Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/377

Rh places actually deteriorated since he is free. The soil has become exhausted, the fields have even sometimes been abandoned, so that in many regions bad crops and dearth have come to be of almost regular occurrence."

The helplessness of the peasant, the importance of food supplies, and the necessity of foreign markets for surplus product have induced the Russian Government to devise an extensive system of state aid, apart from the measures arising out of the emancipation. This policy was initiated in 1888, and offers a most elaborate plan for facilitating the marketing and transportation of grain, without endangering the home supply. It was formerly the practice among rural communities to set aside a certain quantity of grain each year of good return to be held as a store against a deficient crop or actual famine. This salutary system had been allowed to fall into disuse in many governments where the development of agriculture seemed to promise an immunity from want or even from high prices that are inseparable from a really short production. The events of 1891 gave a rude shock to this feeling of confidence, and the Government determined to enforce the old system of storing grain, or to create a fund out of which actual suffering through a partial famine could be relieved. The Minister of the Interior, in calling the attention of the local authorities to this matter, proposed two methods of attaining the end desired: (1) by returning the grain borrowed, where a general store has been maintained, and filling new storehouses; or (2) by substituting a grain tax where the old stores have not been kept up, for a money tax designed to make a fund for the purchase of supplies when needed.

"The Ministers of Finance and of the Interior have solicited the imperial permission for giving the zemstvos the right to collect the land tax from peasants in grain instead of money, and that, furthermore, in order to give the zemstvos means to meet the necessary expenses, a credit should be opened for them in the Government bank at the low rate of three and a half per cent per annum and to the full amount of the sums they were entitled to receive in grains. The loans thus made must be returned to the bank out of the money received from the sale of the grain, or, if necessary, from special taxes, and not later than June 1, 1894."

A second object to be gained through state agency was to relieve the peasant from the necessity of selling his grain as soon as gathered in order to provide the means of continuing the operations of the farm.

Since 1888 liberal loans have been made to farmers on grain stored in warehouses or delivered to the railroads. These advances