he
Noblesse land has been alienated, and in one province (Tula) the amount
is only 19 per cent.

The habit of mortgaging and selling estates does not necessarily mean
the impoverishment of the landlords as a class. If the capital raised in
that way is devoted to agricultural improvements, the result may be an
increase of wealth. Unfortunately, in Russia the realised capital
was usually not so employed. A very large proportion of it was spent
unproductively, partly in luxuries and living abroad, and partly in
unprofitable commercial and industrial speculations. The industrial
and railway fever which raged at the time induced many to risk and
lose their capital, and it had indirectly an injurious effect on all by
making money plentiful in the towns and creating a more expensive style
of living, from which the landed gentry could not hold entirely aloof.

So far I have dwelt on the dark shadows of the picture, but it is not
all shadow. In the last forty years the production and export of grain,
which constitute the chief source of revenue for the Noblesse, have
increased enormously, thanks mainly to the improved means of transport.
In the first decade after the Emancipation (1860-70) the average annual
export did not exceed 88 million puds; in the second decade (1870-80) it
leapt up to 218 millions; and so it went up steadily until in the
last decade of the century it had reached 388 millions--i.e., over six
million tons. At the same time the home trade had increased likewise
in consequence of the rapidly growing population of the towns. All this
must have enriched the land-proprietors. Not to such an extent, it is
true, as the figures seem to indicate, because the old prices could not
be maintained. Rye, for example, which in 1868 stood at 129 kopeks
per pud, fell as low as 56, and during the rest of the century, except
during a short time in 1881-82 and the famine years of 1891-92, when
there was very little surplus to sell, it never rose above 80. Still,
the increase in quantity more than counterbalanced the fall in price.
For example: in 1881 the average price of grain per pud was 119, and in
1894 it had sunk to 59; but the amount exported during that time rose
from 203 to 617 million puds, and the sum received for it had risen from
242 to 369 millions of roubles. Surely the whole of that enormous sum
was not squandered on luxuries and unprofitable speculation!

The pessimists, however--and in Russia their name is le