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A  SYSTEMATIC  SOURCE  BOOK 
IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

VOLUME  I 


A 

SYSTEMATIC  SOURCE  BOOK 
IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


EDITED  BY 
PITIRIM    A.    SOROKIN 

Professor  of  Sociology 
Harvard  University 

CARLE    C.    ZIMMERMAN 

Associate  Professor  of  Sociology 
University  of  Minnesota 

AND 

CHARLES    }.    G  A  Lf>  I  1^ 

Chief  of  the  Division  of 
Farm  Populatjjo&>aad  Rural  Life 
U.  S,  Department  of  Agriculture 


MINNEAPOLIS 

THE   UNIVERSITY    OF    MINNESOTA   PRESS 

1930 


COPYRIGHT,     1930,     BY     THE 

UNIVERSITY    OF    MINNESOTA 

ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 
AT    THE    LUND    PRESS,    INC.,    MINNEAPOLIS 


DEDICATED    TO    THE   MEMORY 

OF 

THEODORE   ROOSEVELT 

WHO    IN   APPOINTING    THE    COUNTRY    LIFE    COMMISSION 

DECLARED,    "THE    GREAT   RURAL    INTERESTS    ARE    HUMAN 

INTERESTS  AND  GOOD  CROPS  ARE  OF  LITTLE  VALUE  TO  THE 

FARMER  UNLESS  THEY  OPEN  THE  DOOR  TO  A  GOOD 

KIND  OF  LIFE  ON  THE  FARM." 


DEDICATED   ALSO 

TO 

SIR   HORACE   PLUNKETT 

WHO  GAVE  TO  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT  THE  SOCIO-ECONOMIC 
FORMULA,  "BETTER  FARMING,  BETTER  BUSINESS,  BETTER 

LIVING,"  A  DICTUM  THAT  SUMMARIZES  THE  BASES  OF  THE 

COUNTRY  LIFE  MOVEMENT  IN  THE 

UNITED  STATES. 


DEDICATED   ALSO 
TO 

LIBERTY   HYDE   BAILEY 

CHAIRMAN  OF  THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  COMMISSION,  WHOSE 

DEEP  INSIGHT  INTO  THE  LIFE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  FARMER 

SHAPED  THE  REPORT  OF  THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  COMMISSION 

INTO  A  DOCUMENT  OF  PRINCIPLES  OUT  OF  WHICH  HAS 

DEVELOPED  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  IN  THE 

UNITED  STATES. 


PREFACE 

IN  THE  main  these  volumes  are  self -explanatory  and  therefore 
need  no  preface.  However,  the  editors'  plan  of  the  Source  Bool{ 
was  influenced  to  such  an  extent  by  several  considerations  that 
they  deem  it  wise  to  acquaint  their  readers  with  some  of  the  per- 
sonal motives  that  lie  behind  the  work.  The  editors  have  been 
moved  by  the  following  considerations:  Human  society  through- 
out its  history-— in  its  origins,  forms,  activities,  processes,  growth, 
evolution—- has  been  so  largely  under  the  pressure  of  agricultural 
and  rural  forces  that  up  to  the  present  sociology  as  a  science  of 
society  has  virtually  been  the  sociology  of  rural  life.  A  world 
view  of  the  sociology  of  rural  life  is  important  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  science.  In  order  to  balance  the  vogue  of  agricultural 
economics  as  an  educational  discipline  and  a  guide  to  public 
action  in  America,  major  emphasis  is  now  required  upon  a  sound 
rural  sociology.  There  is  need  that  the  content  of  rural  sociology, 
whether  presented  in  texts  or  lying  in  the  popular  mind,  should 
contain  facts  of  an  indubitably  sociological  character.  There  is 
need  in  the  textual  organization  of  the  facts  of  rural  sociology  for 
a  resolutely  scientific  methodology.  In  the  training  of  American 
rural  sociologists  there  is  need  for  a  broad  acquaintance  with  the 
rural  sociological  thought  and  theory  of  Europe  and  Asia.  And, 
finally,  in  this  era  of  American  teaching,  research,  and  extension 
of  rural  sociological  facts  and  theory  and  in  this  period  of  experi- 
mental agrarian  legislation,  a  systematic  source  book  world-wide 
in  scope  is  timely.  Now  let  us  discuss  these  points  very  briefly. 

A  glance  at  the  bases  of  general  sociology  shows  the  importance 
of  the  rural  world  in  the  present  development  of  human  society. 
This  importance  is  due,  not  to  the  well-known  fact  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  human  race  is  still  agricultural  and  rural,  but 
to  the  fact  that  the  dominance  of  industrial  forces  and  the  prestige 
of  the  city  are  relatively  a  matter  of  yesterday  and  that  rural  habit 
is  still  the  core  of  human  behavior  the  world  over. 

Rural  sociology  in  America  has  grown  to  large  proportions,  in 
a  night  as  it  were,  on  soil  prepared  by  agricultural  science.  It  is 
not  to  be  marveled  at  that  textbooks  in  rural  sociology  in  America 

[vii] 


viii  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

are  still  quite  provincial,  not  even  being  developed  on  the  geo- 
graphic basis  of  the  entire  country.  Agricultural  sciences,  such  as 
soil  chemistry,  bacteriology,  horticulture,  and  entomology,  have 
the  benefit  of  European  experience.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
state  that  rural  sociology  needs  to  benefit  from  similar  world 
experience. 

The  economics  of  agriculture,  justly  popular  in  colleges  of  agri- 
culture as  an  interpreter  and  guide  among  the  agricultural  sci- 
ences, has  confined  itself  so  largely  to  the  operations  of  individual 
farmers,  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  physical  operations  and 
aspects  of  farmer  groups,  on  the  other,  that  the  socio-psychic 
aspects  and  relations  of  the  human  factor  in  agriculture  are  in 
danger  of  eclipse.  Public  action  also,  in  large  matters  of  agricul- 
tural policy,  is  likely  to  be  based  unduly  on  purely  economic 
formulas.  To  restore  the  proper  balance  to  economic  considera- 
tions in  agricultural  education  and  public  policy,  a  sound  presen- 
tation of  the  sociological  elements  in  agricultural  progress  is 
greatly  to  be  desired. 

The  demand  for  thoroughly  trained  sociologists  to  fill  college 
and  university  positions  in  rural  social  science  is  now  fairly  in- 
sistent. It  seems  necessary,  therefore,  to  furnish  the  material  that 
will  enable  them  to  secure  an  acquaintance  with  European  and 
Asiatic  thought  upon  the  rural  social  problem.  The  older  nations 
and  races  have  long  struggled  to  understand  the  human  factor 
in  agriculture,  and  America's  short  experience  will  gain  from  the 
wisdom  of  older  historic  ideas. 

The  timeliness  of  a  source  book  based  upon  European  and 
Asiatic  theory  can  scarcely  be  doubted  when  we  reflect  upon  the 
prevalence  of  academic  courses  in  rural  sociology,  the  demand  for 
sociological  research  made  by  the  agricultural  experiment  sta- 
tions, and  the  opening  phase  of  extension  and  adult  education  in 
all  the  states.  The  farmers'  recent  success  in  obtaining  national 
agrarian  legislation  is  an  additional  indication  that  the  present  is 
the  psychological  moment  for  the  appearance  of  these  volumes. 

Now  that  the  chief  reasons  for  these  volumes  have  been  can- 
vassed, we  may  explain  very  briefly  a  few  features  in  the  plan  of 
the  work.  The  purpose  of  the  Source  Boo^  is  to  give  a  more  or 
less  exhaustive  survey  of  the  knowledge  in  the  main  fields  of  rural 
sociology.  It  is  intended  to  be  a  complete  encyclopedia,  a  refer- 


PREFACE  ix 

ence  work,  and  a  substantial  systematic  treatise  in  the  field.  It 
aims  to  give  the  reader  an  adequate  and  up-to-date  knowledge  of 
present-day  theories  in  European,  Asiatic,  and  American  scien- 
tific literature.  This  main  objective  makes  the  peculiarities  of  the 
publication  comprehensible.  Since  it  is  not  an  attempt  to  popu- 
larize the  science  of  rural  sociology  and  since  it  is  not  intended 
as  a  text  for  beginners,  popular  and  entertaining  readings  are  not 
included.  Since  it  is  intended  to  be  a  systematic  treatise,  its  intro- 
ductions give  a  systematic  analysis  of  the  problems,  and  the  read- 
ings are  arranged  in  such  a  way  that  they  supplement  what  is 
briefly  touched  upon  in  the  introductions.  The  introductions  and 
the  readings  together  attempt  to  give  a  well-rounded,  coherent, 
and  factually  exhaustive  picture  of  the  phenomena  in  the  various 
fields.  Since  it  is  planned  as  a  reference  work,  it  is  heavily 
weighted  with  factual  data  and  references.  This  abundance  of 
figures  and  data  may  cause  the  inexperienced  or  casual  reader  to 
fail  to  grasp  the  systematic  plan  and  logical  consistency  of  the 
work,  but  the  careful  and  competent  reader  should  profit  from 
it  without  losing  the  logically  coherent  system  of  rural  sociology 
incorporated  in  the  Source  Boof(. 

