Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/604

600 the differentiation of the different qualities of land. After that the tracts are laid out, each one as nearly as possible approaching a square, some perhaps entirely of plough land, some combining plough land with pasture and woods. The peasants who are to receive tracts of exactly equal value often draw lots for them. The assignment of other tracts is ordinarily made by mutual agreement.

It is difficult to comprehend what a vast amount of labor is involved in these surveys. In the single year of 1912 nearly 9,000,000 acres passed under the measuring-chain. More than five thousand surveyors are employed and paid by the government. The commissioners in charge of the so-called new land arrangements number seven thousand.

Well laid-out tracts of land are not, however, an end in themselves. They are simply the requisite for scientific farming that will yield the largest returns. The peasants of Russia must be taught how to manage their soil to the best advantage. This instruction is being given them. Agricultural experts have been stationed throughout the country to teach the mujiks by counsel and example how to dress and till their fields, what crop to plant. The number of these experts in the employment of both the government and the zemstva increased from 2,541 in 1909 to 5,185 in 1911. Many model farms and testing-fields have been established to make plainly evident the concrete results of better agricultural methods. The experimental stations increased from seventy in 1907 to two hundred and ten in 1911. I can speak from personal observation of one in the province of Samara. It is in charge of a gentleman who studied agronomy for two years in the United States and is excellently managed. Much should be said in praise of the work done by the zemstva. That at Kineshma is engaged in a great variety of admirable activities all looking toward the welfare of the peasant. I need only mention as apropos of agricultural progress the placing of stallions where they will help toward breeding finer horses and the furnishing at little more than cost price of excellent seed and farm machinery of every kind practicable and desirable in that part of Russia. Many other zemstva are engaged in the same work. Indeed these district and provincial councils were the first to conceive the idea of teaching the peasants how to improve their methods of cultivating the soil. That was twenty years ago, more or less; now the government is co-operating with them and added stimulus and strength have brought corresponding results.

The new land policy of Russia is scarcely known to the world at large. Considering its magnitude and importance very little in the way of a careful exposition of it has been written. Yet it has to do with more than 100,000,000 people and with an area almost equal to the rest of Europe. It endeavors to change in a decade or two the habits, customs, ideas and ideals of centuries. While the reforms of Peter the Great were limited almost entirely to the upper classes, this concerns