Morning journal and courier., 1893-03-20
THE FRENCH PEAsANTRY.

THE FRENCH PEAsANTRY. | The Small LaRdowners-some Mo- tions That Need to be Modified Vast Improvements in Rural Life The Peasants are Pretty Contented, Sober and Moral.
 t PARIS, March 1. Tothe Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER: Some of our notions about rural France will have to be revised. It has been popu- larly supposed that the extensive sub-divi- sion of agricultural land in this country
 was due primarily to the revolution of a hundred years ego. There can be no doubt that the popular uprisipgs of that period, with It's political and material changes, were somewhat of a help to- ward this end, but that they could not have been the chief factor Is shown con- clusively by the single circumstance that when the revolution broke out 1t found amongst the twenty five millions of the population at that period about half as many small landowners as there are es. timated to be at present in a population of thirty-eight millions As 8 matter of fact peasant proprietorship as it exists in France is 8 legacy from the far distant past. It existed and was recognized side by side with feudalism, and 1t has reached Its present unparalleled dimensions be, cause, since feudslism was abolished, the political and material conditions of France have become gradually more and more favorable to it.
 Another notion needing to be modified
 is that which conceives of small propri- etors as holding 8 larger area of the sg- | ricultural land of Francs than Is held by
 proprietors of more importance. It is | easy to be misled in this matter. There
 are portions of France, and the fsirest and richest portions, of which such 6
 conception would be unquestionsbly true,
 and the notion receives additional favor | from those general statements which are
 sfost, like that, for instance, which puts
 the aggregate of landowners at eight mil half of the agricultural surface is titled | by the families to whom 1t belongs.
 When, however, We dive into figures lit- l tie, what we discover is that holdings of
 less than fifteen acres amount to only about fourth of the country's surface, while those exceeding one hundred and twenty acres cover more than a third oi
 it. We also find that holdings which range between these figures exceed con sidersbly in the acreage they cover both | the smaller and the larger estates; mak- II fpy ff nhyinnslu aQ Erennh atatiStt clans have repeatedly maintained, that | France, as regards the division of its | land, may more properly be classed as 6 country of medium holdings than as @ ns- | tion which is either dominated by big landlords or out up into piece meal for the sole benefit of little ones.
 Two other notions challenge attention both of which will have to be changed somewhat If they are to harmonizs strictly
 with the facts. One is the popular idea | that under a system of email and dium holdings the land will be cultivated better,
 and hence be more fruitful, than under 6 different system-such 8 system, for in-
 stance, as that obtaining in England. In
 new country like our own, where the | soil has only to be tickled with the blow to smile annually with 6 bountiful hsr. vest, fuch 6 result from email proprie. torship might be naturally counted upon, | but where the soil Is old and 80 nearly exhausted ss to need artificial stimulus,
 and therefore capital and skill, to bring
 1t into a state of even moderate fruitful
 ness, it Is very easy to see, upon reflection,
 that the small, semi-impoverished owner,
 who must rely solely upon his own limited
 resources, is at @ disadvantage. Not only
 is this what might reasonably be expected
 but the figures show that 1t is the actual | result; that, too, whether small holdings
 in France are compared in their produc
 tiseness with larger holdings of the same
 sort of land in the same country, or whether
 agricultural France is Jumped together and
 compared iu this matter with nations
 which pursue their farming under a diff
 ferent system.
 So likewise must our notions as to tn
 degree of material prosperity accruing t'
 small proprietors be modified somewhat
 Settled upon few acres, a smsll famil,
 may manage to live, but if they depent
 solely upon what their little patch of lanC
 affords them they will live a hard life with scarcely any comfort, and in meal
 and squslid surroundings This is tn condition of O large part of the Frencl
 peassntry at the present day. It is quit , true that most of them lay by little fol
 the future, but they do this by sort O instinct, and the reason they are able to d. |
 uncertainty they will steal a little iron } present necessaries. Allowing for eIcep , tions, We have not found that ss regard the supply Of their material wants tn French peasantry as a whole are much, l ; any, better of than the farm lsborers o , Great Britain. Their food Is coarse in tn extreme and they are often very mesnl domiciled. The cleanliness and bright , | ness one sees so generally in laborers' col | tsges in England are rare indeed In France l I N. Blouet, who is surely 6 good authority l tells us that the average French pesssn
 | will live on eight or ten cents a day, an
 another writer, N. Bethsm-Edwsrds, wh
 has trsyersed the entire country, says tn,
 thousands of French peasants must hsy , seen for the first time, at the Paris expos l, ton of 1889, those conveniences of mo- ern life which in all well regulated fsmili'
 are held essential to both health and d. 7 ssncy.
 a Perhaps we are laying too much stret
 upon these things. For fear of being mi
 understood, we hasten to gay that TUT g life in France has undergone vast improv ments within twenty years, and that Il
 trend is now more decidedly onward ar l. upward than ever before. You can sti s find sections where the rude bed sdorl a an alcove in the kitchen, and where, as T. ' the earliest times, nOT6tb utcu IO tIt<
 out the corn; and alec many parts whe @ illitersoy is common, and where the peep ,t live in the coarssst manner and do the l. work without the least regard for model 1t Improvements. But in these days educ
 ton Is penetrating into the most reno n hamlets, and Jacques Bonhomme, und Ia the influence of this and other civilizli forces, is beginning to think that thero "a more in this life even for him than to grl
 and save, and then die, leaving simil :. conditions to his offspring. Moreovs farm wages are improving. For the To .e est form of farm drudgery they ha
 qusdrupled within fifty years, the ruli v rate now being from eighty to one hu
 dred and twenty dollars @ year with boar to the latter sum, which Is very high f ar France, being the wage commanded d! those "sristocrsts of the farm" the she 10 herds. After all, too, there Is hardly a
 pauperism in agricultural France. thou sd there is poverty and plenty of hard scratc I ing. And when you consider that Hon
 Hodge, if he lives to be very old, is ve w likely to end his days in the poor hou . while Jacques Bonhomme is almost 0
 tain to breathe his life away under his o' of roof tree, with his own kindred sbc ee him, it would sesm as though any sr m stantisl comparison between the peasant nv of France and the farm laborers of El rs land were quite out of the question.
 That the French peasants themselves k. measurably content with their lot is sho in numerous ways. One proof of 1t Is u- | T. ,-Al