[82]

BOARD FURNISHED BY THE EMPLOYER.

Paid toFor the summer season.Per year.
Farm helpFrom 25.00 to 35.00From 35.00 to 60.00
Carpenters” 55.00 to 70.00100.00

[83]

Workingmen.
Concerns.Total.Average to concern.
Ranenburg50619853.9
Dankoff24013555.6
Total74633404.5

Virtually, however, the average is less than this, since there are included only those industrial concerns belonging to peasants, and situated in the precincts of the villages, while peasant labor is also employed in those enterprises owned by the landlords and situated on their estates.

[84] This is the industry which is protected, through prohibitive tariffs and export premiums, from foreign competition.

[85] Twelve communities were found by the statisticians in which a considerable part of the membership consisted of regular beggars. As an example may be quoted the village Bratovka, bailiwick Naryshkinskaya, Ranenburg: “A good many go a-begging even when crops are good; in years of failure over half the village takes to begging.” (Loc. cit., p. 283.) Professional beggary has been of late very comprehensively described by some of the observers of peasant life. Late in the fall the huts are nailed up, and caravans of peasants—man, wife and child—start on a journey “for crumbs.” We read in the Statistical Reports for the Gubernia of Tamboff:

“Everywhere the peasants report a great number of beggars; generally they are peasants from a strange district. It is only in a case of extreme necessity that a man able to work would force himself to ask alms in his own village. Usually, the needy families are supported through loans of bread from their neighbors, who divide with them their last provisions. The peasants of the district of Morshansk report, moreover, that they are haunted by a good many beggars from the district of Shatzk, as well as from the gubernias of Vladimir and Ryazañ.” (Vol. III., p. 277.)

Does it not exactly remind one of the historical picture drawn by Vauban, who reported that “one-tenth of the French peasants are beggars, and the remaining nine-tenths have nothing to give them?”