machinery has been set to work on its commercial task of supplying power and earning money.

The directors have no present desire to send the current to great distances. It will pay better to create a smokeless manufacturing town in the neighborhood. If required, the power could be sent much more than a hundred miles, and still be more economical than steam, even though coal is cheap there. In countries where power is much wanted, but very costly, the electrical transmission will be successful at distances of many hundreds of miles. Such

cases occur in many places where there are valuable mines but no fuel.

In conclusion, I may say that the work done at Niagara is the forerunner of much more, and already I have in hand the preparation of plans of schemes nearly as important.

I also wish to bear tribute to the kindly friendship which I almost universally experienced at the hands of American engineers. Hardly a single case occurred where any jealousy was shown at an Englishman (or rather Scotchman) being selected to carry out the work.-Blackwood's Magazine.

THERE is not the slightest doubt that the feeling which now dominates in Russia is the need of a deep, thorough, and sincere revision of all the most fundamental conditions of existence of the nation. The best men of Russia, in all classes and strata, are convinced by this time that it is no longer possible to persevere in the direction which national life has followed for a time; that to do this would mean to throw

all further development on a false track; to paralyze the best energies, to vitiate national character itself, and to prepare national catastrophes, unfathomable as to their ultimate results; that an effort must be made to get out of the old grooves and to find the way to open a new phase of development.

All nations have known such periods. Western Europe, too, is feeling at this moment the need of a fundamental revision of the bases of its economical life. But nowhere is this need felt so acutely as it is in Russia. No other nation of Europe has ever had to face such national calamities as the famine years of 1891 and 1892, and to convince itself of its utter helplessness to prevent like calamities in the future; no nation has undergone such a systematic annihilation of all its organs of local self-government, and such an obstruction of all the channels in which the local constructive forces could find an issue from the present difficulties ;

and none has seen such formidable weapons of repression, so obstinately applied for a succession of five-andtwenty years, to prevent the best forces from becoming active factors in national life. Nowhere else do the problems at issue involve so deeply the very first conditions, economical and politi cal, required for the life of a nation.

The feeling I speak of is not of yesterday's birth. It dates from the famine of 1891, when thousands of men and women were brought face to face with the undescribable misery of the peasants,* and could ascertain on the spot how the best energies of private men, and the endeavors of what then remained of local self-government, were paralyzed by the functionaries, who treated every effort going beyond mere charity as an encroachment upon their own spheres of activity. Since that memorable year, optimism or indifference being no more possible, a decided revival of public opinion has begun to take place in Russia. whole tone of the daily press, the review, the book of economic science, and even the novel has changed; and

The

it has become evident that nothing can prevent Russian society from taking to heart the desperate condition of the down-trodden peasants, discussing what is to be done, and acting accordingly. It must be borne in mind that Russia is, above all, an agricultural nation, and a peasant nation; and that the misery or the wealth of the peasant is the misery or the wealth of the whole community. Not that Russia has no industries. On the contrary, her industries have immensely grown during the last three decades. But, as she has no foreign markets worth speaking of for her manufactures, and has not that class, so numerous in this country, of people drawing large incomes from the world-trade-the colonies, or the loans to, and the capital engaged in, all countries of the world -the chief customer of the Russian industries is the Russian peasant.

The cottage industries are peasant industries, the very climate compelling the agricultural population to manufacture something during the long winter months; they give occupation to at least 8,000,000 people, and are valued at a minimum of 180,000,000l. a year-that is, nearly twice the productivity of the great industries. But few of them are for the rich,* the immense mass of their produce being consumed by the peasants. Even the big industries (which employ only 1,500,000 workers in European Russia proper) have their chief customers among the scores of millions of the peasants; and they so much depend upon the peasant consumer that every autumn the output is settled for all the greater factories of the empire for the next twelve months at the Nizhniy Novgorod fair, after the prospects of the year's crop have become known. The nation thus lives almost entirely on her agricultural produce, and the peasant is by far the chief producer in agriculture. Out of the 303,000,000 acres cultivated in Russia, the peasants own and cultivate 204,000,000 acres ; and they cultivate in addition another

* Such are the "Paris" hats, the "Vienna" bent furniture, both of good quality, some silk and lace, the cutlery, the toys, the optical instruments fabricated in the middle prov. inces.

