Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/99

Rh fessors, 12 fellows, and, after a curriculum of 4 years, confers the degrees of licentiate and doctor,. which are indispensable for those who contemplate becoming lawyers, medical men, or teachers in the higher schools. It was opened in 1835 with 52 students; in 1854 it had 643 ; it now has 1400. In 1872 it had 1244, of whom 26 were students of theology, G22 of law, 423 of medicine, 120 of arts, and 53 of pharmacy. The small number of theologi cal students is partly accounted for by the existence of four other theological seminaries in Greece, supported by private funds, one at Athens and three in the provinces, and partly by the scandalous neglect of clerical educa tion that obtains in Greece. In 1867 there were only 115 students at these four theological seminaries. A large pro portion of the students at the university have always been foreign Greeks, for professional men are trained there not only for Greece itself but for the whole region of the Levant. Out of the 1244 students who attended in 1872, 249 were Greeks from foreign parts, 124 of these being students of medicine, 66 of law, and 6 of theology. No one is admitted as a student who has not completed his education at a gymnasium. The salary of a professor hardly amounts to X200 a- ( year. There is no school inspection beyond that of the demarch.

Education is by law compulsory for children from seven to twelve years of age, but this law is not enforced, for it does not require to be ; and the results of education in Greece are the more remarkable as being the fruits of what is practically purely voluntary attendance. Every eighteenth person in Greece is at school; in Russia only every seventy-seventh is so. In 1872 the total number of pupils was 81,197, of whom 65,111 were males and only 16,086 females. Boys and girls are taught at sepa rate schools ; of the primary schools, 942 are for boys, with 1009 male teachers and 52,943 pupils, and only 199 for girls, with 221 female teachers and 11,035 pupils. The Hellenic schools and gymnasia are for boys only, and in 1872 had 6055 and 1942 pupils respectively. There are, however, various private schools for girls, with an aggregate attendance of 5000. These figures show that there is a serious defect in female education, for which neither the Government of Greece nor the people have due solicitude. It ought to be mentioned, however, that there is one phase of female education in which Greece is in advance of many other European countries, for the medical school of Athens is opsn to female students, who num bered 42 in 1879.

We have no exact statistics as to the numbers engaged in each branch of industry severally, but Eikelas gives in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London for 1868 an estimate for the year 1861, according to which nearly half the population (49 37 per cent.) were agricul turists and shepherds, and more than a third of the remainder (or 18*66 per cent, of the whole population) in the liberal professions. 13 87 per cent, were engaged in industrial pursuits, 8-43 per cent, in trade, 5 40 per cent. were domestic servants, and only 4 27 per cent, were parsons of independent means. Government officials and their families comprise a twelfth part of the population. There is great want of employers with considerable capital, and the amount of labour done and wages earned by the workmen is much diminished by the extraordinary number of ecclesiastical holidays they are required to observe. There are .195 fast days in Greece, and the number of working days in the year never exceeds 265. There are no paupers in Greece, no poor law or poor rate, and no religious associations for charitable purposes. Beggars are very rare, and absolute destitution may be said not to exist.

Agriculture is still in its infancy. A larger proportion of its area is uncultivated than obtains in any country in Europe except Kussia; but that is explained by the unusually large part of it which is occupied by mountains. We have no exact statistics since 1860, but then only one- seventh was under cultivation. Its entire area (exclusive of the Ionian Islands, not then part of it), was 45,699,248 stremmas, a stremma being a little over a quarter of an acre. Of these only 17,824,000 were capable of cultiva tion, and only 6,076,000 actually under it, and half of this amount is always fallow from their system of working it. By universal testimony the country might grow food for three times its present population, yet it has to import cereals every year to an amount exceeding a third of its own produce, and over .1,000,000 in value. But agricul ture contends with many difficulties in Greece, most of them, like the vicious land-tax, the want of roads, and the imperfect agricultural methods, being happily remediable. The soil is, as a rule, light and thin. In many places there is great lack of rain and running water, but the people are expert in irrigation. The chief products are corn, wine, fruit, and oil. Six different kinds of wheat are grown, producing, in a favourable season, as much as 10 or 13 returns, and after a dry spring from 3 to 5. Good crops are got of rye, b.irley, and maize ; oats do not grow so well, and potatoes not at all. Pulse thrives everywhere, and rice is produced in the plains of Marathon and Argos, and in marshy laud elsewhere. Cotton and tobacco have been introduced in our own day, and give good returns. Greece is still in want of one of the first requisites to agricultural prosperity, a resident proprietary. The modern kingdom began with almost no proprietors. Under the Turks two-thirds of the land belonged to the sultan, and became at the revolution simply national property, which the Government has been selling ever since to pri vate owners on more or less reasonable terms. The peasants are showing a passion for land, and save up to buy their crofts, and in this way a large class of small freeholders is being created, with what effect upon agricul ture we have no means as yet of determining. There were 16,122 proprietors in 1861. The relation between land lord and tenant is the metayer system of taking as rent or usufruct a share of the net produce, usually a third, but in the case of Government land 15 per cent. Great part of the agricultural labourers are not Greek subjects, but arc Mahometan Albanians from Thessaly and Epirus, who come into Greece annually in harvest-time, in bands of 30 or 40 under a captain, who work at lower rates than Greeks and work longer, for they have no feasts to observe, and who contrive by frugal living to carry back three-fourths of their earnings to their families at home. The methods of cultivation in use are still primitive. Modern implements are not employed to any great extent, though their manufacture is carried on at Syra and the Piraeus, and though even the steam plough has been actually introduced in Elis. The Greek plough is still that of Homer, which the husbandman carries about his croft on his shoulder, and which hardly does more than scrape the surface of the ground. It is wrought by oxen, Greek horses the old Thessalian breed being small and unfit for farm work. There is no system of rotation of crops. Fields are cropped till they are exhausted, and then left fallow for a year or two. The farmers have no idea of manure or drainage. There are few enclosures, and even the laying out of the fields is slovenly, a patch of this crop here, and a patch of that there. The houses of the peasantry are sheds of wood or huts of mud, without either chimney or window, but always with a picture of the Virgin inside. With all the defects in the Greek system of cultivation, agricultural returns show gradual though slow progress. In 1846 the yield for the year of wheat, barley, aud maize 