RUSSIAN EMANCIPATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1960, 24 October 1889, Page 4

RUSSIAN EMANCIPATION.

After a trial of a quarter of a cen-i , tury, the Emancipation; Act is .nowj acknowledged to'ihave utterly failedj the reports of Eussian officials, ofj statistical professors at Moscow, such; as Jansen, and' the Nihilists, with; Stepuiak at their head, all alike agree; that the misery of the rural class is greater than even in the days of serfdom ; cultivation is at the lowest ebb,; the yield is wretched and less than in, any other European country. Eaqh peasant must plough, sow, and reap as, his neighbors do. The three-field' system of corn, green crops, and fallow, which was abandoned in all ; good agriculture long ago, goes oh with disastrous results. As the' lots are changed by the Mir at their pleasure, after every year, the temporary owner does not care to manure, etc., or in any way to improve the land. Although the rent is sometimes as low as 2s an acre, jet the peasant cannot live. Agriculture is a business requiring capital, knowledge, and a sufficient amount of land to enable different crops to be grown, so that, if one fails its does not mean starvation, for another may succeed.; The Eussian peasant has none of these qualifications. The peasant proprietors, can neither pay the money owing to the Government for their land* nor even the State and communal taxes, and are flogged by hundreds for nonpayment, In one district of Novgorod fifteen hundred peasants were thus condemned in 1887. Five hundred and fifty had already been flogged, when the inspector interceded for the remainder. Widespread famine is found over a great part of the country; usurers, tho bane of peasant proprietors in all countries, are in possession of' the situation; the Koiilaks and Jews “ mireatera ” supply imoney on mortgage, then foreclose, pd when the land is in their own possession get the work don© for nothing as interest. These “ bondage laborers” as they are called, are in fact slaves, and are nearly starved, while the small pieces of land are often reunited into considerable estates, and their new owners consider they have only rights and no duties; Meantime, sis forced labor is at an end and free labor is of the worst possible kind, the old landowners can get nothing done ; they have tried to employ machines, bought by borrowing from the banks and |are now unable to repay the money. The upper class has been ruined with no advantage to the peasant, “The wasteful culture of the cottier,” as Stepniak calls, it, “on these small plots is so bad .that the. general welfare, of the ; country,*’ says Professor Jansen, “is m danger by the small yield of the soil.” In spite of the philanthropic intentions of the Czar, he is believed to have aimed at diminishing the power of the nobles as much as improving the condition pf the peasants. He succeeded; the nobles in many districts are entirely rained; apd there is nothing now between the unlimited power of the autocrat and his 90,000,000 subjects, five-sixths of whom, are peasants, — The Nineteenth Century.