HUNGARY. 



INTERIOR COIvONIZATION 

 AND THE FUTURE OF SMALIv PROPERTY, 



SOURCES : 



CzETTLER (Dr. V. V. Jeno) Die inn'ere Kolonisation in Ungarn, iii Archiv jiir innere ICoio- 



nisation. Parts lo aud ii, Berlin, July and August 191 7. 

 Glossen zum tjngarischen Koloxisationsgesetzentwurf, ibid : 



The form and structure of rural property in Hungary are a consequence 

 of the historical vicissitudes through which this country has passed in the 

 last century and which have governed the formation of large landed pro- 

 perty. In these must also be sought theorigin of the small rural towns which 

 are here so characteristic, towns of which 40 or 80 per cent, of the popula- 

 tion are agricultural labourers, generally owners of a house and a small 

 garden. These labourers form the mass of the peasants who emigrate 

 temporarily, and are employed more or less throughout the country on 

 all kinds of work. They are however much attached to their native soil 

 to which they return as soon as the work for which they have been engaged 

 has' ended. 



When, on the whole somewhat late, capitalism made its conquering 

 entry into Hungary, some of the wandering labourers bought land and many 

 of them became small proprietors. The redivision of lands, the division 

 of common pasture-lands and other collective property, and above all the 

 sale of properties of the Domain which, for financial reasons, took place be- 

 tween 1870 and 1880, had an important effect in this direction. But these 

 events entailed an entire absence of regularity in the method of taking pos- 

 session of lands. When the finances of the Hungarian State were reduced 

 to order and the conditions of the market improved, the possition of landown- 

 ers also became better. Consequently a smaller extent of land came into 

 the market every year, and the opportunities for the rural populace, living 

 apart in small half-rural and half-urban groups, to buy land, diminished pro- 

 portionately. It was then that the first agrarian social movements b^an. 



In order to relieve these over-populated groups of their excess of la- 

 bour and better to realize the value of large landed property, which hitherto 

 had been insufficiently cultivated owing to the lack of labour and capital, 

 the government decided on the very definite land policy of methodically 

 promoting interior colonization on the basis of a division of large estates 

 suited to this use. 



In this way and on these principles the first colonization law was fra- 

 med. It left colonization strictly limited for it regards only State enterprises 



