Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/226

202 let it be fifty or one hundred or even two hundred million puds, all this would not be so terrible. We could now buy that amount of grain in America and it could always be paid for by governmental, social, or popular funds.

The people who are working ought to know that their work has a meaning and is not wasted.

Without this consciousness hands fall idle. But in order to know this for that work in which now are employed an enormous number of Russian people, it is necessary to know now, instantly, within two or three weeks, whether we have enough grain for this year, and if not, then where we can get enough to remedy the deficit.

, November 13, 1891.