AGRICUliTURiAL LABOUR IN POLAND. 



According to a report by H.M. Consul-General at Warsaw, 

 never was the scarcity of farm labourers 

 ^^LabiuT^^ ' more felt in the Kingdom of Poland than 

 in Poland. in 1898, and never before had it caused 

 •, so much loss to farmers. Labourers were 

 not only difficult to get at all, but the harvest of winter 

 grains, which hdd been delayed by the weather, coincided 

 with that of the spring sowings> and so rendered a larger 

 number of labourers necessary at one time than usual just 

 when they were particularl)- difficult to find. The want of 

 hands was especially felt in the industrial Governments, in 

 large towns, and near the German and Austrian frontiers. 

 Peasants find it more advantageous to work in factories, 

 where the work is continuous, or a,s bricklayers or paviours 

 than to work in the ; fields, or, if they do so, prefer to go 

 abroad where wages are considerably higher for farm work. 

 This being the case, and a sufficiency of farm hands being 

 more difficult to get each year, various measures have been 

 proposed to remedy the evil. It has been proposed, for 

 instance, to try to get the Government to change the passport 

 regulations so as to make it more difficult for peasants to go 

 abroad to work. Another proposal, which seems the only 

 feasible solution of the difficulty, is to extend considerably 

 the use of agricultural machinery, in order to be as inde- 

 pendent as possible of human labour. The difficulty will 

 be miich greater in future years if, as is feared, the soldiers 

 who are usually allowed to engage themselves as labourers 

 are not allowed another year to do so, and it seems probable 

 that such will be the case, as permission for them to do so was 

 refused this year in Podolia and Volhynia. One result of such 

 a measure would be a considerable rise of wages, which would 

 chiefly affect beet and potato planters. 



The Forest Preservation Act, which is being gradually 

 introduced throughout the whole of the Russian empire 

 since 1888, came into force in Poland on 

 RulsTan Fo?es?i J^^X '898. The object of this measure 

 is, H.M. Consul-General at Warsaw 

 states, to prevent the rapid destruction of forests which has 



