Concentration of the communal land proves to be the general basis of the economic welfare of the class under consideration.[117] Under the rule of the mir a large farm means a strong patriarchal family; the preservation of the latter is equally characteristic of the trader as of the mere farmers of the class, and appears to be even somewhat more pronounced among the former than among the latter.[118]
On the other hand, farming with the help of hired labor has enormously advanced among this section of the village community; it may be said that the employing farmer is a member of this progressive class par excellence.[119] The growth of this form of agricultural coöperation is going on within the class under consideration keeping pace with the dissolution of the patriarchal family.[120]
Ad III. The rural proletariat is generally marked by the absence of live stock to till the land with.[121] The class in question is formed of those peasants whom it did not pay to work on their farms, in view of the scarcity of the same.
Nearly one-half of the class are landless or own less than five dessiatines, the percentage of such households being three times greater than among the peasantry at large. Only a very small minority are in the possession of plots exceeding the average, the percentage being three times less than among the peasants at large. On the whole, a holding of a proletarian is half the average in the district.[122]
This is the immediate result of the complete dissolution of the patriarchal family among the village proletariat, the bulk of the latter consisting of families with only one adult male worker.[123]
Having failed as farmers, one-half have become farm laborers, the rest are employed in industry, or have no steady employment at all.[124] With all of them, wages are the chief means of livelihood.[125] The income from their farms is of secondary importance. The gross receipts from sale of produce are absorbed by the taxes.[126] Still the produce of the farm is partly consumed in kind and may serve to supply the owner with some of the necessaries of life.[127] In fact, it proves profitable for the village proletarian to cultivate his plot with the help of hired labor; accordingly, the majority of the proletarians of the Russian villages are not only employees, but also employers at the same time.[128] As yet there is but a small fraction of the village that has evolved into the condition of proletarians proper, whose only economic interest is that of wage labor.[129]
Ad II. The mean between both extremes, i. e. between the independent farmers and the proletarian laborers, is occupied by a transitional class who are farmers and wage laborers at once.
The soil being tilled by its owner’s labor, the farmer is supposed to raise live stock. We remember that two horses to a farm is the minimum required to constitute a strong household, the normal approaching three horses upon an average. The proletarians, as a rule, have no horses. The transitional class under consideration is characterized by the ownership of from one to two horses.[130]
Within this class a further distinction is to be made as between (A), those with whom outside earnings are to cover only a small deficit in their farming, and (B), those with whom wage labor has become as important a source of income as farming: