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:

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.

The economic tendency of the time, however, is toward money economy and “free contract.”[69] As in the matter of taxation, the change is brought about by the rise of rent.

On the one hand, the amount of work done by the tenant for the landlord has enormously increased, thereby diminishing the demand for compulsory labor.

On the other hand, whenever the rent is to be paid in cash, at least one part must be advanced in the spring, i. e. at a time when most of the peasants are short of money. Moreover, the extraordinarily heavy rents exacted have made the leasing of land a very hazardous business; one bad yield is sufficient to upset all the tenant’s calculations, and to throw him into insolvency.[70] The circle of tenants who can pay their rents in cash has thus been reduced to the “stronger” householders.[71] The natural consequence was increased offers of farm labor in exchange for land, on the part of those who could not afford to lay out ready money.

Thus in the process of the economic evolution, compulsory labor becomes obsolete. It was only in the minority of cases that the promise of labor was required as an essential part of the rental agreement, and even then it was only in exceptional cases that farm work was to be performed for the full amount of the rent. Generally only a part of the latter was to be covered through labor; the rest could be paid, at the option of the tenant, either in work or in money.

In this transitional form of agreement prevalent in 1882, the peasant appears, properly speaking, as tenant and laborer at once. The next step is toward the differentiation of both.

The purely money form of rent has already won the field over about one half of the whole area of rented land.

That this is the form which is finally to prevail, follows from the fact, undisputed by Russian statisticians, that peasants in good standing avoid working on the landlords’ estates, and prefer to pay their rent in money. The miserable remuneration for farm work is the very obvious reason of this dislike.

These are the average amount of rent and the average price paid for the full work of cultivating, and harvesting one dessiatine, and carrying the crops to the barn:

The average figures can be considered, however, merely as representing static conditions at any given moment. The tendency of the movement is rather indicated by the extreme limits.

When work is offered in payment of rent, wages very often sink far below the level. At the same time rent is ever on the rise.

Let us take for purposes of comparison, some communities in which piece wages are lowest, and some others in which rent is highest:

As the ratio of rent to wages is moving from 3:1 towards 5:1, it finally becomes questionable whether we should class among tenants or among laborers a peasant who has to till five dessiatines for the landlord in exchange for one dessiatine given to himself.

Thus land tenure is degenerating into wage labor.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WAGES IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS.

In Russia we have the case of the so called allotment system on a large scale. The influence of this system was picturesquely elucidated by John Stuart Mill when he stated that “it makes the people grow their own poor rates.”[72] Exactly the same is observed in Russia.

The greater part of the work in agriculture, as well as in industry, is performed by farmers.[73] With them the earnings from outside labor are to cover only a part of their expenses, which cannot be provided for by farming. It is obvious that wages alone must fall below the usual standard of life.[74]

We have seen how, in the course of the evolution from farmer to wage worker, the tenant first becomes farm laborer. Accordingly it is natural to find farm labor prevailing among the local occupations of the peasants:

The transitional stage between husbandman and help is occupied by the householder who alternates his own farming with working on the landlord’s estate. In either case the workman comes with his own horse and implement.[75]

The relation between employer and employee is, with a very few exceptions,[76] one of money economy.

Owing to the circumstances above discussed, the farmer is ever in quest of ready money. In his quality of “peasant proprietor” he enjoys “the blessing of credit,” that is to say, he is always in debt to the landlord. Unquestionably, the favor is not granted for the sake of pure neighborliness. Money is advanced in fall time, or in winter, in reward for farm work to be performed next summer, and sometimes in a year or two.[77] The noble descendant of Rurik[78] gains the benefit of 50 per cent. yearly upon an average on the reduced rate of hire.

Low pay for piece work beats down the workman proper, who has to depend entirely upon his employment. The wages for day-labor may serve as an illustration:

BOARD FURNISHED BY THE EMPLOYER.

Furthermore, the comparison between agriculture and industry brings out the fact that skilled labor[79] is paid in the rural districts at nearly the same rate as farm work.[80] The case is perfectly analogous to that of agricultural labor. In many of the households in question there are, besides the artisan, other male members of the family who carry on their farming.[81] In fall and winter the farmer, who is at the same time an artisan, would work for any price. A tailor, e. g., travelling around his village, earns in the fall from 1.50 to 2.50 a week, while boarding with the customer. On the other hand, the maximum in wages is paid to carpenters, whose trade is carried on in the summer, so as to preclude competition on the part of the farmer.[82]

Certainly, the maximum of two rubles, say $2.00, a week, and board, to a skilled carpenter, falls short of the minimum in some civilized countries. It is in this rate of wages that we must seek the reason for the slow development of industry in the rural districts.

Indeed, it is but for a small part of the hands who have been “freed” from farming, that room could be found in local industry:

The ranks of the rural proletarians, who had no working horses with which to carry on their farming, grew four times as fast as rural industry, though it might be expected that the latter would have been fostered by low wages. The example of the quarries in the bailiwick Ostrokamenskaya, District of Dankoff, can be used to make the matter plain.

About fifty men are engaged there in breaking stone, and working it into millstones. Some of them work in small partnerships, and sell the stone to middle men; some are in the employ of petty contractors. A rent of 25.00 per head is levied by the owner of the place; the net income of an independent worker is from 75.00 to 100.00 for the summer, which is more than the income in any other trade. The hired workman, however, is paid only from 35.00 to 60.00, the profit of the entrepreneur amounting to 47-66 per cent. in a season. Where the product of a man’s semi-annual labor sells for 125 rubles, no mechanical improvements could make the commodity cheaper. So long as ten per cent. a month can be made by the petty employer, at a practically nominal outlay of money, he will successfully compete with big capitalistic enterprises. Indeed, we see that five men are about the average number of workers employed in any one concern.[83] There are, certainly, a few capitalistic concerns: distilleries, sugar factories, steam flour mills, coal mines. A railway line is crossing the district, and employs some of the peasants. But here, as elsewhere, the proletarian is beaten on the labor market by the farmer.

In distilleries a farmer can be got to work in winter merely for mash, which is used as fodder for his cattle. Money wages naturally oscillate between the very modest limits of 5.00 and 9.00 a month, out of which the workingman must board at his own expense. In sugar factories the wages are between 6 and 8 rubles a month in winter, i. e. between $0.75 and $1.00 a week![84]

It follows from what has been here shown that it is only the farmer who can get along with the rates paid in rural industry. The peasant who is unable to farm could hardly eke out an existence. He has the choice either of becoming a pauper[85] or of leaving his village.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE RURAL SURPLUS POPULATION.

There is thus but a minor fraction of the surplus population that has forever left the native village with the chance of settling somewhere else as farmers.[86] It is still to agriculture that most of the wandering peasantry are looking, not as farmers, however, but as wage laborers, while a vast minority flock to the cities.[87]

As to this class of the peasantry, it is commonly regarded by the Russian press as standing on the lowest round of the ladder of village life. It does not seem generally to occur to the public mind that a regular movement of the working population, like the movement of mercury in the barometrical tube, has to select the line of least resistance. Indeed, it is distinctly shown by comparison that the wages are higher outside than within the village.

Difference of wages stimulates the movement, which when once started in a village, goes on at an ever increasing rate.[88]

This rural surplus population, nominally counted as peasant proprietors, is in reality even now severing the bond that has hitherto linked it to its birthplace. Those who year after year spend the summers as farm-laborers in the South or in the East have already said farewell to farming.[89] The case of artisans who leave the village for the summer season is similar. A peasant who has given up his farming for the sake of working outside has very little to gain by returning for the winter, when the supply of labor in the village far exceeds the demand. After a time some of them move their families to the place in which they have found employment, and part with the old homestead forever.

Those who are employed in factories, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, in coal mines and in railroad service, may have started by spending only their winter leisure in town. But imagine the position of the peasant who manages to put aside, out of his four rubles a week, from 50 to 70 rubles a year to send home.[90] To such a man the attraction of a large capitalistic concern running winter and summer, is one that will hold him captive for years.

