cattle, horses, and agricultural implements,
for building stables and cattle-sheds, and for defraying all the other
initial expenses? And supposing they succeeded in starting the new
system, where was the working capital to come from? The old Government
institution in which estates could be mortgaged according to the number
of serfs was permanently closed, and the new land-credit associations
had not yet come into existence. To borrow from private capitalists was
not to be thought of, for money was so scarce than ten per cent. was
considered a "friendly" rate of interest. Recourse might be had, it is
true, to the redemption operation, but in that case the Government would
deduct the unpaid portion of any outstanding mortgage, and would pay
the balance in depreciated Treasury bonds. In these circumstances the
proprietors could not, as a rule, adopt what I have called the ideal
solution, and had to content themselves with some simpler and
more primitive arrangement. They could employ the peasants of the
neighbouring villages to prepare the land and reap the crops either for
a fixed sum per acre or on the metayage system, or they could let their
land to the peasants for one, three or six years at a moderate rent.

In the northern agricultural zone, where the soil is poor and primitive
farming with free labour can hardly be made to pay, the proprietors had
to let their land at a small rent, and those of them who could not find
places in the rural administration migrated to the towns and sought
employment in the public service or in the numerous commercial and
industrial enterprises which were springing up at that time. There they
have since remained. Their country-houses, if inhabited at all, are
occupied only for a few months in summer, and too often present a
melancholy spectacle of neglect and dilapidation. In the Black-earth
Zone, on the contrary, where the soil still possesses enough of its
natural fertility to make farming on a large scale profitable, the
estates are in a very different condition. The owners cultivate at least
a part of their property, and can easily let to the peasants at a fair
rent the land which they do not wish to farm themselves. Some have
adopted the metayage system; others get the field-work done by the
peasants at so much per acre. The more energetic, who have capital
enough at their disposal, organise farms with hired labourers on the
European model. If they are not so well off as formerly,