Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/227



ELP for the population suffering from bad harvests may have two objects: support of the peasant proprietors and prevention of people running the risk of illness, and even death, from want and from the bad quality of food.

Are these objects attained by the aid now extended in the form of twenty or thirty pounds of flour a month to each consumer, reckoning or not reckoning laborers? I think not. And I think not from the following considerations:—

All the peasant families of all agricultural Russia may be distributed under three types. First, the wealthy farm with eight or ten souls, on the average twelve souls to a family, with from three to five hired men, on the average four, from three to five horses, on the average four, and from three to nine desyatins of land, on the average six. That is a rich farmer. Such a muzhik not only feeds his family with his grain, but frequently hires one or two laborers, buys up land of those worse off than himself, and sells them grain and seed. All this, maybe, is done on conditions not favorable for the poor, but the result is that in the country, where there are ten per cent of these rich men, the land is not idle, and in case of necessity the poor man may have the means of obtaining grain, seed, even money.

The second type is that of the average muzhik, with great difficulty making the ends of the year meet by means of his two parcels of land, and one or two