As above mentioned, in those very communities where communal tenure is yet in existence, side by side with it individual tenancy has taken root:
| Ranenburg. | Dankoff. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dessiatines. | Per cent. | Dessiatines. | Per cent. | |
| Held by the mir | 2195 | 66 | 2240 | 81 |
| Held by individuals | 1138 | 34 | 534 | 19 |
| Total rented | 3333 | 100 | 2774 | 100 |
Thus communism in tenancy is passing away; small holdings for a term of one summer have become to-day the dominant form of rental agreements.[66]
CHAPTER VI.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FARMER INTO THE AGRICULTURAL LABORER.
In the vast majority of cases tenure at will did but take the place of the old relations between master and serf.[67] The obligation of the serf toward his master was discharged on some estates in labor (corvée), on others by payments, either in money or in kind. It is only natural to find the old practice inherited by modern economy:
| Rented for | Communal tenure. | Individual tenure. | In all.[68] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communities. | Land. | Communities. | Land. | Land. | ||||
| Dessiatines. | Per cent. | Dessiatines. | Per cent. | Dessiatines. | Per cent. | |||
| Share in crops | 3 | 47 | 1 | 4 | 382 | 2 | 429 | 2 |
| Money rental (merely) | 34 | 3330 | 76 | 84 | 6687 | 43 | 10017 | 50 |
| Labor (merely) | 1 | 48 | 1 | 8 | 562 | 4 | 610 | 3 |
| Labor compulsory and money in addition | 10 | 958 | 22 | 132 | 8065 | 51 | 9023 | 45 |
| Total | 48 | 4383 | 100 | 228 | 15696 | 100 | 20079 | 100 |
The patriarchal custom of division of the product itself between landlord and tenant (métayage) has now become about entirely obsolete, and is now to be found only in combination with extra payments in money. Forced labor on the part of the peasant for the benefit of the landlord continued in use. Abolished by law, it has been upheld until to-day, through the economic pressure of the need of land. The free tenant was compelled to bind himself to do a certain amount of work for the landlord. If he failed in this he could not get the opportunity of renting land. Pecuniary agreements were in vogue on those estates alone, whose owners did not care for farming.