122 ROUMANIA - MISCELLANEOUS 



Certainly, it was not in accordance with these provisions, which, al- 

 ready in themselves burdensome, became in practice quite insupportable, 

 through the severity of the landlords and the little if any justice the 

 peasants obtained when they went to law, that the Roumanian land 

 question could be finally settled. The first signs of discontent appeared 

 in 1848 : the government of the time appointed a commission on which 

 the peasants were also represented : after a long debate some amendments 

 were made in the Law which, for the moment, served to calm the excite- 

 ment. Later on, the agitations recommenced, until in 1864 the Minister 

 Cogalniceanu proposed and carried through Parliament a new land law, by 

 which the peasants were finally liberated from the odious burdens imposed 

 on them by the landlords or tenant farmers under the form of taxes in 

 money or contributions in forced labour. The peasants also received land 

 under cultivation, and, to be exact, 467,840 peasants, owning 4 oxen, 2 oxen 

 or one ox or even none at all received altogether 1,766,258 ha. of land. 

 But it is to be observed that about 200,000 of those peasants who had 

 not two head of cattle and about 150,000 of those who had received no 

 land, because the landlords, in terms of the organic law, stUl in force, were 

 not bound, as we have seen, to transfer more than ^/g of their land, formed 

 a group of about 350,000 persons absolutely and immediately dependent 

 on the landlords who made them at last the scapegoats for the benefits 

 obtained by the rest. This group, therefore, became a centre of discontent, 

 which, in spite of the good but incomplete reforms, was not long in 

 reappearing and assuming an alarmingly acute form. 



Among the causes of this discontent, we must consider in the first place 

 the enormous increase in the peasants' rents and, in the second place, the 

 unjust and vexatious form of the agricultural contracts in force. 



It is necessary to remember that in Roumania, more than one third 

 of the arable land is in the hands of a thousand large land owners (i) who 

 generally do not cultivate their immense estates themselves, letting them in 

 preference to tenant farmers who, in their turn, really speculate in the 

 work of the peasants. The proportion of arable land that thus h&e cotne 

 into the hands of tenant farmers is more than 65 %; of this 39 % 

 has been let to foreign tenant farmers. These large areas are subdivided 

 into small lots of not more than 20 ha. and leased to the peasants by 

 special contract at special rents. 



These rents might be paid in two ways : in money or in kind. 



To show the rapid rise in these rents between 1870 and 1906 we 

 reproduce the figtires given by Creanga in his detailed study showing the 

 annual rent per hectare paid by the peasants : 



(a) In 1870, in a total number of 210 farms studied, on 



115 or 54.7% the rent was less than 20 lei per ha.; 



89 » 42.4% » from 20 lei to 40 lei per ha. ; 



5 » 2.4% » » 40 » » 50 » 



I » 0.5% » » 50 )) » 60 » 



(i) Cfr. D. G. Teodoresco, op. cit., page 27. 



