74 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



work ? Their money wages surely are much lower, but 

 the difference is equalised as soon as we reckon their 

 wages in produce. The twelve shillings a week of the 

 British agricultural labourer represents the same amount 

 of wheat in Britain as 4he six shillings a week of the 

 Russian labourer represents in Russia,* not to say a 

 word about the cheapness of meat in Russia and the 

 low house rent The Russian labourer is thus paid the 

 same amount of the produce grown as he is paid here. 

 As to the supposed prodigious fertility of the soil in the 

 Russian prairies, it is a fallacy. Crops of from sixteen 

 to twenty-three bushels per acre are considered good 

 crops in Russia, while the average hardly reaches thir- 

 teen bushels, even in the corn-exporting parts of the 

 empire. Besides, the amount of labour which is neces- 

 sary to grow wheat in Russia with no thrashing- 

 machines, with a plough dragged by a horse hardly 

 worth the name, with no roads for transport, and so 

 on, is certainly much greater than the amount of labour 

 which is necessary to grow the same amount of wheat 

 in Western Europe. 



When brought to the London market, Russian wheat 

 was sold in 1887 at 315. the quarter, while it appeared 

 from the same Mark Lane Express figures that the 

 quarter of wheat could not be grown in this country 

 at less than 363. 8d., even if the straw be sold, which is 

 not always the case. But the difference of the land rent 

 in both countries would alone account for the difference 

 of prices. In the wheat belt of Russia, where the 



* It results from the detailed figures given by the Agricultural Depart- 

 ment (The Year 1885 with regard to Agriculture, vol. ii.), that the 

 average wages of the agricultural labourers were from 180 kopecks a 

 week in middle Russia to 330 kopecks in the wheat-exporting belt (from 

 35. gd. to 6s. 6d.), and from 55. 6d. to los. 5d. during the harvest. Since 

 1885 the wages went up in both countries ; the average wages of the 

 English labourer were given for 1896 at 133. yd. If the Russian labourer 

 is so miserable in comparison with the English, it is due chiefly to the 

 exceedingly high personal taxation and several other causes which cannot 

 be here treated incidentally. 