How far this estrangement of the peasant from his native village has gone, can be learned from the following figures:[91]

The ownership of a home holds the peasant fast to his village even after he has already abandoned farming.[92] The peasant however, who is year by year employed far away from home, has settled, through the sale of his house, his account with the old village.[93]

We have here consequently an indication of the recent growth of Russia’s town proletariat.

CHAPTER IX.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY.

The Russian village community, as has been stated above, was a compound integer of which the unit was the communistic household. The individualistic tendency of the economic evolution after the emancipation did not fail to affect this cell of archaic communism. The dissolution of the compound family became the evil of the day within the village, and the most warmly discussed topic both in literature and in administrative circles. The peasantist regarded the decline of the “pillars”[94] of Archaic communism with the deepest regret. “O tempora, o mores!” clamored the bureaucrat, indignant at the spirit of “disobedience to the elder” which was permeating the village. Of greater importance, perhaps, was the perfectly justified apprehension as to whether the dissolution of the peasant family might not have an injurious effect upon the taxpaying power of the household. It might be questioned by individualists whether the peasant, as a human being, was necessarily to be guided in his domestic life solely by regard for the public purse, but from the standpoint of Russian public law, such objections do not hold water. To use an analogy, the stock farmer, when mating his animals, does not take in consideration the possible condition of their mutual affection, his object being solely the maintenance and improvement of the breed. Is not the wise ruler the shepherd of his human flock? Thus about 1885[95] a law was passed forbidding the “self-willed” division of the compound family without due authorization by the village assembly, whose resolutions are subject to the control of the officers of the State.

This new dictate of paternalism has certainly caused much annoyance in the village, and it must unquestionably have failed in achieving the desired end. The matter has been excellently elucidated by Mr. Gleb Oospensky, one of Russia’s foremost writers, as well as by Mrs. Epheemenko and Prof. Engelhardt.

So long as the occupations of all the members of the family were identical, the tie of co-operation bound them closely together. The income of the family, due to their collective labor, constituted accordingly their collective property. The authority of the “major” of the household was respected on the ground of his greater experience, which comes with age, as well as of his administrative ability.[96] When altered circumstances forced the family to look for its income to a variety of sources, the basis of the ancient household received a fatal shock. The carpenter who worked all through the summer in some far distant town was no longer an active member of the agricultural co-operative circle. On the other hand, his income being greater than that of his elder brother who was still employed as a farm laborer in the neighborhood, the spirit of individualism revolted against the old communistic rule. The age-long despotism of the elder over the younger members of the family became unendurable. The women, who had to suffer most, were the champions in this “fight for individuality.”[97] The head of the family could oppose no moral authority to this spirit of “disregard of age,” inasmuch as, with all his agricultural experience, he had nothing to say in industry. Thus the growing economic differentiation within the family made its dissolution into separate couples unavoidable.

This presentation of the case, made as the result of individual observation, was fully proved by the figures subsequently collected by the statisticians.

This is the comparative membership per household before, and a quarter of a century after, the emancipation, and the distribution of the peasantry according to the membership of the several families:

In 1858 the average family had from two to three adult male workers above the age of 18, while in 1882 it had only from one to two male workers. This shows that before the emancipation the compound family, consisting either of the father and his married sons, or of married brothers, was the rule. To-day the typical family is represented either by a young couple with little children, or by the father and his boys below 18, who are counted only as “half-workers,” or finally by the father and one of his adult sons. In all, the family has decreased by from three to four persons. It points out plainly that separation of the younger couple from the old stock is already an accomplished fact.[99] That this individualistic tendency develops as outside jobs gain in importance in the household economy is shown by the following figures:

The rate of separated families increases with the percentage of wage laborers. It is by wage laborers that most of the households of the modern type (with one adult male) have been started, while within the patriarchal household about two-thirds of its labor forces are applied to farming.

