348 SMALL IISHDUSTRIES AND 



allotments granted to the liberated serfs, the 

 bad quality or the want of meadows in the 

 land allotted to the peasants, and by the general 

 impoverishment of the peasants, following a 

 very high taxation and very high redemption 

 taxes for the land. But wherever the allotments 

 are reasonable and the peasants are less over- 

 taxed, they continue to cultivate the land, and 

 their fields are kept in better order ; besides, 

 the average numbers of live stock are higher 

 where agriculture is carried on in association 

 with the domestic trades. Even those peasants 

 whose allotments are small, find the means of 

 renting more land if they earn some money 

 from their industrial work. As to the relative 

 welfare, I need hardly add that it always stands 

 on the side of those villages which combine 

 both kinds of work. Vorsma and Pavlovo 

 two cutlery villages, one of which is purely 

 industrial, while the inhabitants of the other 

 continue to till the soil could be quoted as a 

 striking instance for such a comparison.* 



Much more ought to be said with regard to 

 the rural industries of Russia, especially to 

 show how easily the peasants associate for buy- 

 ing new machinery, or for avoiding the middle- 



* Prugavin, in the Vyestnik Promyshlennosti, June, 1884. 

 See also the excellent work of V. V. (Vorontsoff) Destinies of 

 Capitalism in Russia, 1882 (Russia). 



