Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/228

 "hands," and one or two horses. This dvor is almost wholly supported by its own grain. What it lacks is obtained by a member of the family living out.

And the third type is the poor fellow with a family of from three to five "souls," with one laboring man, and frequently with no horse. This kind never has grain enough; every year he is obliged to invent some means of getting himself out of his tight place, and he is always within a hair's breadth of being a pauper, and at the slightest misfortune he will beg.

The aid given in the form of flour to the inhabitants of the famine-stricken places is distributed by means of lists of peasant families according to their means. By means of these lists calculations are made as to how much help is to be afforded to any particular family. And this help is given only to the very poorest,—that is to say, to the families of the third type.

A "dvor" of the first type,—belonging to the rich or well-to-do peasant who still has several chetverts of oats, who has two horses, a cow, sheep, receives no help. But investigation into the condition, not only of the average, but of the rich muzhik, makes one see that if the peasant agricultural class is to be sustained, these are the very farmers that need help most.

Let us suppose that a rich peasant has still a little rye left, he has twenty or more chetverts of oats, he has five horses and two cows and eighteen sheep, and because he has all this he receives no help. But reckon up his income and his expenses, and you will see that he is in just as much need as the poor man. In order to support the rotation which he has undertaken with his hired land, he must sow about ten chetverts. What grain remains, at forty, fifty, even sixty rubles, is nothing in comparison with what he needs for his family of twelve souls. For twelve souls he needs fifteen puds at one ruble fifty kopeks—twenty-two rubles fifty kopeks a month—two hundred and twenty-five rubles for ten months. Moreover, he needs forty, fifty, or seventy