and who have ever been the representatives of civilisation and culture
in Russian country life, should be gradually expropriated in favour
of other and less cultivated social classes? Not a few influential
personages are of opinion that such a change is unjust and undesirable,
and they argue that it is not advantageous to the peasants themselves,
because the price of land has risen much more than the rents. It is not
at all uncommon, for example, to find that land can be rented at five
roubles per dessyatin, whereas it cannot be bought under 200 roubles. In
that case the peasant can enjoy the use of the land at the moderate rate
of 2 1/2 per cent. of the capital value, whereas by purchasing the land
with the assistance of the bank he would have to pay, without sinking
fund, more than double that rate. The muzhik, however, prefers to be
owner of the land, even at a considerable sacrifice. When he can be
induced to give his reasons, they are usually formulated thus: "With
my own land I can do as I like; if I hire land from the neighbouring
proprietor, who knows whether, at the end of the term, he may not raise
the rent or refuse to renew the contract at any price?"

Even if the Government should continue to encourage the purchase of land
by the peasantry, the process is too slow to meet all the requirements
of the situation. Some additional expedient must be found, and we
naturally look for it in the experience of older countries with a denser
population.

In the more densely populated countries of Western Europe a safety-valve
for the inordinate increase of the rural population has been provided
by the development of manufacturing industry. High wages and the
attractions of town life draw the rural population to the industrial
centres, and the movement has increased to such an extent that already
complaints are heard of the rural districts becoming depopulated. In
Russia a similar movement is taking place on a smaller scale. During the
last forty years, under the fostering influence of a protective tariff,
the manufacturing industry has made gigantic strides, as we shall see in
a future chapter, and it has already absorbed about two millions of the
redundant hands in the villages; but it cannot keep pace with the rapid
increasing surplus. Two millions are less than two per cent. of the
population. The great mass of the people has always been, and must long
continue to be, purely agricultural; and it is to their fields th