The dissolution of the old household was of the greatest economic consequence, parcellation of the soil being its necessary result:

We notice that the greater the percentage of separations during the period from 1877 to 1887, the smaller the average plot per family and per worker, and vice versâ. About one-half of the households whose plots are the smallest, are those who have separated in the course of the last ten years and have as a rule only one worker. On the other hand, the largest plots, absolutely and relatively, are held by the compound families of the old stamp, of whom only about one-quarter have undergone division during the last decade.[100]

Furthermore we find a certain percentage of the village community absolutely without any land: Thus we have—

This new class of the peasantry owes its existence solely to the division of the family:

It might be supposed that landlessness was connected mainly with old age, widowhood, orphanry, and bodily defects (blindness, lameness, etc.). Yet such, what we may call, biological phenomena will carry with them consequences that vary according to the social institutions of the time. The patriarchal family was not destroyed by the death of one of its male members. His widow and orphans belonged, in some analogy with the Roman family, not to the husband, but to the household as a whole. It was no unusual thing for a widowed daughter-in-law to be given in marriage to an outsider with the purpose of introducing a new male worker into the coöperative body in the place of the deceased member. Similarly the other members remained until death in their family. It was only after the dissolution of the patriarchal household that the feeble and helpless began to figure as a distinct group in village life.

On the other hand the division of the original household and of its lot in the communal land necessarily resulted in a decrease of the live stock belonging to each family, and consequently in a decrease of its agricultural efficiency.

This is shown by the following tables:

I. HOUSEHOLDS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF ADULT MALE WORKERS.

II. HOUSEHOLDS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF HORSES RAISED.

The highest class in regard to the ownership of live stock is composed chiefly of the households of the old type that number at least three male workers, and whose shares in the communal land exceed the average.

The households of the new type consisting of two adult male workers are provided in the majority of cases with two working horses; but there is a very notable minority which is gradually falling into the lower group with only one working horse to a household.

Finally even that level appears to be too high for the households in which there is only one male worker. Only the minority of such households are in the position to keep up at least two working horses; the great majority have either one horse or none, and vice versâ: the groups with one horse or without horses are made up mainly of those households with only one adult male worker, their plots only very seldom exceeding the average, or even falling short of the average.

Now, without a horse there can be no farming; and a household with only one horse is liable to go down in the long run.[101] Still these two groups cover at least one-half of the peasantry of to-day.[102] Thus the dissolution of the old peasant family sapped the productive forces of the peasantry at large and prompted the liquidation of independent farming with a considerable minority of the householders. A distinct group of the village is formed to-day by those peasants who for want of live stock with which to till their plots, are compelled either to hire their neighbors to do the work, or to lease their plots and consequently to stop their farming altogether. The bulk of this class is made up of those families in which there is only one adult male worker.[103] Lack of land, lack of live stock and lack of labor power, make it by no means an easy task for a “singleton” to carry on farming, and a good many must needs fail.

It becomes plain that small peasant agriculture, based on the labor of the farmer alone, could stand only as long as its basis, the compound coöperative family, held together. The previous economic evolution has demonstrated that the co-operation of three adult workers is required upon an average to constitute a stable peasant household. As the progress of individualism will not stop in presence of the survivals of the patriarchal compound family, so the lacking labor force will have to be supplied by hire. The dissolution of the patriarchal family brings forth, of necessity, the employing farmer.

The characteristic feature of this class is that the employer is still the tiller of the soil. The laborer is hired only to help the farmer in his work, the average number of laborers employed varying between one and two to one household, so as to constitute the required coöperation of three working men.[104]

For the present this class appears but in small numbers in the Russian village,[105] and this obviously accounts for the little attention paid to the employing farmer in Russian literature, even in the statistical investigations. Still the need of hired labor increases on the larger farms[106] with the division of the compound family, as can be seen from the following table:

As the dissolution of the patriarchal family is going on at a progressive rate,[107] it follows that the class of employing farmers is on the rise. The farmer’s own family, supplemented by the assistance of one or two permanent wage-laborers, is the coming type of agricultural coöperation, which is destined to take the place of the natural family coöperation.

