We entered many homes during the two days that we remained in this village. In each hut, however small, in every cottage, no matter how keen the distress, we were welcomed with obvious gladness. In one cramped hovel we found a young mother prostrate upon a pile of rags on the floor, very low with typhoid fever. Immediately beside her lay a child of three with scarlatina, and suspended from the ceiling over both their heads a crude cradle in which lay an unweaned baby which the mother was still nursing! In another we found a girl of eight wasted to a skeleton with inherited syphilis. An older sister had died of the same disease two months before. A boy lay at death’s door with scurvy. And so, from house to house we went looking upon scenes too dreadful to portray. Yet everywhere a smile greeted our entrance. In one house we found a very young girl about to become a mother. The Russian peasant is very strict in his attitude toward young girls, and sad and heavy is the lot of any peasant girl who sins. This girl dared not show herself out of her hut for fear of being publicly hooted. She was much exercised over the fate of her child, for she told us that the priest would not bless it at birth. Her mother then begged one of our party to come
A typical cottage in the famine district of Saratoff
Examination of credentials
and offer some little prayer which would save the child from the damnation which should justly fall upon the child-mother. An old man with a long white beard rushed out from another house as we passed and exhibited a wounded foot which he begged us to bandage.
Finally we were taken to the local “Duma” building, a town hall where all the males of twenty-one years of age and over gather from time to time to discuss the affairs of the community. About forty men followed us there and at the first opportunity began pouring out questions. Almost without exception these queries had to do with the land. In America did all the people starve half the year unless given food by the government, or by some other agency? What did we do with landlords in America who could not possibly work or use the land and yet would not allow the people to use it? These and other questions were put to us with great directness. At last I asked them what they proposed to do for themselves.
There was silence for a minute. Then one man, more outspoken than the rest, said: “We look to the Duma to give the land to us. We feel that it belongs to us, and we have confidence in the Duma.”