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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTHLY.—SUPPLEMEXT. 



separate families, who lived in common under the 

 same roof or within the same inclosure. These 

 family communities M. de Laveleye finds existing 

 among all the southern Slavs from the Danube 

 to beyond the Balkans, alike in Slavonia, Croatia, 

 Servian Voivodia, the Military Confines, Servia, 

 Bosnia, Bulgaria, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and 

 Montenegro. In these lands the family, made up 

 of the group of descendants from a common an- 

 cestor occupying the same house, is the social 

 unit, and owns and tills the soil in common. M. 

 de Laveleye draws a vivid and pleasant picture 

 of this type of life from personal observation, and 

 the same mode of peasant-life has been well de- 

 scribed by Mr. Evans in his rambles through 

 Bosnia. The household elects its gospodar or 

 head, who buys and sells, and manages the com- 

 munity, but as a constitutional sovereign with the 

 consent of the rest. It is a free parliamentary 

 government, with the gospodar for the executive, 

 and the whole family circle for the legislature. 

 In these model households every one has just 

 that amount of authority he is entitled to. The 

 gospodar himself, unlike officials in less favored 

 countries than Servia and Bulgaria, when he feels 

 himself growing old, resigns ; for a Servian prov- 

 erb says, " He who toils should govern." The 

 elders are respected and obeyed, but not servile- 

 ly. Women are not treated, as in Eastern coun- 

 tries, like beasts of burden or slaves ; the gospo- 

 dar's wife regulates the household, directs the 

 education of the young, and chants the national 

 poems to them in the evening. She is consulted 

 in all marriages, and is respected by all. With- 

 in an inclosure surrounded by a hedge, and on a 

 lawn planted with fruit-trees, rises the gospodar's 

 timber-built house, with its hall where the family, 

 averaging from ten to twenty persons, take their 

 meals in common and meet at night, the women 

 to spin and embroider their bright dresses, the 

 men to play the lute and sing, the grandfather to 

 tell the children tales of old Servian heroes. Each 

 family owns a patrimony of over forty acres, and 

 the produce is consumed in common or divided 

 equally among the married couples. But the 

 profits of each man's individual industry belong to 

 himself. He may even own a cow or a few sheep. 

 These instances of private property, however, 

 mark no degeneracy from the idea of family pro- 

 prietorship, which governs absolutely the arrange- 

 ments affecting the soil. " Pauperism and even, 

 saving rare exceptions, accidental distress are 

 unknown," for the aged and infirm are supported 

 by their kinsfolk. The attachment to the family 

 does not, as elsewhere, engender narrow selfish- 



ness. The picture drawn by M. de Laveleye of 

 these happy families is worthy of the golden 

 age: 



" Communities dwelling in the same village 

 are always ready to lend one another assistance. 

 When a pressing work has to be executed, several 

 families join together, and the task is executed 

 with general animation. There is a kind of holi- 

 day. In the evening popular songs are sung to the 

 sound of the gvzla, and there are dances on the 

 sward under the tall oaks. The southern Slavs 

 delight in singing, and rejoicings are frequent 

 among them ; their life being to all appearance a 

 happy one. Their lot is secure, and they have 

 fewer cares than Western nations, who strive in 

 vain to satisfy wants which become every day more 

 numerous and more refined. In their primitive 

 form of society, where there is no inheritance, and 

 no purchase or sale of lands, the desire of grow- 

 ing rich or of changing one's lot hardly exists. 

 Every one finds in the family group the means of 

 living as his ancestors have lived, and asks no 

 more. The rules of succession which give rise to 

 so much strife among relations, the greedy desire 

 of the peasant, stinting himself in everything to 

 increase his property, the anxiety of the proleta- 

 rian, uncertain of to-morrow's wage, the alarms 

 of the farmer, who fears the raising of his rent, the 

 ambition to rise to a higher position, so frequent 

 in the present age — all these sources of agitation, 

 which elsewhere trouble men's minds, are here 

 unknown. Existence flows along peaceably and 

 uniformly. Men's condition and the organization 

 of society are not changed. There is nothing 

 which can be called progress. No effort to secure 

 a better or a different position is attempted, for the 

 mere reason that the possibility of changing the 

 traditional order which exists is not conceived of " 

 (pages 186, 187). 



M. de Laveleye has brought together various 

 records of the existence of family communities 

 in the middle ages throughout Europe. The 

 system was even used in France nearly to the 

 end of the eighteenth century for other indus- 

 tries besides agriculture. M. de Laveleye quotes 

 from Legrand d'Aussy's tour in Auvergne a very 

 quaint and interesting description of several com- 

 munities of cutlers near Thiers. One in particu- 

 lar, named Guittard, would seem to have borne 

 out M. de Laveleye's impression that family 

 communities are the nursing-mothers of all the 

 virtues. Besides managing all the concerns of 

 the family in a manner not surpassed even in 

 Servia or Bulgaria, the Guittards appear to have 

 kept a number of watch-dogs for a very original 

 purpose: 



" Passing through one court," says M. Legrand 

 d'Aussy, " I saw several large dogs, which at once 