The  first  volume  consists  of  two  main  divisions.  Part  One  gives 
a  concise  summary  of  the  history  of  rural  sociological  theory  and 
outlines  the  main  sociological  characteristics  of  the  rural  world 
and  the  farmer-peasant  class.  The  second  part  gives  the  details  of 
the  external  and  more  formal  characteristics  of  the  sociological 
organization  of  rural  life.  The  next  two  volumes  will  deal  in 
detail  with  the  inner,  the  institutional,  the  psychological,  and  the 
mental  phases  of  rural  organization  and  the  demographic  charac- 
teristics of  rural  and  urban  populations. 

It  was  hoped  that  the  major  portion  of  the  volumes  could  be 
made  up  of  substantial  excerpts  from  various  foreign  works, 
woven  together  with  a  minimum  of  exposition.  It  was  found, 
however,  that  for  the  first  volume  especially  many  highly  im- 
portant contributions  resisted  the  method  of  excerpting  continu- 
ous self-explanatory  passages  and  forced  us  to  present  much 
material  in  the  form  of  summaries  and  digests.  This  recourse  per- 
mits the  inclusion  of  a  far  greater  range  of  reference  material 
without  severe  loss  of  original  statement. 


x  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

No  apology  is  offered  for  enriching  the  Source  Boof^  with  the 
more  or  less  elaborate  introductions,  transitions,  analyses,  and  dis- 
cussions that  make  the  work  in  its  entirety  a  systematic  treatise  on 
rural  sociological  thought  and  theory.  The  dignity  of  the  subject, 
the  seriousness  of  the  purpose  of  the  editors,  and  the  needs  of  the 
hour  seem  to  warrant  such  a  procedure.  It  is  regretted  that  the 
volumes  could  not  have  been  further  rounded  out  by  the  incorpo- 
ration of  many  worthy  American  studies,  but  this  was  quite  out 
of  the  question.  All  the  important  ones,  however,  are  mentioned 
in  the  introductions,  and  their  data  and  conclusions  are  analyzed. 
Most  of  the  important  American  studies,  moreover,  are  already 
available  to  American  students.  Finally,  most  of  the  bibliogra- 
phies are  given  in  the  footnotes  to  the  introductions  and  readings 
and  in  special  editorial  references  made  at  the  proper  places. 
Additional  bibliographies  not  mentioned  in  these  notes  are  ap- 
pended to  the  introductions  in  each  chapter. 

These  volumes  have  been  made  possible  by  the  cooperation  of 
several  interested  organizations:  the  Division  of  Farm  Population 
and  Rural  Life,  Bureau  of  Agricultural  Economics,  United  States 
Department  of  Agriculture;  the  University  of  Minnesota  Agri- 
cultural Experiment  Station  and  the  College  of  Agriculture;  the 
Graduate  School  and  the  College  of  Science,  Literature,  and  the 
Arts  of  the  University  of  Minnesota;  and  the  University  of  Min- 
nesota Press.  Under  the  terms  of  the  agreement,  the  editors  are  to 
receive  no  royalties  from  the  sale  of  the  volumes,  so  that  the  work 
may  be  presented  to  the  public  at  as  reasonable  a  price  as  possible. 

It  should  be  stated  also  that  most  of  the  introductions,  selec- 
tions, and  systematization  of  the  material  and,  in  general,  the 
greater  part  of  the  work  of  the  Source  Boof(  were  done  by  Pro- 
fessor Pitirim  Sorokin.  Without  the  encyclopedic  knowledge  of 
the  literature  of  rural  thought  and  of  sociological  theory  that  he 
brought  to  this  task  and  his  indefatigable  attention  to  the  details 
of  arrangement  and  interpretation,  the  Source  Boof^  would  not 
have  been  thought  possible  at  this  time. 

Grateful  acknowledgment  is  due  the  many  American  and 
foreign  authors  and  publishing  houses  without  whose  cooperation 
the  production  of  these  volumes  would  have  been  exceedingly 
difficult.  Among  these  should  be  mentioned  the  authors  and  pub- 
lishers of  the  readings  given,  all  of  whom  gave  their  kind  per- 


PREFACE  xi 

mission  to  use  excerpts  in  the  Source  Boo%.  Their  names  are 
given  in  the  proper  places  in  the  volumes.  Among  many  other 
persons  who  helped  in  the  work  by  furnishing  data,  material, 
advice,  suggestions,  bibliographies,  and  criticisms,  and  in  many 
other  ways,  especial  mention  should  be  made  of  Guy  Stanton 
Ford,  Dean  of  the  Graduate  School  of  the  University  of  Minne- 
sota; Walter  C.  Coffey,  Dean  and  Director  of  the  Agricultural 
Experiment  Station  and  the  College  of  Agriculture  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota;  Mrs.  Margaret  S.  Harding,  Editor  of  the 
University  of  Minnesota  Press;  Dr.  D wight  Sanderson  of  Cornell 
University;  Dr.  Migoishi  Nunokawa  of  Tokio  University;  Dr. 
Vaclav  Smetanka  of  the  Czechoslovakian  Academy  of  Agri- 
culture; Dr.  Nikolai  Kondratieff  of  the  Moscow  Agricultural 
Research  Institute;  Dr.  Richard  Thurnwald  of  the  University  of 
Berlin;  Dr.  Leopold  von  Wiese  of  the  Koln  Research  Institute  of 
Sociology;  Dr.  Gaston  Richard  and  Dr.  G.  L.  Duprat  of  the  Inter- 
national Institute  of  Sociology;  and  Dr.  Benoy  K.  Sarkar  of  Cal- 
cutta University  and  the  India  Institute  for  Economic  Research. 
A  word  of  thanks  is  due  the  staff  of  the  library  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota.  Finally,  many  translators,  for  the  most  part 
graduate  students  in  sociology  at  the  University  of  Minnesota, 
should  be  given  credit  for  their  work. 

P.  A.  S. 

C.  C.  Z. 

C.  J.  G. 


CONTENTS 

Part  1:  Historical  Introduction 

CHAPTER  I,  HISTORY  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY:  AN- 
CIENT SOURCES      3 

A.  INTRODUCTION 3 

B.  ANCIENT  ORIENTAL  SOURCES     6 

I.  Ancient  Babylonian  Sources                 7 

II.  Ancient  Egyptian  Sources  .           8 

III.  Fragmentary  Allusions  in  the  Bible 11 

The  Old  Hebrew  Testament 11 

The  New  Testament          12 

IV.  Ancient  Persian  Texts 13 

V.  Texts  of  Ancient  India 14 

VI,  Ancient  Chinese  and  Japanese  Records  17 

C.  ANCIENT  GREEK  SOURCES 24 

I.  Hesiod 26 

II.  Plato 29 

III.  Aristotle 33 

IV.  Xenophon     36 

D.  ANCIENT  ROMAN  SOURCES 39 

I.  Cato    40 

II.  Varro    40 

III.  Virgil   43 

IV.  Columella    45 

V.  Polybius  51 

CHAPTER    II.    HISTORY    OF    RURAL    SOCIOLOGY: 

FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES 53 

A.  ARABIAN  RURAL-URBAN  SOCIOLOGY  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  . , ,  53 

I.  Ibn-Khaldun    54 

B.  THE  EUROPEAN  PEASANT  DURING  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 68 

[  xiii  ] 


CONTENTS 

Part  I:  Historical  Introduction 

CHAPTER  I.  HISTORY  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY:  AN- 
CIENT SOURCES     3 

A.  INTRODUCTION    3 

B.  ANCIENT  ORIENTAL  SOURCES 6 

I.  Ancient  Babylonian  Sources     7 

II.  Ancient  Egyptian  Sources 8 

III.  Fragmentary  Allusions  in  the  Bible 11 

The  Old  Hebrew  Testament 11 

The  New  Testament      .          12 

IV,  Ancient  Persian  Texts 13 

V.  Texts  of  Ancient  India 14 

VI.  Ancient  Chinese  and  Japanese  Records 17 

C.  ANCIENT  GREEK  SOURCES 24 

I.  Hesiod   26 

II.  Plato 29 

III.  Aristotle  33 

IV.  Xenophon     , 36 

D.  ANCIENT  ROMAN  SOURCES 39 

I.  Cato   40 

II  Varro   40 

III  Virgil  , 43 

IV.  Columella    45 

V.  Polybius  51 

CHAPTER    II    HISTORY    OF    RURAL    SOCIOLOGY: 

FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES 53 

A.  ARABIAN  RURAL-URBAN  SOCIOLOGY  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  ...  53 

I.  Ibn-Khaldun 54 

B.  THE  EUROPEAN  PEASANT  DURING  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 68 

[xiii] 


xiv  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

C.  EUROPEAN  THINKERS  BEFORE  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY     .  72 

I.  John  of  Salisbury            ...               -  72 

II.  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  ....  73 

III.  Sir  Thomas  More .74 

IV.  Niccolo  Machiavelli             .         .           .              ....  75 

V,  Francis   Bacon          .                •    •  76 

VI.  Giovanni  Botero 76 

VII.  Hugo  Grotius .  .  79 

VIII.  Thomas  Hobbes    ...                 ,  .                   79 

IX.  J.  B.  Vico 79 

D.  THE  PHYSIOCRATS 82 

E.  THE  POLITICAL  ARITHMETICIANS  AND  THE  CAMERALISTS  OF 
THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 96 

L  John  Graunt 97 

II.  William  Petty ...  99 

III.  Gregory  King          101 

IV.  Edmund  Halley 102 

V.  Charles  Davenant 103 

VI.  Richard  Price 103 

VII.  Arthur  Young . .       106 

VIII.  Antoine  Deparcieux 107 

IX.  Johann  Peter  Siissmilch      .       . .             109 

F.  PROMINENT  ENGLISH  THINKERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND 
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 112 

L  James  Harrington 112 

II.  David  Hume 115 

III.  Sir  James  Steuart 116 

IV.  Political   Essays  concerning  the   Present   State  of  the 
British  Empire     117 

V.  Adam  Smith 118 

VI.  John  Millar 126 

VII.  Thomas  R.  Malthus 129 

G.  PROMINENT  FRENCH  THINKERS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CEN- 
TURY    132 

I.  Voltaire    132 

II.  Montesquieu   133 

III.  Rousseau    134 


CONTENTS  xv 

H.  PROMINENT  AMERICAN  THINKERS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CEN- 
TURY ..  .138 

I.  Benjamin  Franklin              .                                    .  139 

II.  Thomas  Jefferson  .             ....  140 

III.  Alexander  Hamilton     .  141 

I.  CONCLUSION:  A  CENSUS  OF  OPINIONS  142 

CHAPTER  III.  ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFEREN- 
TIATION            147 

CHAPTER    IV.    FUNDAMENTAL    DIFFERENCES    BE- 
TWEEN THE  RURAL  AND  URBAN  WORLDS    .      .  186 

A.  "SIMPLE"  AND  "COMPOUND"  DEFINITIONS                       ,  186 

B.  DIFFERENTIAL  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  "COMPOUND"  DEFINI- 
TION OF  THE  RURAL  AND  URBAN  WORLDS                   .     ...  187 

I.  Occupational  Differences 187 

II.  Environmental  Differences                188 

III.  Differences  in  Sizes  of  Communities                    .      ...  190 

IV.  Differences  in  Density  o£  Population  .                ....  198 
V.  Differences  in  the  Homogeneity  and  the  Heterogeneity 

of  Populations    ,                        203 

VI.  Differences  in  Social  Differentiation,  Stratification,  and 

Complexity 212 

VII.  Differences  in  Social  Mobility 217 

VIII.  Differences  in  the  Direction  of  Migration 230 

IX.  Differences  in  the  System  of  Social  Interaction 233 

C.  SUMMARY 239 


Part  H:  Rural  Social  Organization  in  Its  Ecological  and 
Morphological  Aspects 

CHAPTER  V,  ECOLOGY  OF  THE  RURAL  HABITAT. . .    263 

CHAPTER  VI,  DIFFERENTIATION  OF  THE  RURAL 
POPULATION  INTO  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITIES 
AND  FUNCTIONAL  ASSOCIATIONS  305 


xvi  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

CHAPTER   VII.    SOCIAL    STRATIFICATION    OF    THE 
AGRICULTURAL  POPULATION  362 

I.  Fundamental  Strata  of  the  Agricultural  Population  363 

II.  Present  Tendencies  in  Land  Concentration  and  Rural  Stratifi- 
cation 370 

III.  Comparative  Advantages  and  Disadvantages  of  Small-Family 

and  Large-Scale  Capitalistic  Types  of  Farming  387 

CHAPTER  VIII.  MOBILITY  OF  THE  RURAL  POPULA- 
TION 501 
I,  Forms  of  Social  Mobility  of  Cultivators;  Mobile  and  Immo- 
bile Types  of  Rural  Aggregates  501 
II.  Effects  of  Mobility  on  Rural  Population  and  Rural  Organi- 
zation 503 

CHAPTER    IX.   FUNDAMENTAL    TYPES    OF    RURAL 
AGGREGATES.  EVOLUTION  OF   THE  FORMS  OF 
LANDOWNERSHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION         .      558 
I.  Individual-Private  and  Collective-Public  Landowner  ship  and 
Land  Possession  558 

II.  Types  of  Rural  Aggregates  from  the  Standpoints  of  Social 
Differentiation,  Stratification,  Mobility,  and  Landownership    559 

III.  Evolution  of  the  Forms  of  Landownership  and  Land  Pos- 
session 568 


READINGS 

PAGE 

1.  HESIOD:  THE  GOOD  HUSBANDMAN                       .  27 

2.  PLATO'S  CHARACTERIZATION  OF  THE  RURAL-URBAN  PEOPLES  30 

3.  ARISTOTLE:  THE  ART  OF  AGRICULTURE                               ,       .  34 

4.  ARISTOTLE:  DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  HUSBANDMEN  34 

5.  XENOPHON:  COMPARISON  OF  HUSBANDMEN  WITH  ARTISANS           .  36 

6.  XENOPHON:  EULOGY  OF  AGRICULTURE  37 

7.  CATO:  OF  THE  DIGNITY  OF  THE  FARMER                     .  40 

8.  VARRO:  ON  FARMING  ...  ,41 

9.  VIRGIL:  PICTURE  OF  RUSTIC  LIFE        .          , .  44 

10.  COLUMELLA:  ANALYSIS  OF  RURAL  LIFE                                   . .  46 

11.  POLYBIUS:  URBANIZATION  AND  DEPOPULATION               ,    .          .  51 

12.  IBN-KHALDUN:  COMPARISON  OF  RURAL  AND  URBAN  PEOPLE      .  55 

13.  IBN-KHALDUN:  URBANIZATION  AND  DECAY ,  65 

14.  MEISSNER:  THE  PEASANT  IN  MEDIEVAL  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  ,    ,  69 

15.  QUESNAY:  CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  SOCIAL  CLASSES  . .  83 

16.  QUESNAY:  REAL  AND  FICTITIOUS  PRODUCTION  OF  WEALTH.       ,     .  84 

17.  QUESNAY:  FARMERS  AND  THE  CITY        ....             87 

18.  DE  LA  RIVIERE:  COSMOPOLITANISM  OF  THE  COMMERCIAL  AND  AGRI- 
CULTURAL CLASSES , , , ,  90 

19.  MIRABEAU:  ESTIMATE  OF  AGRICULTURE 93 

20.  GRAUNT:  RURAL-URBAN  VITAL  PROCESSES 97 

21.  PRICE:  RURAL-URBAN  DEMOGRAPHY  AND  MIGRATION 103 

22.  DEPARCIEUX:  RURAL-URBAN  MORTALITY 108 

23.  HARRINGTON:  RURAL-URBAN  RELATIONSHIPS     113 

24.  ADAM  SMITH:  AGRICULTURE  AMONG  THE  OTHER.  OCCUPATIONS.  . ,  120 

25.  ADAM  SMITH:  PSYCHO-SOCIAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  FARMER 
CLASS    123 

[  xvii  ] 


xviii  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

PAGE 

26.  MILLAR:  AGRICULTURE  AND  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  WOMEN'S  STATUS  127 

27.  ROUSSEAU:  CITIES,  THE  SOURCE  OF  PERDITION 135 

28.  MAUNIER:  DEFINITION  OF  A  CITY          153 

29.  MAUNIER:  FORMATION  OF  THE  CITY  BY  TEMPORARY  CONCENTRA- 
TION OF  A  COMPLEX  SOCIETY 159 

30.  PETRIE:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  CITIES  AND  THE  CITY-STATES  IN  ANCIENT 
EGYPT  AND  ITS  FACTORS  .     .           ....  162 

