Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/376

360 Other circumstances had interposed to check the intended operation of this great economic revolution. In 1880 over one fourth of the peasants in the eight governments composing the richest region of the empire, comprising the agricultural zone of the center, were under "temporary obligations," and thus far from perfect freemen. "In the more fertile regions of the black-mold belt, where, owing to the outlets opened by the railroads, the value of land has rapidly increased, the landlords frequently found it to their advantage not to consent to its redemption, so as to retain the compulsory services of the peasants. Now the statute did not give the peasant the right to demand the redemption; this right belonged exclusively to the master, and all that the peasants could do in such a case was to reduce their lots to the legal minimum allowed for that particular locality." To hasten the end, Alexander III made redemption obligatory.

Although nearly forty years have passed since the ukase of emancipation was promulgated, it is still too early to give a definite judgmentjudgement [sic] upon its results. The expectations of its framers have not been attained, in part because of the immensity of the task and diversity of conditions to be met, and in part because the immediate application of the ukase was made not by those who had thought out the scheme, but by others, who were either indifferent or even hostile to the measure. The serf has not generally become an independent landholder, nor has he gained that economic self-reliance that was so ardently desired. He is even less able than before to encounter a bad season, short crops, or a cattle plague, for he has no master who may make good his losses and help him to tide over his difficulties. On the other hand, the peasant has not secured what he believed to be his rights, and is not a little discontented that his dream of full and free possession of the land has not been fulfilled. The many and increasing taxes bring home to him the responsibilities of property, but give him little for meeting the increasing burdens. "Great is the number of peasants who, to-day, pay taxes and dues as heavy as in the time of serfdom, while they have less land, less forest, often less live stock, and less credit than before the emancipation, which, under such crushing conditions, could not rapidly augment the well-being of the people nor improve the culture of the soil. It has frequently enriched wealthy districts, and sometimes appears to have still more impoverished poor ones. Official statistics have ascertained that in many localities the cattle had diminished in number, hand in hand with the lack of cattle goes that of agricultural implements and of manure, so that the peasant's already primitive mode of farming not only has not improved, but has in