In order to understand Russia one must therefore imagine a compact mass of nearly 80,000,000 peasants, who grow nine-tenths of all the cereals grown, and maintain both the industries and the main bulk of the trade. For them the railways upon which the cereals are carried to the centres for export; for them the passenger trains which transport millions of peasants southward, as they go in search of work on the fertile Steppes, while their wives and children till and crop their poor acres at home. For them the fleet of 2,000 steamers on the rivers; out of the commerce in the corn which they grow originate the big fortunes; and so on. Nay, the imperial revenue, which now attains nearly 101,000,0007., is chiefly built of their coppers, and fluctuates according to the number of coppers which pass through the peasant's hands. In fact, it so much depends upon the peasant's condition that the years of least deficits, cheapest loans (loans are contracted every year), and least expenditure upon the interest paid on foreign loans are the years of the rich crops, such as 1888 and 1893. Good crops make the financial reputations of Ministers of Finance, because a surplus of corn in the peasant's barn means a reduction of the deficit by a dozen of million pounds; while the two last famine years cost the State 24,000,000l. of direct relief, over 2,000,0007. spent in relief works, and over 10,000,000l. of decrease in the revenue.

*

What is, then, the life of those millions to whom Russia owes all the gorgeous luxury lately displayed at St. Petersburg, her railways, her immense army, her fleet of fifty ironclads, and her large State revenue?

*The budget estimates are usually made upon the averages of the three preceding years, while the very bad crops recur on the average each ten to eleven years. This is why years of surprising surpluses in the revenue are so closely followed by years of equally considerable deficits. In fact, the estimates, to be of practical value, ought to be based on ten to twelve years' averages,

Certainly, no West European is capable of fathoming the poverty of the Russian peasant. A table and a wooden bench around the log walls; no trace of bedding, the sheepskin or the woollen over-cloth being taken off the shoulders to serve as mattress, bedcloth, and blanket; no trace of pillow, even in the house of the "rich" peasant-that is all the furniture of the Russian izba. Nay, a piece of cotton or linen rag and a scrap of paper are a luxury which the doctor and the midwife look in vain for in a peasant household.

Food itself is often wanting. When it was stated in this country, in 1891, that each 17. subscribed to the famine relief fund would sustain an adult for eight months, till the next crop, the statement was met with incredulity. But this is really what the peasant lives upon for twelve months in ordinary times. And those who, on coming to Russia, are greeted with bread and salt, certainly have not the faintest idea of how difficult it is for the peasant to have enough of black rye bread and salt all the year round; how every year, in seven households out of ten, the question where to earn some bread for to-morrow, or to borrow a few pounds of flour, worries husband and wife for at least three or four months every year. The fact is that Russia produces no surplus of cereals. If all the rye and wheat grown every year remained in the country, and not one single bushel of it were exported, European Russia would have an average of 520 lbs. of rye and wheat per head of population-that is, the lowest amount required for one inhabitant's food, and nearly two bushels less per inhabitant than what is really consumed of cereals in this country or in France.* But Russia exports on the average one-third part of her crops, t

*It exported forty-eight per cent. of the crops during the three years which immedi. ately preceded the famine.

The Russian agricultural statistics, collected by means of thousands of correspondents scattered in every district, are quite reliable, as has been shown wherever they have been verified by the local statisticians, About the productivity of Russia see the excellent work and maps of Borkovsky, published by the Russian Geographical Society (Memoirs:

and consequently that much is wanted. for the food of the population. So that "chronic starvation," as Tolstoi wrote, is the real normal condition of the great bulk of the Russian peasants.*

A

Every year the peasant is compelled to sell in the autumn the corn he needs for his own food, although he knows that he will have to buy his bread in the spring at a higher price. He bas no other means to pay the taxes. few months before the conclusion of the last 3 per cent. conversion loan it was announced, with much booming in the European Press, that in the budget of 1893 all "ordinary" and "extraordinary" expenditure had been covered "by an extraordinary increase of the ordinary revenue." The reality was, as we know from our correspondents, as also from the Russian Press itself, that the most vigorous measures had been taken for flogging out of the peasants as much as possible of their arrears. The shameful " executions," so truly described by Tolstoi in The Kingdom of God in Ourselves, were repeated all over Russia. Happy were those peasants who succeeded in borrowing some money at 7 or 8 per cent. per month from the very Orthodox Russian money-lenders without the Jewish pale, or at 5 per cent. per month

Statistical Section, vol. xii.). Also the many works of the Agricultural Department and the Central Statistical Committee.