31.  FUSTEL  DE  COULANGES:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  ClTY  IN  ANCIENT  GREECE 

AND  ROME     165 

32.  KLUCHEVSK.Y:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  CITIES  AMONG  EASTERN  SLAVS  ...  167 

33.  SOMBART:  DEFINITION  OF  A  CITY  IN  THE  ECONOMIC  SENSE 170 

34.  SOMBART:  GENESIS  OF  THE  CITY  . .         171 

35.  SOMBART:  THE  COMPOSITION  OF  THE  MEDIEVAL  CITIES 174 

36.  SOMBART:  THE  ECONOMIC  POLICY  OF  THE  CITY 181 

37.  PIRENNE:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  MEDIEVAL  CITIES 184 

38.  SIMMEL:  LARGE  CITIES  AND  MENTAL  LIFE 242 

39.  SPENGLER:  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  CITY 248 

40.  DEMANGEON:  GEOGRAPHY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT 266 

41.  MORET  AND  DAVY:  EGYPTIAN  CUMULATIVE  RURAL  COMMUNITIES  335 

42.  LEE,  ASAK.AWA,  Tsu,  KULP:  CHINESE  AND  JAPANESE  RURAL  CUMU- 
LATIVE COMMUNITIES 336 

43.  MAUNIER:  VILLAGE  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITY  OF  THE  KABYLES 
(BERBERS)      340 

44.  MAINE  AND  KRAUS:  HINDU  CUMULATIVE  VILLAGE  COMMUNITY  .  341 

45.  KROPOTKIN:  THE  RURAL  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITIES  IN  EUROPE 

AND  ASIA 343 

46.  KOVALEVSKY:  OLD  SLAVIC  RURAL  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITY  345 

47.  HOLECEK:  OLD  SLAVONIC  VILLAGE 346 

48.  RIEHL:  GERMAN  CUMULATIVE  RURAL  COMMUNITY 348 

49.  LE  PLAY:  THE  AGRICULTURISTS:  GENERAL  TRAITS  OF  THEIR  OR- 
GANIZATION      350 


READINGS  xix 

PAGE 

50.  RUSSEL:   THE  VILLAGE  NEIGHBORHOOD   IN   GERMANY    (RECENT, 
PAST,  AND  PRESENT  SITUATION)   .  353 

51.  PEAKE:  THE  ENGLISH  VILLAGE  OF  TODAY  .  .          358 

52.  SIEGFRIED:  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  REGIME  OF  LANDED  PROPERTY 

ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  POLITICAL  OPINION  .          402 

53.  KAWADA:  THE  TENANTRY  SYSTEM  AND  MOVEMENT  IN  JAPAN  408 

54.  POLJAKOW:  FORMS  OF  TENANCY  IN  CHINA  .    .          413 

55.  SEE:  AGRARIAN  REGIMES  IN  EUROPE  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  AND  NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURIES         419 

56.  SCHIFF:    THE    LEGISLATIVE    AGRARIAN    REFORMS    IN    EUROPEAN 
COUNTRIES  BEFORE  AND  AFTER  THE  WORLD  WAR       .  424 

57.  SOMBART:  PEASANT  ECONOMY 445 

58.  TUGAN-BARANOVSKY:  SMALL  AND  LARGE  ENTERPRISES  IN  t AGRICUL- 
TURE     456 

59.  HAINISCH:  CRITICISM  OF  DR.  LAUR'S  THEORIES  .     466 

60.  LENIN:  CAPITALISM  AND  AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  477 

61.  SCHAFIR:  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  AGRARIAN  PROGRAM  OF  THE 
SOCIALIST  PARTIES  OF  THE  SECOND  INTERNATIONAL 488 

62.  HEBERLE:  MOBILITY  OF  THE  AGRICULTURAL  POPULATION  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES     508 

63.  SPILLMAN:  THE  AGRICULTURAL  LADDER 523 

64.  ASHBY  AND  JONES:  THE  SOCIAL  ORIGIN  OF  WELSH  FARMERS  .    .       528 

65.  ASHBY  AND  DAVIES:  THE  AGRICULTURAL  LADDER  AND  THE  AGE  OF 
FARMERS    , ,  . ,     535 

66.  KAVRAISKI  AND  NUSINOFF:  DYNAMIC  CHANGES  WITHIN  PEASANT 
ENTERPRISES 548 

67.  TSCHUPROW:  CONCEPT  AND  FORMS  OF  THE  LAND  COMMUNITY 
(Feldgemeinscha'ft)     578 

68.  WEBER:  THE  GERMAN,  SCOTCH,  AND  CELTIC  VILLAGE  COMMUNITY 

OF  THE  PAST 581 

69.  BADEN-POWELL:  VILLAGE  LAND  SYSTEMS  IN  INDIA 584 

70.  KULP:  LANDOWNERSHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION  IN  A  CHINESE  VIL- 
LAGE (PHENIX  VILLAGE) 592 


xx  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

PAGE 

71.  PREOBRAJENSKY:    A   CASTLE   MANOR   OF   BOHEMIA  IN   THE   FIF- 
TEENTH AND  SIXTEENTH  CENTURIES       .      .  .  593 

72.  BREASTED:  THE  STATE  MANAGEMENT  OF  AGRICULTURE  IN  ANCIENT 
EGYPT  ..  .  ....  .  599 

73.  ROSTOVTZEFF:    THE    STATE   MANAGEMENT    OF    AGRICULTURE    IN 
PTOLEMAIC  EGYPT          ...  .  ,  599 

74.  BAUDIN:  AGRARIAN  COMMUNITIES  IN  PRE-COLUMBIAN  PERU  602 

75.  WALTZING:  STATE  MANAGEMENT  OF  AGRICULTURE  AND  INDUSTRY 

IN  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE.  607 

76.  MAK.LAKOV:  THE  PEASANT  QUESTION  AND  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLU- 
TION .  609 

77.  PROKOPOVITCH:  THE  SOVIET  GOVERNMENT  AND  THE  PEASANTS  615 

78.  SOROKIN:  SUBSEQUENT  CHANGES  IN  SOVIET  AGRICULTURAL  POLICY 
AND  THE  NEW  AGRARIAN  REVOLUTION  .  .  621 

79.  MANNICHE:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  DANISH  PEASANTRY  ,         634 

80.  ST.  LEWINSKY:  ORIGIN  AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF  FORMS  OF  LAND- 
OWNERSHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION  636 


PARTI 
HISTORICAL  INTRODUCTION 


CHAPTER  I 

HISTORY  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY:  ANCIENT  SOURCES 
A.  INTRODUCTION 

In  the  history  of  social  evolution,  the  agricultural  stage  was  one 
of  the  earliest.  The  elements  of  agriculture,  in  the  form  of  the 
collection  of  the  free  gifts  of  nature— fruits,  edible  plants,  etc.— 
were  present  in  the  earliest  stage,  hunting  and  fishing.  The  pas- 
toral stage  followed  for  some  tribes,  while  other  groups  and  tribes 
passed  directly  from  the  stage  of  hunting  and  collecting  to  that 
of  the  primitive  cultivation  of  land.  Both  of  these  new  ways  of 
subsistence  belong  to  agricultural  activities.  For  this  reason  the 
pastoral  stage,  as  well  as  that  of  primitive  cultivation,  may  be 
regarded  as  an  agricultural  stage.  Since  that  time  agriculture  in 
its  various  forms  has  been  one  of  the  fundamental  ways  of  pro- 
curing the  means  of  subsistence  and  one  of  the  basic  industries 
of  mankind. 

The  antiquity  of  agriculture  and  its  vital  importance  to  the  ex- 
istence and  welfare  of  human  societies  made  man,  a  thinking  ani- 
mal, meditate  upon  it  and  the  many  phenomena  connected  with 
rural  life.  This  thinking  was  directed,  on  the  one  hand,  towards 
the  purely  technical  aspects  of  the  art  of  agriculture;  and  on  the 
other,  towards  its  economic,  moral,  biological,  social,  and  psycho- 
logical aspects.  The  first  problem  does  not  concern  us  here;  tech- 
nical agronomy  is  not  the  subject  of  this  work.  The  aspects  of  the 
second  category  (rural  human  relations)  will  be  dealt  with  in 
these  volumes. 

How  did  the  thinkers  of  the  past  view  agriculture  and  how  did 
they  evaluate  it  in  comparison  with  the  other  industries  pursued 
by  human  beings?  What  were  their  opinions  concerning  the  peo- 
ple who  were  engaged  in  agricultural  activities?  What  position 
among  other  social  groups  did  they  assign  to  the  class  composed 
of  the  tillers  of  the  soil  and  the  breeders  of  cattle  ?  What  were,  in 
their  opinion,  the  effects  of  the  agricultural  industry  upon  the 
health  and  vitality,  mind  and  morality,  mores  and  manners, 

[3J 


4       SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

character,  conduct,  and  relationships  of  the  people  engaged  in  it? 
Correspondingly,  what,  in  their  opinion,  were  the  bodily,  vital, 
moral,  social,  and  psychological  traits  of  the  cultivator  class  that 
were  due  to  their  agricultural  activities  ?  In  what  ways  did  agri- 
culture affect  the  social  organization,  social  processes,  historical 
destinies,  and  economic  and  social  welfare  of  societies?  What 
fundamental  differences  did  they  find  between  the  agricultural 
and  nonagricultural  classes  and  societies  and  between  the  rural 
and  the  urban  social  worlds?  Such  are  the  fundamental  prob- 
lems with  which  rural  sociology  deals.  And  these  are  the  prob- 
lems about  which  we  plan  to  consult  the  opinions  of  the  promi- 
nent thinkers  of  the  past. 

Such  a  study  is  interesting  in  itself.  In  addition,  it  may  reveal 
a  conspicuous  uniformity  among  the  views  and  theories.  Such  a 
uniformity  may  be  symptomatic:  if  the  great  thinkers  of  various 
times  and  of  various  countries  were  unanimous  in  their  opinion 
on  many  important  problems,  this  unanimity  would  suggest  that 
there  might  be  some  scientific  truth  in  their  beliefs.  These  opin- 
ions may  be  of  assistance  to  contemporary  investigators  busy  with 
the  same  problems. 

