ON THE CZAR'S HIGH W 'A Y. 85 



There is no reason why all should not be much better 

 off. Vodka was the only trouble. A moujik who 

 kept away from the vodka shop and tended to his land 

 and his work was infinitely better off than when he 

 was a serf. For the man who cared for nothing but 

 drink and neglected his family, serfage and the mas- 

 ter's stick were better than freedom. 



" The secret of the prosperity of Volosovo is that we 

 voted to have no vodka shop in the mir — that, and 

 nothing else. Every mir has the privilege of local 

 option. (Since this was written, local option has been 

 taken away.) It remains with the people themselves 

 whether they shall admit a vodka seller to their midst 

 or not. Vodka sellers get into the mirs by bribery, 

 and by paying a good share of the taxes. A vodka 

 seller will, perhaps, engage to pay five hundred rubles 

 of the mir's taxes, which, let us say, amounts to one 

 tenth of the whole. This being agreed to, the liquor 

 shop is opened, the moujiks spend everything in drink, 

 and the entire mir is demoralized. The vodka seller 

 takes twenty rubles out of every moujik's pocket ; in 

 return for which he pays twenty kopecks back in the 

 guise of taxes. Now, in Volosovo we decided to keep 

 our twenty rubles and pay our twenty kopecks taxes 

 ourselves, and so, at the end of the year, we find our- 

 selves nineteen rubles and eighty kopecks in pocket." 



Thus far, my informant said, the government had 

 been inclined to deal leniently with the moujik. If 

 unable to pay his direct taxes, it was because he had 

 drank vodka, and had thereby paid them, several times 

 over, indirectly. So reasoned a paternal government 

 that had delivered him from serfdom — a weakling to 



