Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/601

Rh last decade. They cultivated these large tracts to advantage, using improved machinery. There is, however, much to be said on the side of those who insist that technical advance in agriculture can be furthered best in connection with private property. This is the assumption on which the law of June 1911 rests. There is in this law definite evidence of the change of emphasis in the land policy of Russia. The government still wishes to encourage the transformation of communal property into private property, but it brings less pressure to bear in this direction. On the other hand, it lays tremendous stress upon uniting the various parcels of land belonging to one owner, whether that owner be an individual or a community. The law makes the most elaborate provision for the settlement of every imaginable difficulty arising from the lack of clear demarcation of boundary lines and the confusion of tenures. There are areas in Russia which wear the aspect of a veritable puzzle—fields of different villages intermingled, church, state and private property enclosed in one piece of communal property, holdings partly communal and partly private and so on almost without end. Out of this chaos the government proposes to bring order—but only upon request. When a family, or a number of families, or a village, or a group of villages forming a community, desire to have their land surveyed and rearranged, they appeal to the district commission whose members represent the central government, the local government and the peasants themselves. This commission appoints one of its number, or a surveyor, to examine the locality in question and to confer with the petitioners as to their wishes. The entire matter having been explained to it, the commission decides whether the project is in harmony with the principles laid down by law to govern all the new land arrangements, and, according to its decision, either refers the project back to the peasants for changes, or orders that it be worked out in detail. When this has been done, those whose lands are concerned are requested to pass upon the plan in its final form. It is their privilege to accept or reject it, but every effort is made by the members of the district commission to overcome objections by persuasion or by practicable modifications. When accepted the plan is sent to the commission of the province. Upon the approval of this commission the work is put under way as soon as surveyors can be spared for it.

The character of the work done by these surveyors depends upon circumstances. A few illustrations will serve to make it clear. When the peasants were emancipated it often happened that a group of villages, being the property of one and the same lord, received their nadiel as one community. This land was not a single piece but was made up of many irregular pieces. Certain ones belonged to each village, had been cultivated by it in the days of serfdom. These were rarely continuous and were mixed with the pieces belonging to the other villages of the