Even  the  most  primitive  agricultural  tribes  thought  a  great 
deal  about  some  of  these  problems.  The  existence  of  various  magi- 
cal and  religious  rites,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  various  beliefs 
connected  with  agriculture,  on  the  other,  is  evidence  of  this.  These 
beliefs  and  opinions,  however,  are  omitted  from  this  chapter, 
partly  because  of  their  undeveloped  and  bizarre  character,  partly 
because  they  are  poorly  recorded,  partly  because  they  are  men- 
tioned in  other  chapters,  and  finally,  because  they  do  not  touch 
many  of  the  problems  discussed  directly  in  this  chapter.  Some  of 
these  problems — for  instance,  the  differences  between  the  agri- 
cultural and  nonagricultural  peoples,  the  rural  and  urban  cul- 
tures, the  social  effects  of  agriculture  as  distinct  from  those  of 
other  industries — could  appear  only  after  the  differentiation  be- 
tween the  country  and  the  city  took  place.  As  many  primitive 
agricultural  and  pastoral  peoples  lived  in  a  pre-urban  stage,  it  is 
natural  that  the  above  problems  did  not  exist  for  them.  Therefore 
they  could  not  think  over  them  nor  construct  theories  about 
them.  This  is  the  reason  why  our  survey  begins  with  the  theories 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  5 

and  opinions  created  in  the  societies  that  have  known  at  least  the 
beginnings  of  city  growth  and  rural-urban  differentiation. 

We  shall  begin  with  the  ancient  Oriental  societies;  after  that  we 
shall  pass  to  ancient  Greece  and  Rome;  and  from  these  countries 
to  medieval  and  modern  Europe.  In  passing,  some  theories  devel- 
oped in  Arabia  will  receive  attention.  Our  survey  will  close  with 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Later  theories  will  be  analyzed 
in  other  sections  of  the  work. 

Before  giving  the  most  important  parts  of  the  theories  dis- 
cussed, it  is  necessary  to  add  a  few  remarks.  First,  we  do  not  give 
all  but  only  the  most  important  theories.  The  importance  of  a 
theory  is  determined  by  its  character  and  development,  by  its  rec- 
ognized authority  as  manifested  either  by  its  incorporation  intc 
the  religious  or  juridical  codes  of  a  society,  or  by  its  coming  from 
an  author  whose  opinions  were  regarded  as  authoritative  by  the 
society  of  which  he  was  a  member.  Second,  we  give  the  theories 
as  they  are;  that  is,  in  this  part  of  the  work  we  do  not  question 
either  their  validity  or  adequacy,  nor  the  motives,  prejudices,  and 
reasons  that  lay  behind  them.  Third,  it  is  unreasonable,  therefore, 
to  take  the  theories  presented  here  as  an  accurate  reflection  of 
reality— they  may  or  may  not  be.  For  instance,  many  writers,  espe- 
cially among  Greek  and  Roman  thinkers,  who  lived  in  the  period 
of  high  urbanization  and  decay  of  their  societies,  depicted  the 
former  agricultural  stage  in  the  most  idyllic  and  attractive  ways. 
Such  pictures  may  be  due,  at  least  in  some  degree,  to  an  idealiza- 
tion of  the  past  in  contrast  to  the  present— an  idealization  quite 
natural  under  the  circumstances.  Fourth,  it  is  necessary  to  keep  in 
mind  that  almost  all  theories  given  here  have  in  mind  the  free 
husbandman.  We  know  that  in  almost  all  societies  of  the  past  the 
work  of  cultivation  was  done  to  some  degree  with  the  help  of 
slaves  or  serfs.  These  are  not  always  mentioned  or  conceived  of  as 
separate  from  the  free  cultivators  or  from  the  masters  of  slaves 
who  were  engaged  in  agriculture.  As  a  rule,  the  positive  character- 
istics given  to  the  cultivators  by  these  theories  do  not  have  in  view 
these  slaves  and  serfs;  they  usually  concern  either  free  farmers,  or 
peasants  who  are  personally  working  their  own  or  their  family 
lands,  or  free  landowners  who,  not  being  absentee  owners,  man- 
age their  agricultural  enterprises  with  the  help  of  slaves,  serfs,  or 
free  laborers.  The  qualities  given  to  this  upper  or  free  class  of 


6       SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

agriculturists  are  not  to  be  ascribed  entirely  to  the  unf  ree  tillers  of 
the  soil. 

Finally,  in  these  first  chapters  we  give  the  theories,  as  such, 
without  the  social  background  in  which  they  were  conceived  and 
which  they,  accurately  or  inaccurately,  attempted  to  reflect.  De- 
scription and  analysis  of  the  backgrounds  of  this  section  would 
make  an  exceedingly  long  work,  surpassing  the  total  limits  of 
our  entire  study.  Readers  who  are  interested  in  the  correlation  of 
a  given  theory  with  the  conditions  in  which  it  originated  and 
with  the  peculiarities  of  the  personality  of  its  author  must  make 
these  comparisons  for  themselves.  Besides,  it  is  to  be  noted,  as  will 
be  shown  at  the  end  of  chapter  ii,  that,  in  spite  of  the  enormous 
differences  of  the  social  conditions  calling  forth  the  theories,  the 
ideologies  show  a  remarkable  similarity.  This  probably  means 
that  they  have  some  elements  of  truth  or  they  would  not  have 
shown  such  a  similarity.  For  that  reason  the  knowledge  of  them 
is  useful,  regardless  of  the  backgrounds.  After  these  remarks  we 
can  proceed  to  give  the  theories  and  opinions  themselves. 

B.  ANCIENT  ORIENTAL  SOURCES 

From  these  ancient  oriental  sources  we  give  quotations  from 
the  ancient  sacred  and  semisacred  books  of  Assyro-Babylonia, 
Egypt,  Palestine,  Persia,  India,  and  China  (including  Japan). 

The  religious  and  juridical  character  of  these  sacred  books  is 
evidence  that  the  opinions  given  in  them  were  considered  authori- 
tative by  the  respective  societies  in  the  past.  The  opinions  incor- 
porated in  these  books  are  very  old.  As  a  rule,  they  reflect  ideas 
as  they  existed  centuries  before  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
era.  If  these  countries  are  still  agricultural  in  the  essentials  of  their 
culture  and  occupation,  they  were  much  more  agricultural  in  the 
past  during  the  period  when  the  statements  given  in  the  sacred 
books  were  formulated  or  created.  As  to  the  character  of  the 
statements,  they  are  fragmentary.  They  are  scattered  throughout 
many  volumes  of  the  sacred  books  and  merely  touch  some  of  the 
problems  mentioned  above  haphazardly  and  very  laconically. 
Nevertheless,  they  throw  some  light  on  a  few,  at  least,  of  these 
problems.  These  excerpts  give  the  ancient  evaluation  of  agricul- 
ture as  being  a  means  of  group  subsistence  as  compared  with 
other  occupations;  they  reflect  the  society's  view  as  to  the  relative 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  7 

rank  of  the  cultivators  in  the  social  order;  they  depict  ancient 
opinions  concerning  agriculture  as  an  economic  basis  for  the 
moral  and  social  well-being  of  a  society,  as  well  as  several  similar 
points.  In  addition,  they  depict  in  detail  various  laws  concerning 
agriculture,  much  of  the  technique  of  ancient  agriculture,  the 
forms  of  ownership  and  possession  of  land,  and,  finally,  the  nu- 
merous rites  and  ceremonies  connected  with  agriculture.  These 
last  points,  however,  will  be  considered  in  other  sections  of  the 
work.  After  these  preliminary  remarks  some  selected  extracts 
follow. 

I.  ANCIENT  BABYLONIAN  SOURCES 

The  existing  sources  concerning  ancient  Babylon,  and  among 
them  the  Code  of  Hammurabi  (2250  B.C.),  contain  a  great  deal 
of  material  concerning  the  juridical  regulation  of  the  relations 
connected  with  possession  of  land,  tenancy,  the  conditions  of 
agricultural  work,  the  removal  of  landmarks,  the  destruction  of 
crops,  the  interference  with  water  channels,  etc.,1  but  they  give 
very  few  sociological  generalizations  in  the  field  under  considera- 
tion. The  general  spirit  of  the  Code  is  the  glorification  of  the 
city.  This  can  be  understood  if  we  bear  in  mind  that  the  cities  of 
ancient  Babylonia  were  city-states — vast  walled  territories. 
In  the  suburban  parts  of  these,  agriculture  was  carried  on,  and 
many  city  dwellers  engaged  in  it.  (Hammurabi  styles  himself  a 
demigod  who  "made  the  fame  of  Babylon  great,  who  filled  the 
city  of  Ur  with  plenty;  who  gave  life  to  the  city  of  Uruk;  who 
made  the  city  of  Borsippa  beautiful;  the  lordly  city  king,"  etc.) 
(Prologue.) 

