Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1886-10-21
A RUSSIAN PROBLEM.
The Land Question ~ 1t Presents Itself In
the Cars DOmlnionA.

The Land Question ~ 1t Presents Itself In
the Cars Dominiona-
Twenty-Five years ago the Russian
Government did the biggest thing in
the way of agrarian reform on record.
1t emancipated the serfs who hereto
fore had been the involuntary tillers Of
their masters soil. Nevertheless these
serfs were neither laudless men nor the
mere chattels of their owners. They
were settled in villages, and each COM
mune had the use of as much lanl Is
sufficed for the support OF its members.
The Russian serf, in short, was a life
tenant, whose rent was paid with his
own labor. His lord could no mere
deprive him of his holding, or deny
him the time necessary for its cultiva-
ton, than the serf could refuse to cul-
tivatc land of his master or change him
for another. Whatever may have been
the moral and economical draw backs
of this system. and they were many and
great, it ut least assured the tillage of
the land and prevented the creation of
a proletariat, class with no other re-
source than their labor. who, if they do
not work this week, must starve the
next, for the communes were bound to
support their own poor. and the mas.
tiers would. in their own interest. see
to it that their serfs did not lack food.
But the Emancipation act changed all
this. and in II great measure changed
it FOR the worse. In other words.
emancipation, in itself a great moral
good. was SO mismanaged that its ma
terial results as touching those for
whose benefit it was DIES gned have
been nothing less than ruinous. This
was. of course, not intended; the Gov
eminent had no doubt sincere desire
to insure the prosperity of the class
which is the main support of the state.
But they attempted to perform tine i'm
possible, and create at the same time a
landed aristoeracy and territorial
democracy. For fear of hurting the
mobiles and .,ut of Difference to their
wishes they did not ailot the peasants
as much land as would enable them to
live and pay the heavy taxes demand
ed from them by the state.
1t may be as well to mention here
that the traditional Russian conception
of land tenure entirely differs from that
which prevails among English-speaking
peoples. Russian peasants hold that
land, having been made by nobody,
and being an article of universal need.
ought to be nobody's peculium, its
produce should belong only to him who
tills it, and when he ceases to till it,
the land should revert to the commu-
nifty. A Russian peasant never by any
chance speaks of my land 1t is al
ways ''our land" and the Russian Ian
guage has no word which expresses the
idea of a private ownership in part of
the earth's surface. This theory is held
more or less by the Slavonic race. 1t
finds expression in their laws. In Bull
garia. for instance, the main who works
as a common laborer for ten cOnsecu-
tive years on a farm becomes ipsO tdctO
the owner of certain portion thereof,
for which reason Bulgarian farmers
never of course do employ sabn;er
ten consecutive years. All the same,
the idea is there. 1--WE belong to the
seigneur, but the land belongs to us,
the cultivators," was the old Russian
peasants conception of serfdOnl, and
IL was no doubt the conception of the
law. So intense was this feeling that
if the landlords had got their way. and
the serfs had been appropriated and
made into mere tenants ut will, there
would almost certainly have ensued a
serviIe instruction of unexampled
magnitude. The Government, as ]
have said, took middle course and
gave the peasants some land. yet not
enough to enable them to keep the wolf
from the door. The consequences of
this mistaken policy have been disas-
trous in the extreme. San Fran
cisco Chronicle.