*When one lady (V. D. Pushkina) began to distribute to the peasants, during the famine, fifty-four lbs. of rye flour, eighteen lbs. of potatoes, and six lbs. of millet per head, and per month, she was told, of course, on all sides, that never, not even after the best crop, does the peasant live on such rich fare. The remark was quite correct. Still better was her reply: Well, let them have, at least, this year what they need."

To understand this phraseology one must know that the Russian budget consists of two parts the ordinary revenue and expenditure, and the extraordinary revenue and expendi ture. The former includes all revenue, but it does not include all expenditure—the outlays for re-armament, new railways, sea-ports, etc., being inscribed in the extraordinary budget. In order to avoid the word " deficit," which yearly attains from 10,000,000l. to 20,000,000l., an "extraordinary revenue" is inscribed in the budget, and it consists of the war con. tributions, never paid by Turkey and Khiva, and of what is realized through loans. The extraordinary revenue thus simply means loans contracted to meet the deficit. In 1893,

from the Jewish money-lenders within the pale! And so it goes on every year, good or bad crop alike, until a more general failure of crops throws thirty millions of people into the clutches of starvation with its necessary sequel of hunger-typhus, dysentery or cholera, diphtheria and what not. In such years thousands of house holds will lose their last cow and horse. And no cow in the house means that the famishing mother, crying herself at the sight of her dried breast, will feed her dying child with chewed sour rye bread; and no horse means that the husband will harness in the plough his lads and lasses, and, seizing the plough with his hands, he will push and pull it across the hard, dry, unmanured clay. Thereupon he may have the honor of being complimented "for his energy" by the official Village Messenger (Selskiy Vyestnik) (December 1892), a sister organ to the Official Messenger, published by the Ministry of Interior for the enlightenment of the peasants. And the official organ will have the courage to ask its correspondent to send in more information as to the crops obtained in these interesting experiments !" Who knows? Perhaps the human team will pay, after all, the taxes due to the State !*

Round this dominating fact-the undescribable misery of the peasant-all the great problems of Russian life are grouped. And when we consult the

owing to a good crop, and the stringent measures taken for the recovery of arrears, the real revenue, however, covered for the first time all expenditure; and when this became known a new loan was immediately contracted for "conversion purposes.' *Scores of budgets of peasant households have been published by Russian statisticians. I take the following figures from an average deducted by M. Scherbina out of seventy-five average households in a middle Russia prov: ince The taxes and rents make 11. 5s. per soul. For cattle, tools, and other farming needs, 15s. Furniture and vessel, 10d.; tea and sugar, 1s.; fish, 11d.; meat, 10d.; salt, 7 d.; kerosene oil, 51d.; soap, 24d. (wooden ash is used for washing); dress and boots, 4s. 5d. All per soul and per year. The average household containing six souls, its total yearly expenditure for taxes, rent, and living is 151, 15s., a figure which very well agrees with what is known from hundreds of other researches. The rouble is equal to 2s.

several hundreds of volumes of inquiries, researches, and so on, published on this subject, we find that all of them agree in the following conclusions: For the extensive culture, with very little cattle and almost no manure, which the peasants now carry on, their allotments are too small. They were too small thirty years ago at the time of the emancipation, and they are still smaller now that the population has increased by one-third.** Consequently the rents and taxes alone, in an immense number of cases, are two or three times higher than what can be obtained from the allotment land under the present modes of culture. As for a more intensive and more profitable culture, the peasants have neither the necessary means nor the necessary knowledge to undertake it. At the same time they must not reckon upon finding occupation on the landlords' estates; and very few of them will find occupation in industry. We continually read, indeed, in the Press of the Party of Return to Serfdom (the kryepostniki or esclavagistes) interminable complaints of the landlords finding no hands for the culture of their estates. To remedy this, the said Press has advocated the abolition of the village community, and the creation of millions of paupers by law; the abolition of the justices of the peace; the introduction of police chiefs nominated by the nobility; the creation of a nobility bank for privileged loans. at the expense of the State Exchequer, and so on. the reality is that few landlords care to cultivate their estates. The 140,000,0007.--that is, a sum equal to the contribution levied by Germany upon France-which they have received from the Government, either as a compensation for the loss of serfdom rights (the so-called redemption of land now repaid by the peasants), or as loans from the State's banks, have been squandered in maintaining the old standard of living; and, apart from the Western and the Baltic provinces, the land

But

*Two-fifths of the liberated peasants have received less land than what was recognized as the strictly necessary minimum for living upon by the Emancipation Law itself.