In  other  sources,  particularly  in  the  legend  of  the  birth  of 
Sargon  of  Agade  and  in  other  legends  connected  with  this  great 
and  popular  king  (who  reigned  about  2637-2582  B.C.),  his  peasant 
origin  is  stressed  with  a  feeling  of  pride.2  Again,  in  the  famous 
epic,  Gilgamesh,  the  violence  of  this  demigod  king  and  the  heavy 
corvee  imposed  by  him  upon  the  people  was  stopped  only  by  the 
hero,  Enkidu,  who  was  a  savage  living  amidst  the  animals  (cows 
and  other  beasts)  and  who  was  pictured  as  a  great  hunter,  shep- 

irThe  Code  of  Hammurabi,  trans,  by  R.  F.  Harper,  Chicago,  1904,  Art.  36  fi. 

2  See  Rawlinson's  translation  in  the  Athenaeum,  September  7,  1867;  G.  Smith's  text 
in  the  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology,  I,  46  £.;  E.  A.  Wallis  Budge, 
"Babylonian  Life  and  History,  2d  ed,,  pp.  23-25. 


8       SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

herd,  and  ruler  of  the  beasts.3  He,  only,  could  become  the  equal  of 
the  demigod,  Gilgamesh.  Further,  in  the  Babylonian  story  of  the 
flood  it  is  mentioned  that  "the  city  of  Shuruppak  was  destroyed 
because  of  the  wickedness  of  its  people,  which  brought  down 
upon  them  the  wrath  of  Bel,  the  god  of  middle  heaven."  4 

Finally,  as  to  the  position  of  the  cultivators  among  the  other 
social  classes  of  Babylonian  society,  we  find  the  landowners 
among  the  upper  class  (the  Amelum)  or  the  nobility,  and  we 
find  the  agricultural  workers  in  the  free  middle  class  (the  Mush- 
%inu)  and  in  the  class  of  slaves  (the  Wardum)? 

II.  ANCIENT  EGYPTIAN  SOURCES 

The  landholding  population  of  ancient  Egypt  was  composed 
of  three  large  classes:  the  priests,  the  soldiers,  and  the  husband- 
men. Although  serfs  and  slaves  were  used  in  agriculture  as  well 
as  in  other  occupations,  the  class  of  husbandmen  proper  was  free. 
"The  third  class,  definitely  called  husbandmen,  must  have  had  a 
different  tenure  from  that  of  the  serfs  under  the  other  classes. 
They  must  have  been  free  farmers,  yeomen,  only  subject  to  tax- 
ation."6 

Egyptian  literature,  in  so  far  as  it  is  known,  does  not  contain  a 
general  philosophy  of  rural  life  or  an  enumeration  of  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  husbandmen  as  contrasted  with  those  of  the  other 
social  classes.  Nevertheless,  here  and  there  in  various  literary 
works  are  scattered  casual  remarks  concerning  these  phenomena. 
In  the  first  place,  in  the  literary  works  written  by  the  class  of 
scribes,  it  is  only  natural  that  the  position  of  this  official  class 
should  be  regarded  as  the  best  of  all  the  occupations,  including 
agriculture.  In  several  exhortations  to  the  school  children,  the 
admonitions  to  be  diligent  and  to  be  good  pupils  are  repeated, 
again  and  again.  Otherwise  they  could  not  become  scribes  and 
magistrates  but  must  become  something  else — soldiers,  barbers, 
sculptors,  artisans,  masons,  priests,  bricklayers,  or  husbandmen — 
positions  much  lower  than  that  of  a  scribe.  And  the  authors  point 
out  the  hardships  and  other  negative  characteristics  of  all  of  these 
occupations.  In  the  part  concerning  husbandmen  the  exhortations 
are  as  follows: 

*See  A.  Ungnad  and  H.  Gressman,  Das  Gilgamesch-epos,  Tafel  I,  Gottingen,  1911. 
4  Budge,  of.  cit.,  p.  8. 

BSee  Budge,  of,  cit.,  pp.  160  ff.;  Harper,  The  Code  of  Hammurabi,  Introduction. 
*W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie,  Social  Life  in  Ancient  Egyft,  Boston,  1923,  p.  14. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  9 

I  am  told,  thou  [a  pupil]  dost  forsake  writing,  thou  givest  thyself  up 
to  pleasures;  thou  settest  thy  mind  on  work  in  the  field,  and  turnest 
thy  back  on  God's  words  [hieroglyphic  writings  and  the  ancient 
texts].  Dost  thou  not  bethink  thee  how  it  fareth  with  the  husband- 
man, when  the  harvest  is  registered  [i.e.,  the  taxes  deducted  from  it]  ? 
The  worm  hath  taken  half  of  the  corn,  the  hippopotamus  hath  de- 
voured the  rest.  The  mice  abound  in  the  field,  and  the  locust  hath 
descended.  The  cattle  devour,  and  the  sparrows  steal.  Woe  to  the  hus- 
bandman! The  remainder  that  lieth  upon  the  threshing  floor,  the 
thieves  make  an  end  of  that.  .  .  .  The  pair  of  horses  dieth  at  the 
threshing  and  ploughing.  And  now  the  scribe  landeth  on  the  embank- 
ment and  will  register  the  harvest.  The  porters  [the  minor  officials] 
carry  sticks,  and  the  negroes  [as  police],  palm-ribs.  They  say:  "Give 
corn."  "There  is  none  there."  He  is  stretched  out  and  beaten;  he  is 
bound  and  thrown  into  the  canal.  .  .  .  His  wife  is  bound  in  his  pres- 
ence, his  children  are  put  in  fetters.  .  .  .  His  neighbors  leave  them, 
they  take  to  flight,  and  look  after  their  corn.  .  .  .  But  the  scribe,  he 
directeth  the  work  of  all  people.  For  him  there  are  no  taxes,  for  he 
payeth  tribute  in  writing,  and  there  are  no  dues  for  him.  Prithee, 
know  that." 7 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  disadvantages  of  almost  all  other  occu- 
pations, as  compared  with  that  of  a  scribe,  are  depicted  as  being 
less  than  those  of  a  husbandman.8 

In  other  works  we  meet  the  following  characteristics  of  the 
husbandmen.  In  "The  Tale  of  the  Two  Brothers,"  both  of  whom 
are  husbandmen,  the  brothers  (especially  the  younger,  Bata)  are 
depicted  as  being  very  industrious,  exceedingly  strong  and  hand- 
some, highly  moral  and  honest,  greatly  attached  to  one  another, 
and  very^  stoical.  It  is  further  related  how  the  younger  brother  is 
harmed  by  the  city  officials  and  the  sovereign  (who  takes  every- 
thing from  him,  including  the  wife  given  to  him  by  the  gods) ; 
how  through  his  wife,  he  is,  in  various  forms,  killed  several  times, 
each  time  reviving  in  the  form  of  a  bull,  tree,  etc.,  and  is  trans- 
formed eventually  into  a  ruler  and  punishes  the  wrongdoers.9 

In  brief,  the  tale  depicts  the  semimythical  Bata  in  the  most  at- 
tractive way.  In  another  story,  "The  Complaints  of  the  Peasant," 
the  robbing  of  the  peasant  by  the  smaller  officials  (in  other  ver- 
sions the  workingmen)  and  the  tenacious  attempts  of  the  former 

7  A.  Erman,  The  Literature  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  trans,  by  A.  M.  Blackman,  Lon- 
don, 1927,  pp.  67-72, 193. 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  67-72, 193-198. 
'Ibid.,  pp.  150-161. 


10      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  obtain  justice  are  again  stressed.  Despite  his  being  beaten 
and  otherwise  tortured  he  makes  his  petition  to  the  highest 
authority  at  least  nine  times;  his  language  is  eloquent  and  far 
from  servile;  he  showers  upon  the  official  who  does  not  deal  justly 
various  invectives  such  as:  "Rob  not  an  humble  man  of  his  pos- 
sessions. .  .  .  Thou  wast  appointed  to  hear  pleas,  to  judge  be- 
tween the  suitors,  to  repress  the  robber.  But  lo,  it  is  the  upholder 
of  the  thief  that  thou  wouldst  be.  Men  put  their  trust  in  thee, 
and  thou  art  become  a  transgressor  or,  ...  a  cheat  for  the  whole 
land.  .  .  .  Thou  art  rapacious.  .  .  ."  In  his  pleas  the  peasant  sets 
forth  many  highly  moral  ideas;  he  reminds  the  officials  of  their 
social  duties.  Finally  he  triumphs  over  the  oppressors,  is  amply 
remunerated  by  the  pharaoh,  and  receives  the  possessions  of  his 
aggressor.10 

