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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



and his congress are co-powers in the 

 making of the national laws. The con- 

 gress has control over the appropriation 

 of money and the levying of taxes, sub- 

 ject to the approval of the king. Every 

 male citizen who pays three dollars taxes 

 a year and who is above the age of 21 

 votes in the election of delegates to the 

 congress. 



It is the people and their character- 

 istics, next to the international relations 

 of Servia, that are of chief interest. The 

 country is rugged and mountainous, and 

 the people fit in perfectly with the land- 

 scape. They have all the virtues of the 

 mountaineer; their wants are as few as 

 their sorrows ; they live largely under that 

 communal system that produces a mor- 

 ally clean race, and eat those foods that 

 produce strong bodies. Of meats, mut- 

 ton is the chief food, and it is said that 

 Servia raises more sheep per capita than 

 any other country in the world. The 

 chicken for pot-pie on feast days and the 

 turkey and suckling pig for Christmas 

 are not wanting. The national beverages 

 are spring water and plum wine, although 

 Germany in late years has taught the city 

 dwellers the art of drinking beer. 



FEW INDUSTRIES 



Industries are few, far between, and 

 primitive. Every home, almost, makes 

 its clothes from home-grown wool and 

 flax. The footgear consists of leather 

 sandals strapped around the ankle and 

 worn over wool stockings. In bad 

 weather these wool stockings give place 

 to leather ones, with the fleece on the in- 

 side. The women still wear a knife or 

 dagger, a survival of Turkish times. 



While in some parts of the country 

 substantial farming progress has been 

 made, for the most part the methods that 

 prevailed in the United States a hundred 

 years ago are characteristic of Servian 

 agriculture today. Servia came to Amer- 

 ica for its principal crop, and later for 

 the salvation of another of its important 

 crops. In quantity and value Indian corn 

 takes the lead, and the Servian makes it 

 serve nearly every situation encountered 

 in the economy of the farm — the meal he 

 uses for his corn-cakes, which form a 

 staple article of diet in every peasant 



home ; the fodder for feeding his cattle ; 

 the grain he feeds to his pigs, for pig 

 raising is a principal industry — so impor- 

 tant, in fact, that one of Servia's wars 

 with Austria is known in history as the 

 pig war. Some years ago a disease deadly 

 to vines was imported into Servia from 

 France and Switzerland, and the epidemic 

 was ended only by the importation of 

 American vines and the establishment of 

 schools of viticulture. 



THEIR AGRICULTURAL AWAKENING 



Under King Alexander, who was as- 

 sassinated about a dozen years ago, a 

 considerable impetus was given to agri- 

 culture in Servia by the importation from 

 Germany of the rural cooperative credit 

 association based on the Raififeisen prin- 

 ciple. This system assumes that while 

 ten peasants acting as individuals may 

 have no borrowing power at all, when 

 they act in cooperation the property of 

 all pledged for the debts of each mem- 

 ber renders their credit good, and it has 

 worked out that way in Servia. The 

 peasants of a community go together,, 

 pool their resources, and the entire mem- ■ 

 bership stands for the debt of each indi- 

 vidual. The result is that they are able 

 to borrow money at low rates of interest 

 and on good terms as to time of repay- 

 ment. Each member of the credit asso- 

 ciation has it in his power to veto any 

 loan, and every member makes sure that 

 the borrower is putting his loan to good 

 use. The result has been that the care- 

 ful peasant has not lacked for credit, and 

 has been able to undertake expenditures 

 that would have been impossible except 

 for this system. The rural credit system, 

 of Servia is not dissimilar from that 

 which has been proposed for the farmers 

 of the United States. 



The Servian peasant never brings him- 

 self to premature old age in the pursuit 

 of the almighty dollar. He desires only 

 a comfortable living, and regards his ease 

 more highly than progress. He is mjuch 

 less thrifty than his neighbor, the Bulgar, 

 much less given to war than his close 

 friend, the Montenegrin, and much less 

 a believer in educational progress than 

 the Rumanian. He is given to socia- 

 bility, however, and just as the rural ag- 



