nsity of the
seasons affects not only the manner of work, but the whole mode of life
of a people. On the Yukon, in Iceland, and the high mountain valleys of
the Alps, winter puts a check not only upon out-of-door labor, but upon
all public or community life. Intercourse stops or is greatly
restricted. The outside world drops away. In Iceland, the law courts are
in session only in summer when the roads by sea and land are open. In
the Kentucky mountains the district schools close before Christmas, when
the roads become impassable from rain and snow; the summer is the gala
time for funeral services, for only then can the preacher or
"circuit-rider" reach the graves made in the winter. Therefore the
funerals in one community accumulate, so to speak, and finally, when
leisure comes after the August harvest, they make the occasion for
important social gatherings. Much of the influence of winter lies in its
power to isolate.

It is the economic effects of such periods of enforced idleness which
are most obvious, both in their power to restrict national wealth and
keep down density of population. When long, they limit subsistence to
the products of a short growing season, except where local mining adds
considerable sources of revenue. In the Russian government of Yaroslaf,
located on the northernmost bend of the Volga within the agricultural
belt, and containing the chief inland wheat market of the Empire, the
field labor of four months must support the population for the remaining
eight months of the year. The half of Russia included in the cold forest
zone of the north maintains meagerly a sparse population, and can hope
for an increase of the same only by the encouragement of Industrial
pursuits. Here the long winter leisure has created the handicrafts on
which so many villages rely, and which in turn have given rise to
peddling,[1444] as we have seen it do in high mountain regions where
altitude intensifies and prolongs the winter season. Agricultural and
industrial life are still undivorced, just as in primitive communities.
The resulting population has also the primitive mark of great sparsity,
so that modern industry, which depends upon a concentrated labor force,
is here inhibited. Hence Russian manufactures, which are so active in
the governments of Vladimir, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, cease beyond
the sixtieth parallel, which defines the northern limit of the
agricultural belt and the beginning of the forest and the