Finally, however, the displacement of the small farmer must needs have led to the gradual substitution of money economy for natural economy. As the number of impoverished peasants increased in inverse ratio to the tenant class, a time arrived when the demand for labor could no longer be supplied by tenants alone, and had to be provided for through wage labor. The employer became the creditor of the laborer. This necessitated money payments for the land given in tenure.
Such are the inferences necessarily following from the above review of peasant agriculture. The immediate study of agriculture on a large scale must obviously lead to the same conclusions.[155]
As yet the major part of the area of private property is cultivated by means of peasant live stock and implements, as evidenced by the comparative quantity of live stock raised on the large farms and in the rural districts abroad:
| District of Voronezh. | Land, Dessiatines. | Horses. | To 1 horse on an average, Dessiatines. |
|---|---|---|---|
| On large estates under cultivation (land in small tenure excluded) | 86360 | 1708 | 50.5 |
| In the district at large | 434372 | 52465 | 8.3 |
It follows from these figures that the landlords’ stock is hardly sufficient for the cultivation of one-sixth of the land which is virtually farmed by the owners of large estates. Quite naturally, from the agronomic standpoint the Russian “bonanza farms” have very little advantage over small peasant farming. The primitive division of the arable land into three well-nigh equal fields, of which one is yearly left unsown, prevails on the large estates as well as on peasant farms.[156] The tillage with the antediluvian peasant plough (sohá) is very imperfect, while improved ploughs are not in common use, and wherever they are, one plough is found for every 91.2 dessiatines (246 acres) of arable land. Superficial tillage strains the productive forces of the upper layers of the soil, while lack of live stock prevents the fertilizing of the land on a reasonable scale, the fields being manured on an average once in eighteen years.[157]
Large farming thus partakes of the wasteful character of small peasant agriculture, and proves therefore almost as little productive, a fact shown by the comparative yields of cereals:[158]
| Classes of farms. | Rye. | Oats. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratio to the seed. | Per cent. | Ratio to the seed. | Per cent. | |
| On peasant farms | 5.3 | 100 | 4.6 | 100 |
| On large estates (over 50 dessiatines) | 7.3 | 138 | 5.8 | 126 |
Still, even that slight increase of productivity is sufficient to make large farming prevail over small peasant tenure: