Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1888-03-29

men, who own in common the meadows
on the banks Of the Moskoya. On tie
eve of the moving six measurers, one
for each village, come 10 the fields and
divide them into lots, according to the
quality of the grass. Each lot is divided
into sections, according to the number
Of osmaks. At the same time each
osmak in the village chooses in
private meeting ten mowers. AT z
A. NJ. these small gangs OF ten
come together from all sides upon
the scene of action (; those that are late
pay fine. As the fields have been al
ready measured out beforehand, and the
station of each gang determined the night
before, in half an hour the whole crowd
has settled down to work. The osmaks
come one after the other ont of the ranks,
take their appointed place, and thus all
the mass of mowers spreads over the i'm
mense area of the fields. BY o'clock
all are working their scythes as one man.
The ten mowers OF each osmsk work to-
gether, and each gang takes care not to
be behind the others By ga. NJ. every
thing is done. The mowers, scythe 90
shoulder, go off home singing, feed, and
60 to rest Gangs OF women and young
people coming from the osmaks take
their places in the fields and gather to-
Gether the hay. After these come the
peasants from the villages with their
carts. About 2 o'clock the ground is
covered with little ricks, that are divided
by lot among tho members of the oamak,
and the carts carry off the hay to the
villages. BY 8 o'clock at night there is
not handful OF hay in the fields. Pas
ture lands are generally held in common.
and are indiyisble Forests, if of little
importance, are also held in common.
If they are worth anything they are often
forbidden to be touched for ten or twenty
years. and are then shared ont like the
moving. II very rarely happens that
the repartition of the fields occurs each
year. This is not profitable to cultlya-
tors Of the soil.
In recent years there has been great
trouble in Russia from the inequality
IN THE Distribution OF THE LAND.
The unjust repartition Of the land in
1861 still awaits correction, but in 1879
the patience OF the people was exhaust
ed, and they began series of sharings-
up in many places. The tendency to
allot the land equally is growing even in
villages where, until recently, private
property ruled it is emigrating from
Great Russia to the heart Of the Ukraine.
Thus the mir, which has been at
the bottom of the political and social
life of the peasantry, IS proving its
vitality ut the very moment when its foes
were making ready TO see It decently
buried Family communal life, as op-
posed TO this elan, is patriarchal, not a
matriarchal, institution. But the family
commune is not society; it is the prl-
mary cell ont Of which the organ
ization of the society is built. 1t
is out of the family commune
that the mir has grown. Col
lectiye holding, which seems at an
end when the family commune passes
into the fractional, reappears in a more
marked aud complete form in the COM
mune OF the mir. Historical documents
seem to fix the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries as the date of the beginning of
this method of social evolution. This is
like going into another world from that
of the present day, and explains why the
civilization OF the Russian people has
been so backward. They have really
been cut of for centuries from all COM
munication with civilized nations.