In  other  literary  monuments  we  find  allusions  to  the  tillers' 
stubbornness  (they  plow  the  field  amidst  the  civil  war  and  an- 
archy),11 to  their  laboriousness,  to  their  hardships,  and  to  their 
ruin  in  the  time  of  revolution.12  It  is  to  be  noted,  also,  that  in  a 
series  of  the  works  that  describe  the  horrors  of  revolution  and 
catastrophes  and  the  depravity  of  men,  the  husbandmen  are  not 
mentioned  as  being  among  those  who  perform  unjust  actions, 
while  the  city  people  are  so  mentioned.  Again,  in  some  compari- 
sons we  have  an  allusion  to  the  depravity  of  the  city,  "Lo,  my 
name  is  abhorred  more  than  that  of  a  city,  (than)  that  of  a  rebel 
whose  back  is  seen." 13 

At  the  same  time,  in  many  places,  the  work  of  the  tiller  of  soil 
is  depicted  as  being  very  hard;  so  much  so,  that  the  nobility  over- 
thrown by  a  revolution  were  made  (as  their  punishment)  "field 
laborers"  and  were  "yoked  together."  14  Finally,  in  so  far  as  the 
hierarchy  of  gods  may  reflect  the  importance  of  one  occupation 
among  others,  Osiris,  a  god  of  vegetation  and  son  of  the  earth 
god,  Keb,  was  the  most  popular  of  all  Egyptian  gods  and  was 
styled  "the  king  of  gods."  15  And  the  Nile  upon  which  the  agri- 
culture, and  through  it  the  economic  welfare  of  Egypt,  depended 
was  given  the  most  enthusiastic  praise.  It  was  depicted  as  the 
nourisher  of  the  country  and  the  principal  source  of  national 
existence.16 

10  Ibid.,  pp.  116-131.  M  Ibid.,  p.  96. 

11  Ibid,,  p.  94,  IB  Ibid.,  pp.  140  ff. 

12  Ibid,  pp.  94-96,  103.  le  Ibid.,  pp.  146  ff. 
n  Ibid.,  p.  89. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  11 

III.  FRAGMENTARY  ALLUSIONS  IN  THE  BIBLE 

THE  OLD  HEBREW  TESTAMENT 

1.  All  in  all,  the  attitude  expressed  in  the  Old  Hebrew  Testa- 
ment seems  to  be  more  sympathetic  to  the  pastoral  life  than  to 
agriculture,  and  especially  to  urban  life.  "And  the  Lord  God  took 
the  man  [Adam],  and  put  him  into  the  garden  of  Eden  to  dress 
it  and  to  keep  it."  After  the  Fall  "the  Lord  God  sent  him  forth 
from  the  garden  of  Eden,  to  till  the  ground  from  whence  he  was 
taken."  "Cursed  is  the  ground  for  thy  sake;  in  sorrow  shalt  thou 
eat  of  it  all  the  days  of  thy  life"  (Gen.  2: 15;  3: 23;  3: 17).  "And 
Abel  was  a  keeper  of  sheep,  but  Cain  was  a  tiller  of  the  ground" 
(Gen.  4:2-3).  After  Abel  was  slaughtered,  Cain  "builded  a  city 
and  called  the  name  of  the  city  after  the  name  of  his  son  Enoch" 
(Gen.  4: 17).  In  a  similar  way  a  negative  attitude  toward  the  city 
was  manifested  in  the  story  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah:  "Because 
the  cry  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  is  great  and  because  their  sin  is 
very  grievous,"  they  were  destroyed  (Gen.  18: 20-23).  Jehovah  did 
not  approve  the  attempt  of  the  descendants  of  Noah  to  "build  a 
city,  and  a  tower,  whose  top  may  reach  unto  heaven"  and  "scat- 
tered them  abroad  and  they  left  off  building  the  city  [of  Babel]" 
(Gen.  11:1-8). 

2.  Of  the  particular  characteristics  of  the  city  the  Bible  notes 
several:  the  cities  are  sources  of  sinfulness  and  depravity  (Gen. 
18) ;  the  cities  are  the  places  of  refuge  for  the  criminals  (Num. 
35) ;  the  cities  are  the  places  of  habitation  for  the  clergy  (Levites) 
predominantly  (Num.  35) ;  the  cities  are  the  places  of  refuge  for 
strangers  (Num.  14) ;  the  cities  are  the  fortified  places,  the  centers 
for  the  accumulation  of  wealth  (Gen.  41;  II  Chron.  8: 6-7;  9: 25) ; 
they  are  the  centers  of  luxury,  magnificence,  and  beauty  (Ezek. 
27: 1  ff.);  they  are  places  that  must  be  guarded  by  God  in  order 
that  they  should  not  perish   (Psalms  107:4);  they  are  places 
whose  streets  are  morally  dangerous  (Prov.  7);  they  are  places 
where  wisdom  and  folly  live  side  by  side  (Prov.  8:9);  and  they 
are  places  whose  population  has  a  short  memory  (Eccles.  9: 15). 
The  Bible  further  indicates  that  before  the  building  of  the  city  of 
Babel  by  the  descendants  of  Noah  "the  whole  earth  was  of  one 
language  and  of  one  speech."  Following  the  attempt  to  build  the 
city  there  came  the  confounding  of  the  language,  and  the  people 


12  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

could  not  understand  one  another's  speech  (Gen.  11).  This  is  an 
allusion  to  a  correlation  between  heterogeneity  and  cities.  In  the 
same  story  the  city  is  identified  with  "brick,  stone,  and  mortar" 
as  its  material  substance.  In  addition,  the  Bible  depicts  the  city 
as  an  inseparable  element  in  the  social  organization  of  Israel  as 
given  to  the  Levites  by  the  command  of  God.  The  city  is  itself 
depicted  in  the  typical  form  of  the  ancient  cities  of  the  East:  a 
vast  abode  surrounded  by  a  wall,  with  a  large  suburban  area 
where  agriculture  and  cattle-breeding  were  carried  on  to  supply 
the  needs  of  the  city  dwellers  (Num.  35). 

3.  As  to  the  agricultural  people  and  their  manner  of  living,  the 
Book  of  Ruth  gives  a  picture  of  the  people  leading  a  hard  life  in 
the  years  of  famine,  but  a  rather  wholesome  and  happy  life  in  the 
years  of  plenty.  The  mores  of  the  rural  people  were  marked  by 
devotion,  patriarchal  attachment,  justice,  honesty,  and  mutual 
care  of  the  families  and  relatives. 

4.  The  laws  concerning  land  and  agriculture  show  considerable 
care  for  husbandry  and  the  husbandmen.  Land  is  regarded  as  the 
property  of  Jehovah,  which  is  only  temporally  given  as  a  pos- 
session to  his  children.  Several  measures,  such  as  regulation  of  the 
boundaries  of  the  fields,  the  utilization  of  the  fruits,  the  canceling 
and  redemption  of  debts,  restitution  of  the  land  to  its  cultivator 
in  the  sabbatical  year,  manifest  a  continuous  control  of  the  land 
problem  and  the  attempt  to  prevent  concentration  of  the  land  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  (Leviticus,  Deuteronomy,  and  Numbers).17 

THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 

The  attitude  of  the  New  Testament  is  shown  almost  entirely  in 
the  comparisons  and  parables  used  in  it.  The  following  are  sam- 
ples :  "I  am  the  true  vine  and  my  father  is  the  husbandman,"  says 
Jesus  of  himself  (John  15).  "Be  patient  until  the  coming  of  the 
Lord.  Behold,  the  husbandman  waiteth  for  the  precious  fruit  of 
the  earth,  being  patient  over  it.  ...  Be  ye  also  patient"  (Jas.  5: 
7-8).  To  the  believers  it  is  said,  "You  are  God's  husbandry"  (I  Cor. 
3:9).  "The  husbandman  that  labor eth  must  be  the  first  to  partake 
of  the  fruits"  (II  Tim.  2:6).  In  several  places  (Matt.  21:33-42; 
Mark  12;  Luke  20)  husbandmen  are  depicted  as  murderers  who 
killed  the  son  of  the  master  in  order  to  keep  from  paying  a  share 

17  See  H.  Schaeffer,  Hebrew  Rural  Economy  and  the  Jubilee,  Leipzig,  1922, 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  13 

of  the  fruits  and  to  appropriate  the  vineyard  of  their  landlord. 
But,  in  general,  the  attributing  of  positive  religious  and  social 
values  to  husbandry  and  husbandmen  predominates  in  the  New 
Testament, 

IV.  ANCIENT  PERSIAN  TEXTS  18 

1.  There  are  five  places  where  the  earth  feels  most  happy. — 
First  is  the  altar,  the  place  where  the  religious  ceremonies  are  per- 
formed; second  is  the  home  with  its  plenty  of  cattle;  the  third 
place  is  "where  one  of  the  faithful  cultivates  most  corn,  grass,  and 
fruit,  O  Spitama  Zarathustra!  where  he  waters  ground  that  is 
dry  or  dries  ground  that  is  too  wet";  the  fourth  is  "where  (there) 
is  most  increase  of  flocks  and  herds";  and  the  fifth  is  "where 
flocks  and  herds  yield  most  dung." 