CHAPTER X.
THE MODERN AGRICULTURAL CLASSES.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the lines between the classes in the Russian village are as yet far from being as sharply drawn as in countries with developed capitalism. It would seem that laborers permanently employed outside of their farms must unquestionably be classed among the proletarians. And yet we find the majority of them maintaining the standard of farmers.[108] This is due to the existence of the compound family, the average household numbering two adult male workers, which enables one of them to carry on farming, while the other is employed outside.[109] Only the minority of the households in question that have only one adult worker, and accordingly we find that independent farming has been given up only by the minority of those householders who are permanently employed as farm laborers.[110] These are the genuine rural proletarians with whom the earnings from wage labor constitute the main source of income. Still they are landholders, and inasmuch as they have no live stock of their own, their plots are tilled chiefly by means of wage labor:

Thus we have the very peculiar economic type of a wage-laborer who is at the same time employer of wage labor. It is obvious that the characteristics of a modern European proletarian could not properly be extended to the Russian agricultural laborer.

Class distinctions are very easily perceived, of course, when the classes have already ripened to a certain degree. In the embryonic stage, the true tendency of the development going on is disguised by the many transitional forms combining the characteristic features of opposite classes. The peasantist of “the seventies,” whose opinions were influenced by European socialism, had no idea of class antagonism within the ranks of the peasantry themselves, regarding it as confined entirely to the “exploiter”—kulak or miroyed[111]—and his victim, the peasant imbued with the communistic spirit.[112]

The statisticians necessarily started in their investigations with preconceived ideas respecting the uniformity of the peasantry[113] as a class, except in so far as legal discriminations had to be taken into account. The study of the facts brought them subsequently to a recognition of the true position, and in some of the later Reports attempts were made to arrange the data according to class distinctions. The main difficulty in the question is as to what proof should be selected for classification. The characteristics of employer and employee would cover only a minor part of the peasantry of to-day,[114] not to speak of a certain vagueness of the terms, as explained above. Mr. Shtcherbina, Superintendent of the Statistical Department of Voronezh, has classified the peasants according to: 1, the size of their farms, 2, the quantity of stock raised, 3, the number of adult male workers to a household, and 4, to the occupation by which they supplement the insufficient income derived from their plots. The households are accordingly scheduled into 320 minute sections, so as to afford the opportunity of subsequently combining them into wider social classes.

We shall divide the peasantry into three main classes:

I. Those whose income from farming is sufficient to meet all the expenses of the household (taxes included), so as to obviate any need of wage earnings.

Households that pay their expenses by the income from commercial or industrial enterprises and draw a net profit from agriculture, are also included in that class.

II. Farmers who are at the same time wage laborers, either in agriculture, or in industry.

III. Proletarians, i. e. those who stopped working on their plots and earn their living exclusively by means of wage labor.

Let us examine these classes in detail.

Ad I. Combine all merely agricultural groups in which the income from farming exceeds the expenses of housekeeping, taxes and rent, and in which, furthermore, all the householders cultivate their plots with their own stock and implements. The results are presented in the following tables:

1. Balance Sheet.

2. Land to 1 farm.

3. Live stock to 1 farm.

The requirements for a “strong” household, as evidenced by the above tables, are as follows: 1, a farm exceeding in size fifteen dessiatines, i. e. one of above the average size; 2, at least two working horses.

Guided by these principles, we obtain the following table comprising all the householders of the class in question, in the district of Korotoyak:

The class in question occupies the top of the village. It owes its economic independence to the fact that the majority of the households represent a co-operation of at least two adult male workers, assisted by half-workers, as well as to the favorable circumstance that the size of the farm exceeds by about one-half, relatively to the number of workers, the average in the district. The number of working horses is accordingly increased in the same ratio, three horses constituting about the average to a farm, while about one half of the households at large fall short of even the average two to a farm.

Another branch of the same class is formed by those householders with whom trade and commerce are as important a source of revenue as agriculture, as shown by the balance below: