740 THE RURAL COMMUNITY 



It is not the natural difference of physical and chemical quantities 

 of the soil or difference of the economic talent of the races, but the 

 historically established economic milieu which forms the determin- 

 ative factor in the difference of the results of peasants' agriculture. 



A certain number of towns upon a given area was necessary to 

 inspire the mass of the peasants with at least such a degree of interest 

 in production that the lord was only enabled to draw from them the 

 means necessary for his sustenance, using the peasants as " funds 

 for interest." Where these influences of culture, which cannot be 

 replaced even by the best labor and best will, were lacking, the 

 peasant lacked frequently the possibility and always the incentive 

 to push the income from his land beyond the traditional measure of 

 his own needs. 



But if number and area are compared, the cities in the east were 

 much fewer in number than in the west and south. And the develop- 

 ment of gross agriculture in the east dates characteristically from an 

 epoch in which not the rise but the decadence of the cities, and a 

 quite noticeable decadence, can be observed. For its surplusage of 

 grain the east was thus directed to its development to an agricultural 

 export territory, with all qualities of such. This direction reached 

 its culmination in our century after the abolition of the English grain 

 duties. On the other hand, several parts of the west needed, even 

 at the end of the Middle Ages, large importations of foodstuffs, 

 especially cattle. The entire contrast is perhaps most evidently 

 expressed by the difference in the prices of almost all agricultural pro- 

 ducts in the east and west in favor of the latter, which difference 

 was only lately removed in consequence of the hidden premiums 

 of grain exportation which we now have granted for a decade. 

 Even the railroads had somewhat diminished this difference, but 

 left them, in the middle of the last century, still very great. The 

 unreliable condition of German numismatical history, besides many 

 other technical difficulties, prevents us from obtaining a sufficient 

 quantity of reliable data for the Middle Ages, but it seems well-nigh 

 impossible that it has been different in general in that period, in spite 

 of great fluctuations in single instances. 



If, therefore, the landlord wanted to make a more intensive use of 

 his peasants, much greater difficulties obstructed in the east his 

 plan to use them as funds for interest, on account of the peasants' 

 traditional lack, of development, the weakness of the local markets 

 for rural products, and the smaller intensity of communication. 

 I should like to ascribe to this circumstance a much greater import- 

 ance --of course only in the form of an hypothesis yet to be proved 

 at the sources -- than has been done before, so far as I know: The 

 landlord of the east has selected the method of operating his own 

 agricultural estate, not because the gross operation was technically 



