A further evidence of land hunger is afforded by the increasing migration of peasants to Siberia.[1]
It need hardly be said that land hunger is not the sole explanation of chronic and acute famine. In certain regions there is a positive superfluity of land. I am not thinking here of the districts inhabited by nomads and semi-nomads, but refer to such areas as those in northern Caucasia, where the average farm often exceeds 20 desjatinas in extent. Yet here also, just as in Siberia and in all parts of Russia with the exception of the northern regions, the peasant complains of land hunger. There are numerous contributory causes of chronic famine, and among these it is necessary to refer to the backward state of Russian agriculture.
According to comparative statistics published in 1907 by the Russian ministry for finance, the yield of wheat per desjatina is in Russia 42 poods, in Italy 50, in North America 60, in Austria 75, in Hungary 77, in France 78, in Germany 120, and in England 137.
It must not be supposed that the peasant is solely responsible for the defective returns from Russian soil; general conditions, remoteness of the cultivated areas from the peasants' dwellings, and similar causes, are contributory. But it remains true that the peasant's lack of culture and capacity for work, together with the backward state of civilisation in general, are, in conjunction with the unjust distribution of land, the principal causes of the agrarian crisis.
Since the liberation, the development of manufacturing industry has been comparatively vigorous. The growth of manufacture was, indeed, a contributory cause of the liberation; but, conversely, the enfranchisement of the peasants promoted the growth of industry and commerce.
Enfranchised peasants flocked to the towns and crowded into the factories, which before long assumed a European and even an American character. Wages are decided by free contract; modern machinery is employed; with the aid of foreign capital, great industry and capitalistic enterprise
- ↑ Between 1885 and 1896, the emigrants to Siberia numbered 912,000; they numbered 1,387,532 between 1897 and 1906: from that year down to 1913 they numbered about two and a half millions. There have also been extensive migrations to Caucasia and to Central Asia. Emigration to the west (America) remains inconsiderable, but began about 1891. Jewish emigration has been extensive, more than one million Jews having left Russia between 1899 and 1906.
