468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eleven hundred and forty acres, and is owned in plots of from thirty 

 to fifty acres. The Hauermeister, or head of the village, owns one 

 hundred and fifty acres, but he is exceptionally wealthy. The church- 

 lands are two hundred and eighty acres, and there are also two hun- 

 dred and ten acres owned by a noble family, non-resident. The till- 

 able church-lands are let to factory and railroad laborers in small 

 plots, and the women of these tenants form a part of the general 

 laboring force in the harvest-season. 



Twenty acres is the least amount of land that a peasant, who lives 

 on the produce of his farm alone, can cultivate profitably in this re- 

 gion, and the living thus obtained is so miserable that those who own 

 so little generally eke out their subsistence by renting land from 



richer farmers. Sixty acres of the land around E have been set 



apart, by old usage, as common, on which those of the villagers who 

 own " village rights " graze their animals, and from which they get 

 clay and stone for building and a certain amount of hay for winter 



use. The extreme subdivision of the land around E is the result 



of the laws which govern the inheritance of land in the province. At 

 the death of the head of the family his land is divided equally among 

 his children, his wife having first taken out of the estate the amount 

 of money or land she brought her husband at marriage, and, in addi- 

 tion to this, a part equal to the share of one of the children. The 

 mother's property at her death goes to the children in the same way. 



Church-lands can be sold when the consent of the minister, church 

 trustees, and church government has been obtained, but such sales 

 rarely take place. Land belonging to the commune as commons can 

 not be sold unless special authority has first been given by the state. 



The highest value I heard set on any land in E was three hun- 

 dred dollars an acre for a garden-spot in the village itself. Land 



near E is not worth so much as near some of the towns around 



it, because it has never been verko2:)pelt or " married," as the process 

 is called, by means of which a peasant obtains one compact farm in 

 exchange for a dozen or more widely scattered, small fields. This 

 Verkoppelung and the laws and customs which make such a process 

 necessary show so much of the German farmer's mc^de of life that I 

 will explain the manner in which it is carried out : In accordance with 

 the laws which govern inheritance, each daughter must receive either 

 at her marriage or at the death of her parents a certain share, varying 

 with the number of children, of all the land belonging to her parents. 

 The chances are, of course, very much against the land which she thus 

 inherits adjoining that of her husband, so that, in the first generation, 

 the family have two fields which may be a mile or two apart. Now, 

 when this couple die, each one of their children receives its share, not 

 of the whole, but of each field owned by the parents. Suppose this 

 process to go on for a century, and it will be readily understood that 

 a peasant may own thirty or forty fields, each containing but a small 



