Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/128

 Westphalia, where in some localities the Polish population to-day forms a majority.

Recent decades have developed a system of temporary emigration. Polish peasants go for a time to the States, to Germany and even to Denmark, England and France. Many of them buy land in Poland with their savings and become farmers. This temporary emigration is financially of great importance, especially to Austrian Poland where the country's budget is made solvent only by the earnings of the emigrants.

The Kingdom of Poland alone, with its rapidly growing industries, was able to absorb a considerable part of its rural proletariate into the mining and industrial centres, thus transforming it into an industrial working class. This class, very strong in numbers but mostly very ignorant and badly organised because of the backward institutions and the bad administration of the country, became not only a very important element of the community but also a source productive of trouble. In this respect the system of administration introduced by the Russian Government, with its extensive methods adapted to the vast and sparsely populated territories of the Russian Empire, proved most fatal when applied to an industrial country with a very dense population and situated in the centre of Europe where it is directly exposed to Western influences. The condition of the working class in Russian Poland is certainly the most unhealthy in all Europe.

One of the chief changes in the structure of the Polish nation was the rapid growth in the second half of the nineteenth century of a strong middle class. In German Poland this class developed in the midst of the