lent changes and convulsions. Mr. Wallace has drawn as pleasing a picture as he can of the country and the people amongst whom he has spent some agreeable years. His book has been so generally read that it would be superfluous to load our own pages by quoting the scenes he describes with so much spirit and, we have no doubt, truth. But there is another side to the question, and by way of showing what it is, we shall cite a part of a letter from a Russian country gentleman, published in 1865 by the Moscow Gazette, which was then, and is still, one of the most jealous champions of the national party and of reform.
I have been spending [said this writer] this last summer in an estate lying to the south-east of Moscow, which I have long known, and with which my own interests are connected. What, then, did I see before my eyes? Universal depression and apathy, reckless living for the present hour, idleness, drunkenness, and thieving. Everything that occurred, whether great or small, to myself or to others, had its source or origin in one of these vices, whose hateful names I have just written down. Apathy was shown in the cessation of all activity, in the extinction of all enterprise. Upon the accomplishment of the great work of emancipation, most of us were deceived by hopes of the advantages attendant on free labor. We planned improvements, we purchased ploughs and agricultural implements. Money enough was spent, but the thing would not go. The low prices of grain, the excessive rate of wages, above all the impossibility of getting free laborers at any price at all, rendered cultivation by day-laborers impossible. Soon afterwards wages fell, and the price of grain rose. But husbandry did not pay. Why? because of the dissolute and disorderly conduct of the men. No farmer can be certain that his laborers will not all have gone off the next morning, without feeding the horses and cattle, and without lighting the stoves—gone off, not from any dispute, but just because there is a holiday in the next village, and Wanka says to Fedka, "Come along, old fellow, there is a drop to be had there—let us be off." The whole pack of them will come back, may be, in three or four days; but in the mean time the stock have died, and the work of the farm has been stopped. . . . On Mondays nobody works at all, either for himself or any one else. Every saint's day is kept for at least three days. If you hire men by time, you cannot reckon on more than fifteen days work in a month; if by piece-work, it is even worse. What are they all about? Drinking up the money in the brandy-shop; for if you give a man a rouble beforehand, be sure you will never see him again. The sottishness of our peasants has now passed from holidays to working days. They get drunk not in honor of the saints, but on every possible opportunity. (Eckardt, p. 234.)
To this it must be added that the migratory habits of the male population, leaving the women at home, are the cause of great abuses, and that the worst forms of disease, the result of debauchery, appear by some recent reports to have infected whole provinces of the empire. Efficient medical advice and remedies are, for the most part, quite unattainable.
Those who vaunt the Russian system on the ground that it excludes competition and presents the most complete picture of protected labor, should remember that no country can withdraw itself from competition in the markets of the world, and that Russia herself is competing and must compete in her chief products with countries, younger but more advanced than herself, which have the advantage of a far better climate, a richer soil, and above all of free property in land and the full results of free labor. At this moment, the corn of southern Russia is undersold by the farmers of the United States, and she has to compete at a great disadvantage with California and the valley of the Mississippi. The trade of Russia with England in linseed, which was an export of immense consequence, has been annihilated by the increasing production of oleaginous grains in India and Egypt. The textile fibres of India, especially jute, have also seriously impaired the trade in Russian hemp and flax. The Russian trade in hides and tallow has powerful rivals in the boundless cattle ranges of South America and Australia. And in these countries she is opposed by the ardor and enterprise of the freest and most energetic races of the world. Can Russia support an increasing foreign debt, with decreasing profits of foreign trade?[1] Can she even in peace maintain her credit in Europe, let alone the cost of mobilized armies, and wars carried on against wild or empoverished nations, from whom no milliards can be extracted by victory? Mr. Wallace should have
- ↑ The official returns of the trade of Russia for 1875, just published, show a decrease of about fifty million roubles in her exports, over the exports of 1874, though an increase on the exports of 1873. The articles which have fallen off are corn, timber, flax, and linseed. The imports of 1875, on the contrary, largely increased, to the amount of about sixty million roubles. The total value of the exports of 1875 was 382,000,000 roubles; and of the imports 534,056,000, leaving an adverse balance of 152,000,000 to be paid in money or bills. As the borrowing power of Russia in foreign countries is for the present exhausted, she will probably be able to spend less in purchases and imports from foreign markets; and must pay for what she wants in her own produce or in gold.
