Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/220

 The price at the present time I think is far lower than what it would be if it were not for the action of the zemstvos. And this price would immediately rise with extraordinary rapidity if only it should occur to the zemstvos to buy the remaining three-fourths of the grain they need.

We might say that the price will not rise if the zemstvos had bought now the whole quantity needed, and rye were on sale at that price. But according to the present state of things there is no likelihood that this was so. According to the present state of circumstances, that is to say, at the price of one ruble seventy kopeks, when the zemstvos did not buy even one-fourth of the necessary grain, and when there was no rye offered for sale anywhere, even in small quantities, there is, on the contrary, a probability that by reason of the zemstvos buying the whole quantity they needed the price would suddenly rise to a price which would show that there was none of the grain in Russia. The price even now in our localities has risen to the highest notch to which it has ever attained, to one ruble seventy kopeks, and still continues to rise regularly.

All these symptoms show that there is a great probability that Russia has not the grain she needs.

But besides these symptoms there is still another phenomenon which ought to compel us to take all possible measures to avert the misfortune that threatens us. This phenomenon is the panic which has seized society, that is to say, the undefined obscure terror of some expected misfortune—the terror which people communicate to one another, the terror which deprives people of the capability of working to any purpose. This panic is expressed even in the prohibition of exporting first rye, then of the other breadstuffs, except for some reason of millet, and in such measures, on the one hand, as assigning great sums for the starving, and on the other hand, the collecting by the local authorities of assessments from those who can pay, as if the extraction of money from the country were not a direct enhancement of the poverty of the country.