Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/125

 and became a class of independent small landowners. This great peasant reform was not carried out solely to satisfy the social needs of the times. In German and Russian Poland particularly the reformers were inspired by the political purpose of breaking the power of the Polish landed nobility, which in the eyes of the governments represented the Polish national tendencies and which could not be reconciled with foreign rule. The ignorant peasant had no national aspirations, and it was hoped that, satisfied with his economic condition, he would prove a loyal subject and might even be employed against other sections of the nation. In a sense, therefore, the reform was carried out in a manner very favourable to the peasants; and it produced a strong class of small landowners, a class which, with the progress of education, with the improvement in the methods of land culture, and with the internal colonisation of the country (in all parts of Poland during the last decades), gradually grew still stronger. Many large landed properties disappeared, having been sold out to peasants in small lots.

This reform proved most beneficent to the Polish nation. The healthy, industrious and thrifty class of small landowners became the strongest foundation of Poland's national existence. It manifested its qualities best in German Poland where education has made the largest strides, where everybody can read and write and where the industrial development of the empire and the protection of agrarian interests by the State produced a most prosperous situation for the agriculturists. The small landowners of German Poland are a very prosperous class. Their savings supply the