5«2 



Thi National Geographic Magazine 



1,300,000,000 instea.l of 400,000,000 

 bushels. 



In the western part of Russia, in the 

 Baltic provinces, Poland, and the south- 

 western region, the yield is considerably 

 higher — between 15 and 20 bushels per 

 acre ; but New Russia and ihe Low^r 

 Volga region, often called tlie granary of 

 Europe, show a yield norma!! v fluctu- 

 ating between 8 and 6 bushel < and often 

 dropping to 5. 



The explanation for such 1 >\v \ ; elds 

 must be sought in Russian agricultural 

 methods as well as the system of l:i.v;l 

 ownership, which dates back to the eman- 

 cipation of the peasants in 1861, \vh m 

 they were granted small lots out of the 

 estates to which they belonged. The 

 greatest share of the land remained in 

 the hands of the large-estate holders, 

 while three-fourths of the peasants re- 

 ceived less than 16 acres per male person, 

 or less than 40 acres per family. At the 

 same time the noblemen's estates were so 

 large that 924 families owned 74,000,000 

 acres of land. Since the emancipation 

 era the peasants have been largely buying 

 land from the noblemen, having acquired 

 in this way over 50,000,000 acres ; but 

 notwithstanding this, the normal increase 

 of population has been such that from 

 1 86 1 to 1896 the average land holding of 

 the peasants per family decreased 20 per 

 cent. 



This system of petty land holdings, 

 combined with the ignorance of the peas- 

 ants, has caused the survival of very 

 primitive and inefficient agricultural 

 methods. Throughout Russia the peas- 

 ants get a much smaller yield than the 

 large-estate holders, and the difference is 

 especially great for winter wheat, reach- 

 ing 3 bushels, or 25 per cent of the yield 

 of the large estates ; moreover, the differ- 

 ence is growing larger. In New Russia, 

 for instance, the yield of spring wheat on 

 peasant lands in four out of the last nine 

 years fell below 5 bushels per acre. 



The communal ownership of the peas- 

 ants' lands, which exists in four-fifths of 

 rural Russia, has also interfered ma- 

 terially with agricultural progress by the 



ever-present danger of redistribution and 

 consequent lack of security of owner- 

 ship. 



There are reasons for these low yields 

 besides the unavoidable climatic condi- 

 tions. Among these is the insufficient 

 use of fertilizers or manure in the wheat 

 region, due to communal ownership of 

 peasants' lands and to deficient live stock 

 and lack of pasture on the peasants' 

 lands. Thus the number of horses in 

 Russia has not increased during the last 

 twenty years, and from one-third to one- 

 half of the peasants in the various wheat 

 provinces have no horses at all. The 

 implements used are extremely poor and 

 primitive. Even the plows are made 

 mostly of wood, and scarcely scratch the 

 exhausted superficial layers of the soil. 

 The all-iron plow is still a luxury for 

 many peasants. Scythes and sickles are 

 still used extensively for harvesting and 

 flails for thrashing. Seeders are scarcely 

 known. Conditions are somewhat more 

 favorable on the larger holdings of the 

 noblemen; among the peasants the kind 

 of machinery directly depends upon the 

 size of the peasant's lot. Importation of 

 complex agricultural machinery has 

 grown from $2,600,000 in value in 1890 

 to $14,200,000 in 1903, but it has affected 

 the farming on large estates more than 

 that of the peasants. 



Even on the large estates the modern 

 implements are not generally used, since 

 it is often customary to hire the peasant 

 with his live stock and his crude imple- 

 ments. I aborers are hired for $30 to 

 $40 a year in addition to their food, the 

 cost of which does not exceed $25, and a 

 female agricultural laborer receives only 

 $12 to $20 a year. Even at harvest time 

 the average wages of a man with a horse 

 in the wheat belt are only 66 cents per 

 day, of a man alone 34 cents without 

 board, and of a female worker 22 cents. 

 At other times the wages are correspond- 

 inglv lower. 



Nevertheless, the cost of producing 

 wheat in Russia is not as low as one 

 misfit imagine. Elaborate investigations 

 have shown that because of the low vield 



