Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/603

Rh The government may be called upon to survey the nadiel of a single very large village. Take Borma as an example. It owned 6,250 dessiatines or approximately 16,625 acres cut up, so that each household tilled eighteen widely scattered parcels. The pasturage was divided anew each year and the ravines were held in common. One hundred and ninety-one families desired to have their holdings given them in private ownership, the rest wished to retain theirs in communal ownership. It was decided to divide the nadiel, so that the northern part might be given to those who wished to withdraw from the mir. Of the latter class ninety-nine families settled upon the tracts assigned them, ninety-two settled in eight groups upon sites purposely chosen at some distance from each other for villages. This arrangement was made for the benefit of those who felt it necessary for the sake of social intercourse to live in the near vicinity of neighbors yet who wished also to be relatively near their fields. Farms whose owners live in the village are known as otroubs. This arrangement is at present very common in Russia. Often it is doubtless an intermediate stage. In the course of time many families living in villages will move to their farms, provided they are able to find good drinking water there or in the near vicinity. The mujik does not mind carting his water in barrels over long distances but there is a limit to the time he can spend in this occupation. A single well frequently serves an entire village.

Here is another example of the kind of task the government may be called upon to perform. A village that has worked its nadiel in common since the time of the emancipation or that, while holding it in common, has parcelled it out periodically among its families, decides at a meeting of the adult men to go over to private ownership. The proper request is laid before the district commission and the surveys begin. The first question has to do with the roads. In central Russia particularly the old ones are meandering and very broad. Why take the trouble to fill in wagon ruts that have become hopelessly deep when it is possible to drive alongside of them? And when new ruts have been formed these, too, can be left to care for themselves. Thus the old roads lost whatever straightness they may originally have had and stretched to a great width. New ones must be carefully laid out. Next comes the question of water. It is the ideal of the government to persuade each family to live on the tract allotted it and with this end in view the commission frequently offers to assist the mujik with the money necessary to transport his old dwelling or to put up a new one, the sum to be paid back in fifteen years without interest, although occasionally in extraordinary circumstances it is an outright gift. Often, however, the absence of water or the expense involved in sinking deep wells makes it necessary for the peasants to live in groups. In this case sites must be selected for these so-called daughter-villages. Then comes