Page:Michael Farbman - The Russian Revolution & The War (1917).djvu/20

 and more difficult to buy for money the necessaries of their peasant life and work—vehicles, horseshoes, nails, ropes, shoes, clothing. In consequence, the longer the war went on the more reluctant they became to sell their grain. Money had become useless to them; they would have been glad to exchange their grain for the things they needed, but these they could not buy in the market and the State was unable to provide them. The result was that the peasants began to hoard and even to hide their stocks of grain "for a rainy day," all the more so as the crops were diminishing every year of the war. The reduction of the yield was due to several causes. First there was the mobilisation of the peasantry, which robbed the land of labour and left the cultivation of the soil principally to women; then the requisitioning by the army of vast numbers of horses was another crippling factor. A third cause was that the stock of agricultural machinery was diminishing through wear and tear and could not be replaced. Soon actual dearth ensued. It was steadily augmented