his agricultural and domestic arrangements for an entire year,
under pain of incurring starvation or falling into the clutches of the
usurer. This is in itself a sort of practical education. Then he has to
attend regularly the meetings of the village assembly, at which all
communal affairs are discussed and decided. To this I must add that he
is by no means obstinately conservative. Habitually cautious, he may be
slow to change his traditional habits and methods of cultivation, but he
does change them when he sees, by the experience of his neighbors, that
new methods are more profitable than old ones. Ask any dealer in
improved implements and machines how many he has sold to peasants in a
single year. Or ask any director of a peasant land bank how many
thousand peasants within the area of his activity are purchasing land
outside the communal limits and farming on their own account. If you
desire any further information on this subject, ask any liberal-minded
landed proprietor who takes an interest in the prosperity of his humble
neighbors to describe to you the small credit societies and similar
associations which have recently sprung up in his neighborhood. Nor is
it only in agricultural affairs that the peasants have manifested a
progressive spirit. If you should happen to pass through the industrial
districts around Moscow, you will see many gigantic factories, which
employ thousands of hands. Incredible as it may seem, not a few of these
were founded by unlettered peasants, whose sons and grandsons have
become millionaires.

Let us now go up a step in the social scale and inquire whether those
born in the mercantile class are as progressive as the peasantry.
Formerly they were regarded, and not without reason, as extremely
conservative, and certainly they used to show little sympathy with
education or culture; but in recent years their character has been
profoundly modified by the ever-increasing influx of foreign capital and
foreign enterprise. The upper ranks at least are now being Europeanized
in the best sense of the term, not only in their methods of doing
business, but also in many other respects. Their homes are becoming more
comfortable and elegant according to modern ideas, refinement is
gradually permeating their daily life, and the sons of not a few of them
are being sent abroad to complete their education in universities or
technical colleges.

Compared with the peasantry and the mercantile community, t