not be conducted on a large scale by means of funded loans.
The conditions are similar in the case of irrigation. Mr. Vladimir Biriukowicz, a writer in the Russkaya Mysl, quotes a few instances of how artificial irrigation has increased the rental value of the estates from 3 rubles to 15, and even 25 rubles yearly per dessiatine. Moreover, and this is of greater importance, amidst the surrounding failure, the irrigated estates were blessed by excellent crops. According to Mr. Daniloff, a civil engineer, irrigation had raised the productivity of ploughland by from 15 to 20 per cent., and of meadow by 100 per cent., while the cost of construction did not exceed 60 rubles per dessiatine. (l. c., April 1, 1892, Protection and Agriculture, pp. 2, 3.) Certainly there is nothing exorbitant in the expense; still it likewise requires an outlay of capital exceeding the value of the land, and this, in the opinion of a practical agriculturalist, must be accounted for as the chief reason of the indifference of the landlords in the matter of irrigation. (Cf., “Topographical Surveying for irrigation works,” by V. Kasyanenko. The Agriculturist, St. Petersburg, No. 47, 1892). Thus the progress of artificial irrigation means the ruin of the nobleman.
[192] I am glad to know that this is the opinion advanced by so high an authority in political economy as Mr. Frederick Engels, one of the few Western students familiar with the Russian language. (Die Neue Zeit, 1892.) So far, however, as my case is concerned, I claim independence of judgment. I wrote in an editorial, dated December 20, 1891: “The consequences of this famine are equivalent to a revolution in the social organization of the Russian village.… The development of capitalism in agriculture, the dissolution of the peasantry into two distinct groups: a rural petite bourgeoisie, and a rural proletariat—these are the characteristics of a new epoch in Russia’s social life.” (Cf., Progress, No. 3, a Russian weekly published at the time in New York.)
[193] This economic revolution seems to be one of more than merely national import. Up to the present day the American farmer has met the Russian peasant on the international market, either as small farmer, or as cultivator of the greater part of the landlords’ property. In this competition the greater economy of labor and the cheaper methods of transportation secured the prize to the American producer. From now on the mortgaged American farmer will have to stand the competition of the Russian capitalist. It hardly needs a prophet to foretell that the breakdown of the Russian peasantry will hasten the decay of small agriculture in America.
[194] Landless households and members thereof are not counted here.
[195] Here are included those possessing their land partly on the basis of communism, and partly quarterly.
[196] This group was formed from the serfs who had belonged to petty gentlemen; this small class of serfs was reduced in 1861 from private serfdom to state serfdom, or, as it was called, to the class of state peasants. In 1866 it shared the lot of the emancipated state peasants. Thus, by its historical origin, this group should be classed among former serfs, while by title of possession its members were hereditary tenants like the rest of the former state peasants. Nowadays they likewise enjoy the right of purchasing their land in property.