Of these measures, only the first was refused by Alexander the Third,

lords prefer simply to rent their lands to the peasants.*

The Russian peasant has thus himself to create the very means for earning a few coppers wherewith to get the living which he cannot get out of his allotment. And this is what he endeavors to do, in so far as he can do anything under the burden of his misery. Wherever there is a village of which the peasants are less miserable, they buy artificial manure, or enter into small associations for buying a plough, or even a threshing machine. The so-called drunkards, who, by the way, have reduced their consumption of spirits by one-half since their emancipation, till every available square yard of their allotments (92 per cent. of the total area), they undertake to pay rack-rents only to get land to work upon, and they spend in agricultural improvements the pennies spared upon their food-when these pennies are not taken by some new indirect or direct tax, which is more often the case. They work fourteen and sixteen hours a day for the sweater in the cottage industries; they walk hundreds of miles to other provinces in order to find work; and when they look for any aid from without, be it only for getting instruction, or for finding a miserable loan of a few pounds of flour, in time of need, they find no one to help them out of their desperate condition.

And yet there is in Russia a consid

* Let us take a typical province of middle Russia-Kursk-with a productive soil and plenty of landlords. Out of about 3,500 big estates, the zemstvo statisticians have described 1,757. There are a few quite model and prosperous farms in their number; but on from 24 to 54 per cent. of these estates (36 on the average) there is no landlords' farming whatever; all land is rented to the peasants. In 871 estates, representing an aggregate of 991,000 acres, only 4,672 hired laborers are employed-one for each 183 acres. In 662 estates, covering another 602,000 acres, and partly cultivated by the landlords, there are only 1,433 ploughs and 1,535 socs (one horsed, of the old Roman type). For each 100 acres of land actually tilled these landlords keep one horse, and one pair of oxen for each 286 acres; 3.3 acres out of each hundred are manured, which means one manuring each thirty years.

+ Six-tenths of a gallon per year and per inhabitant in 1893, as against 1 in 1863.

erable portion of society which only wants not to be prevented from coming to the aid of the peasants. This class of reformers are certainly not socialists; still less are they revolutionists; but this is the class against which the Imperial Government has most bitterly struggled for the last five-andtwenty years. The immense part which Russian society took in the emancipation of the serfs and all subsequent reforms is by this time a fact of written history.* As soon as Alexander the Second had manifested his intention of liberating the serfs-" with land," and not as landless paupersthe whole of the hard work which had to be done in order to elaborate the countless details of the scheme, and to fight step by step against the reactionists who wanted to maintain serfdom, or at least the most of it, was accomplished by thousands of volunteers. Men like N. Milutine, Tchernyshevsky (his reward was, as known, eighteen years of hard labor and imprisonment in a Siberian hamlet near the Polar circle), Aksakoff, Professor Byelayeff, Herzen in London, and a legion of less known men, accomplished that work in the press or in the local committees. The liberation of the serfs, and the series of reforms which logically followed out of it (local self-government, reform of judicial law, reform of military service, and so on), were the work of these volunteers.

These men fully understood, however, that after the serfs had been set free, the first next step was to give them some education; accordingly, thousands of Sunday and evening schools were organized by volunteers, and supplied with volunteer teachers. Methods for the rapid teaching of spelling were elaborated; books for reading, some of which are unrivalled in West Europe, were published. Russia began to be covered with free schools for both children and adults. But then, all of a sudden, came the reaction. In a few schools the teaching had taken an anti-autocratic character one teacher, for instance, had

*See Skrebitzkiy's History of the Emancipation; A. Leroy Beaulieu's works, especially the later one (Un homme d'Etat russe), and many others.