YOUNG RUSSIA 



453 



of the land-owning nobility and endowed 

 with self-government. Each village is a 

 miniature pure democracy, where even 

 representative government would be re- 

 garded as too remote. The heads of the 

 houses in a village meet in free consulta- 

 tion on the basis of "one man, one vote." 

 This true democracy, within an autocratic 

 monarchy, divides the lands to be culti- 

 vated, disciplines its members, provides 

 relief for the needy, and buys fire-engines 

 and agricultural machinery. It selects a 

 head man, who is the president of all 

 village meetings. Another official selected 

 is the pole man, who goes through the 

 village tapping on the windows to warn 

 the people that a village meeting is about 

 to be held. 



Nothing is done until the villagers in 

 meeting approve it. For instance, no one 

 can begin to mow hay until the village 

 meeting says so. The village lands are 

 apportioned out, each male member of a 

 family getting a strip ; and these are not 

 located together, thus preventing any 

 family from getting more than its share 

 of the best land. Sometimes there is a 

 redivision every ten years, and sometimes 

 oftener. Sometimes strips are lo feet 

 wide and sometimes 200 — a strange ef- 

 fect in harvest time, when the land looks 

 like a piece of grandmother's home-made 

 rag carpet. Hay is usually made by the 

 whole community and divided into a 

 number of piles corresponding to the 

 number of men, and these are assigned 

 by lot. 



A RURAIv-IvIVING PEOPI.E 



Few nations have such a great per- 

 centage of their population living on the 

 soil and by the soil as Russia. Where 

 England and Wales have 78 per cent of 

 their people living amid urban surround- 

 ings, the United States 47 per cent, Ger- 

 many 43 per cent, and France 42 per 

 cent, only 15 per cent of Russia's people 

 have left the soil. Of the typical thou- 

 sand of population, 771 are peasants, 107 

 are burgesses, 66 are natives of the wild- 

 tribe order, 23 are Cossacks, 15 are no- 

 bles, 5 belong to the clergy, 5 are privi- 

 leged burgesses, and 8 are unclassified. 



Being preeminently a land of agricul- 

 turists, lands are in Russia what stocks 



and bonds are in England — the principal 

 field for investment. The great Black 

 Forest region is one of the most fertile 

 on the face of the earth ; its soil is from 

 3 to 10 feet deep, and its agricultural 

 possibilities match anything that may be 

 found in Iowa or the Dakotas. 



Thus the geographical handicap of 

 early years — that wide, flat plain over 

 which the armed hosts could drive with- 

 out hindrance, burning and butchering — 

 is now Russia's greatest asset. 



With the bulk of its crops raised by 

 the peasantry, employing the most primi- 

 tive means of farming, Russia is still able 

 to produce a very large proportion of the 

 world's food supply. In 1913 it gave to 

 civilization nearly a fourth of its wheat, 

 fully a fourth of its oats, a third of its 

 barley, and more than half of its rye. 

 The Empire in that year had a wheat 

 crop 200 million bushels greater than that 

 of the United States, an oats crop off- 

 setting our own, a barley crop three times 

 as great as ours, and a rye crop 25 times 

 the size of ours. 



But for our tremendous crop of corn, 

 approximating 2j^ billion bushels, the 

 United States would have to yield first 

 place to Russia as a grain producer. 



FUTURE POSSIBILITIES 



But what Russia is as a producer of 

 the world's staple foodstuffs is nothing 

 as compared with what it may be. That 

 the acreage can be enormously increased, 

 any one who has traveled through Rus- 

 sia can very well understand. But let 

 us assume that the acreage will stand 

 still, and that at some future date the 

 Russian farmer, with his naturally rich 

 and comparatively new land, can dupli- 

 cate what the German farmer, with his 

 naturally poor and long-used land, is now 

 doing in the matter of per-acre yield. 



Russia then would be able to give the 

 world three-eighths of its present wheat 

 supply, two-thirds of its present oats 

 crop, five-sixths of its present barley 

 harvest, and nearly half a billion bushels 

 more than its present yield of rye. 



As a stock-raising country Russia 

 stands out as having more horses than 

 any other nation on earth, with the 

 United States as its nearest rival. It has 



