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treated and driven as cattle. We have mentioned that the
lands allotted to them were insufficient for the maintenance
of life; they lacked also the means and knowledge of the
best modes of cultivating what they had.
More must also be said of the systematic exploitation and
oppression on the part of the estate owners and the authorities.
The landlords, who had in former years been accustomed
to live upon the industry of their slaves, had neither energy nor
skill to cultivate their lands in a proper manner. Many of
them rapidly ran through the “emancipation money” without
applying it to the improvement of their estates. Swiftly on
the abolition of serfdom followed the development of the
railroad and steamboat traffic, which raised the value of the forests
and the produce of the land enormously. Immediately a
devastation of forest land and impoverishment of the soil
began. Immense tracts of timber were ruthlessly felled, to
the great injury of the climate and soil, and crop after crop of
wheat was raised on the same fields without replacing by
manure what was taken away, until the land was completely
exhausted. At the same time that the conditions of the
peasantry made them unable to participate in the increased
value of agricultural produce, seeing that they were unable on
their small plots to produce for the open market, rents were
raised against them to a terrible extent.
In fact, the entire system of finance and steam communication
was used as a gigantic apparatus for sucking the life-blood
of the people. In the first place, the cost of construction was
enormous. The difficulties presented by the physical features
of the country were much more favourable in Russia than in
Finland, for example. Yet the cost in Russia was three times
as much as in Finland (sixty to one hundred thousand roubles
per kilom. as against twenty thousand roubles per kilom).
This difference went in no measure to the working man, for labour
was cheaper in Russia than in Finland. Again, though private
railways have paid very well in Russia, the companies have
succeeded through bribery in obtaining State subsidies, which
in 1883 amounted to 781,888,800 roubles (a rouble is about
2s. 3d.). The smallest amount of common-sense is sufficient
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