THE MISERY OF THE GALICIANS.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 285, 7 May 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MISERY OF THE GALICIANS.

Although the Galicians have been living in poverty for generation*, they are probably poorer now than ever before, incomparably poorer than in the days when they were seifs. As they have no money wherewith to buy manure, their land is becoming less fertile from Tear to year already its productivity per acre is to the productivity per acre of England as 4: 37; and, owing to the divisions and subdivisions entailed by the law of inheritance, their holdings are becoming snuller and smaller. At the present time the average size of a holding is under four jochs ; and, on eighty per cent, of these holdings, the net annual profits do not amount to more than twenty gulden—£l 13s 4d. And thia although every sheep, pig, and fowl that is raised there is sold, and every pound of butter or cheese. To think of working early and late for a whole year for the sake of twenty gulden 1 The peasant.*, it is true are often able to eke out their incomes by earning a trifle on a manor-farm, but it is only a trifle, some twopence in winter and perhaps one shilling in summer. Some few of them are beginning, however, to make their way, when the winter omes round, to thn factories that are now springing up. There they earn twu shillings a day if their laboar be skilled, and from sixpenco to ninepence if it bo unskilled. And these they look upon as quite munificent wages. Even with these additions to their means, however, the chances are that they will be forced sooner or later to have recourse to the money-lender, and then their fate is sealed. Before long they will either be driven forth from thsir holdings, or compelled to work them for him, practically as his sarfs. Holdings have been seized and sold for a debt of Ave shillings. The painful impression produced in Galicia by the poverty of the peasant-' is rendered the more intense in some districts by the glaring contrast in which it stands to the wealth of the nobles. The great landowners there are, as a rule, most lavish in their expenditure ; their houses are organised on the most luxurious scale, and their horses and carriages are quite magnificent. Their extravagance is indeed proverbial, and debt-beridden though many of them be, they scatter money abroad with both hands when their own pleasures are in question. The great majority of them; however, would as soon think of flying as of giving a helping hand to the men and women around them, even though they be dying of starvation at their very gates. In no country in all Europe is there so little sympatbybetween the land-owning class and the peasants as in Galicia, such a lack of any feeling of responsibility on the one side, "or of loyalty on the other. This is owing in some degree, no doubt, to the fact that, whereas the nobles are without exception Poles, the majority of the peasants are Ruthenians by descent, and to a Pole a Rutheuian is always a pariah. The Poles are, of course, the dominant race, and since autonomy was granted to the province, all power has been in their hands. They assess the taxes, collect them, and spend the money they yield ; they make the laws and administer them ; in the law courts, indeed, as often us not, they act at Qnce as judge, jury, witness and prosecutor or defendant. This being the case, they would he mora than human perhaps, did they always mete our strict justice to their opponents. Certainly some of the arrangements for which they are responsible appear to Western eyes to be quite startliugly " one-sided." For instance : It is the peasants who pay the pastor's stipend and keep the house in repair, but it is the lord of the manor who oppoints him. It is they who built the schools, where there are schools, and defray all the cost of education ; but it is he who chooses the teachers, who retains or dismisses them at will, and who decides what they shall teaih and what leave untaught. It is- they, too, who make the roads, although the only vehicles that pass over them are his. Soldiers are billeted for the month together in cottages, but they never cross the threshold of the manor-houee; and when thpy aro in need of horses and forage, it is the land-workers, not the land-oivneiy, who must supply them. The nobles may hunt and ehoot the whole day long, if they choose, over the peasants holdings ; but woe betide a peasant who is founl in his lord's forest without permission .' He is straightway flogged as a poacher. Then a oneroomed hut pays almost as much houseduty as a mansion, and small farms are far more heavily taxed per acre < than great estates. Jn Galicia the incidence of the land tax is indeed quite absurd in its unfairness, and that owing, in parfs at least, to one of those blunders which occur so ofteu in that part of the world. The officials appointed to assess the tax when it was first imposed underestimated the lund held by the nobles to the amount of 3.000,000 gulden; and, when they discovered their error, in order to conceal it, they calmly added that sum to their valuation of the peasants' holdings. A commission is now sitting for the purpose of revisine this valuation; but as it consists of fifteen nobles and _ three peasants, it is not probable that it will do much towards relieving small holdings at the expense of great estates. Some curious proofs of the way in which the Galician nobles abuse their power were afforded by the last Landtag election*. In some districts, where they knew the peasants were going to vote against the official candidates, they stationed troops before the voting booths to drive them away at the point of the sword, and prevent their voting at all. Iu others they allowed them to vote, but took care that their votes were burned uncounted. In one village, when the peasants presented themslves at the parishroom, although they were punctual to the minute, they found that the election had already been held, and with closed dootl! In several places their chief men were quietly arrested while on their way to vote, and thrown into prison. Devices of all sorts were resorted to in fact to prevent these people from using the votes the Austrian Governm nt had given to them. The Reichsrath elections last spring were conduced on the same lines. It teems almost incredible that they should submit, in tins our day, to the sort of treatment that is dealt out to the Galician peasantry. But the ignorance of these people, it must be remembered, is surpassed only by their credulity and their superstition They know no more tlnn their sheep do of the nineteenth-century ways or of nineteenth-century civilisation. They are, too, by nature patient and longsuffering. English workmen would stand aghast could they hear them talk ; for although they have been freemen now nearly half a centnry, they still talk as serfs, and what virtues and what vices they have are the virtues and vices of serfs. That their master should give them a flick with his whip as he passes, is in their eyes the most natural thing in the world ; "nay, they will even turn and kiss the hand that strikes them.