ndustrial establishments furnish
only two per cent. of her population with employment.

[Illustration: P. A. STOLYPIN

PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR]

Unable to get a living from their small and comparatively unproductive
farms, and equally unable to find work elsewhere, the peasants clamor
loudly for more land; and when, as the result of a bad harvest,
their situation becomes intolerable, they are seized with a sort of
berserker madness and break out into fierce bread riots, which
frequently end in regular campaigns of pillage and arson. In 1905 they
attacked and plundered the estates of more than two thousand landed
proprietors and inflicted upon the latter a loss of more than
$15,000,000. The disorder extended to one hundred and sixty-one
districts and covered thirty-seven per cent. of the area of European
Russia.

Such alarming evidences of wide-spread distress and discontent
naturally forced the agrarian question upon the attention not only of
the government but of the people's representatives in parliament. The
Constitutional Democrats in the first Duma proposed to obtain more
land for the common people by following the example set by Alexander
II. when he emancipated the serfs, namely, by expropriating in part,
and at a fixed price, the estates of the nobility, and selling the
land thus acquired to the peasants upon terms of deferred payment
extending over a long time. The government of Nicholas II., however,
would not listen to this proposition, and the Stolypin ministry is now
trying to satisfy the urgent need of the peasants by selling to them
land that belongs to the state or the crown; by making it easier for
them to buy land through the Peasants' Bank; and by facilitating
emigration to Siberia, where there is supposed to be land enough for
all. None of these measures, however, seems likely to afford more than
partial and temporary relief. Most of the state and crown land in
European Russia is not suitable for cultivation, or it is situated in
northern provinces where agriculture is unprofitable on account of
extremely unfavorable climatic conditions. According to Professor
Maxim Kovalefski, the crown lands of European Russia comprise about
22,000,000 acres. Of the 4,933,000 acres that are arable and well
located, 4,420,000 acres are already leased to the peasants upon terms
that are quite as favorable as they could hope to obtain by purchase,
and the remaining 513,000 acres woul