2.  There  are  five  types  of  persons  who  "rejoice  the  earth  with 
the  greatest  joy!' — The  first  three  are  those  who  clean  the  earth 
from  the  corpses  of  dogs  and  men,  and  give  sorrow  to  Angra 
Mainyu  [the  evil  principle  of  the  Zend-Avesta].  The  fourth  is 
he  who  cultivates  most  corn,  grass,  and  fruit,  who  waters  ground  that 
is  dry.  .  .  .  "Unhappy  is  the  land  that  has  long  lain  unsown  with  the 
seed  of  the  sower  and  wants  a  good  husbandman,  like  a  well-shapen 
maiden  who  has  long  gone  childless  and  wants  a  good  husband," 
Who  tills  the  land  with  both  hands  will  be  happy,  who  does  not,  will 
be  a  beggar.  "The  food  that  fills  the  law  of  Mazda  [the  good  principle 
of  the  Zend-Avesta]  ...  is  sowing  corn  again  and  again,  O  Spitama 
Zarathustra.  .  .  .  He  who  sows  corn,  sows  holiness:  he  makes  the  law 
of  Mazda  grow  higher  and  higher;  he  makes  the  law  of  Mazda  as  fat 
as  he  can  with  a  hundred  acts  of  adoration,  a  thousand  oblations,  ten 
thousand  sacrifices.  .  .  .  When  barley   and  wheat  is  coming  forth 
Daevas  [evil  forces  and  spirits]  are  destroyed.  In  that  house  they  can 
no  longer  stay,  from  that  house  they  are  beaten  away.  It  is  as  though 
red  hot  iron  were  turned  about  in  their  throat,  when  there  is  plenty  of 
corn."  The  fifth  is  he  who  gives  alms  to  one  of  the  faithful  (IV,  21-31). 

3.  The  importance  of  agriculture  and  agriculturists. — The  prac- 

18  Excerpts  are  taken  from  the  Zend-Avesta  and  the  Pahlavi  texts,  which  compose 
the  principal  texts  of  the  Zoroastrian  religion.  Though  these  texts  were  written  after  the 
beginning  of  our  era,  their  content  is  old  and  goes  back  several  centuries  before  our  era. 
The  texts  quoted  for  Persia,  India,  and  China,  are  taken  from  the  English  translation 
published  in  F.  Max  Mutter's  collection,  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  (SEE}.  The 
Roman  numerals  in  the  references  give  the  number  of  the  volume  in  this  collection;  the 
Arabic  numerals  indicate  the  pages  in  the  volume. 


14  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tice  of  agriculture  is  like  performing  the  ceremonial  of  the  sacred 
beings,  and  it  is  necessary  to  maintain  much  respect  for  agricul- 
turists; it  is  also  necessary  to  keep  trouble  and  strife  far  from  them 
(XXIV,  27-28,  281-282;  XXXVII,  154). 

4.  The  ran\  of  the  agriculturists  among  the  social  classes. — To 
the  first  social  rank  belong  kings,  judges,  men  of  great  knowl- 
edge, and  men  learned  in  religion;  to  the  second,  the  superintend- 
ents and  governors  of  the  cities  and  the  annihilators  of  the  en- 
emy; to  the  third,  writers,  cultivators,  and  professional  men  from 
the  cities;  to  the  fourth,  tradesmen,  artisans,  market  dealers,  and 
taxgatherers  (XXXVII,  179,  424-425,  443). 

From  these  fragments,  which  are  repeated  many  times  with 
slight  variations,  we  see  that  agriculture  and  the  agriculturists 
were  evaluated  very  highly  by  ancient  Zoroastrian  thought;  that 
agriculture  was  regarded  as  the  basis  of  mankind's  existence,  and, 
speaking  in  modern  terminology,  as  the  primary  factor  of  the 
moral,  religious,  social,  and  psychological  welfare  of  society;  that 
the  social,  religious,  and  moral  value  of  agricultural  work  was 
estimated  as  highly  as  the  value  of  religious  activities  (prayers, 
oblations,  sacrifices);  and,  finally,  that  the  social  rank  of  the 
agriculturists  was  the  third  rank— below  that  of  the  upper  strata 
of  the  rulers,  scholars,  judges,  and  religious  authorities,  but  above 
all  those  engaged  in  business,  the  trades  or  handicrafts,  small  offi- 
cials, and  the  nonagricultural  laboring  classes. 

V.  TEXTS  OF  ANCIENT  INDIA19 

The  outstanding  trait  of  India's  social  organization,  religion, 
and  law  has  been  the  so-called  caste  system.  The  principle  of  caste, 
therefore,  is  the  key  to  the  understanding  of  the  Hindu's  estima- 
tion of  agriculture  and  agriculturists.  Therefore,  we  shall  give  at 
the  beginning  the  classical  Hindu  theory  of  the  four  castes  and 
their  respective  ranks,  which  depicts  the  relative  rank  of  the  agri- 
culturists (Vaisya)  among  other  principal  castes. 

1.  The  social  ran^  of  the  agriculturists  among  the  castes  and  sub- 
castes  of  India. — In  order  to  protect  this  universe  he,  the  most  re- 
splendent one,  assigned  separate  duties  and  occupations  to  those  who 

10  Quotations  are  taken  from  the  ancient  religious  and  juridical  texts  of  India,  such  as 
the  Upanishads,  Hymns  of  the  Atharva-Veda,  the  Laws  of  Manu,  BaudhSyana,  Gau- 
tama, Apastamba,  Narada,  Brihaspati,  the  Institutes  of  Vishnu,  all  translated  and  pub- 
lished in  the  collection,  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  15 

sprang  from  his  mouth,  arms,  thighs,  and  feet.  To  Brahmanas  he 
assigned  teaching  and  studying  the  Veda,  sacrificing  for  their  own 
benefits  and  for  others,  giving  and  accepting  alms.  The  Kshatriya  he 
commanded  to  protect  the  people,  to  bestow  gifts,  to  offer  sacrifices, 
to  study  the  Veda,  and  to  abstain  from  attaching  himself  to  sensual 
pleasures.  The  Vaisya  to  tend  cattle,  to  bestow  gifts,  to  offer  sacrifices, 
to  study  the  Veda,  to  trade,  to  lend  money,  and  to  cultivate  land.  One 
occupation  only  the  Lord  prescribed  to  the  Sudra,  to  serve  meekly  even 
these  other  three  castes  (XXV,  24;  cf.  II,  1-2;  VII,  chap,  ii,  §§  1-17). 

Among  the  free  hired  servants,  in  contrast  to  the  bonded  serfs 
and  slaves,  "soldiers  constitute  the  highest  class,  agriculturists,  the 
middle  class;  porters,  the  lowest  class"  (XXXIII,  344-345). 

2.  Importance  of  agriculture. — A  householder's  house  and  his  field 
are  considered  as  the  two  fundamentals  of  his  existence.  Therefore 
let  not  the  king  upset  either  of  them;  for  that  is  the  root  of  household- 
ers. .  .  .  When  his  people  are  flourishing,  the  religious  merit  and  the 
treasure  of  a  king  are  sure  to  be  in  a  flourishing  state  as  well.  When 
(the  people)  cease  to  prosper,  (his  merit  and  his  treasure)  are  sure  to 
abate  as  well.  Therefore  he  must  never  lose  sight  of  (that)  cause  of 
prosperity  (XXXIII,  164).  (The  plaintiff)  is  not  permitted  to  put 
under  restraint  [arrest]  a  person  engaged  in  study;  nor  one  about  to 
marry;  nor  one  sick.  .  .  nor  a  soldier  at  the  time  of  battle;  nor  a  hus- 
bandman at  the  time  of  harvest  (XXXIII,  288). 

Among  the  ten  modes  of  subsistence — learning,  the  mechanical 
arts,  work  for  wages,  service,  traffic,  agriculture,  raising  cattle, 
contentment  with  little,  alms,  and  receiving  interest  on  money — 
agriculture  is  regarded  as  more  noble  than  any  of  these  modes 
with  the  exception  of  learning  and  receiving  alms.  Agriculture  is 
superior  to  commerce  and  other  occupations  of  Vaisya.  Further- 
more, it  is  permissible  for  a  Brahmana  in  time  of  distress  to  fol- 
low this  occupation,  in  the  form  of  landowning  or  gleaning  corn. 
This  type  of  agriculture  is  permitted  to  the  highest  caste,  the 
Brahmanas,  as  contrasted  with  trade,  money-lending,  service,  and 
so  on,  which  are  styled  as  "a  mixture  of  truth  and  falsehood"  and 
"a  dog's  mode  of  life"  (XXV,  427,  128-129;  II,  225-227;  XIV, 
176,  236). 

This  importance  of  agriculture  and  cultivators  seems  to  have 
been  appreciated  still  more  in  a  later  period  in  the  history  of  In- 
dia, in  the  time  of  the  great  Maurya  Empire  founded  by  Chan- 
dragupta  (accession  to  the  throne  in  321  B.C.).  In  the  sources 


16  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  that  time,  the  Nitisastras 20  and  the  Kautilya  Arthasastra/1 
there  are  allusions  to  this.  Greek  and  other  ancient  writers,  begin- 
ning with  Megasthenes,  followed  by  Diodorus,  Strabo,  Pliny,  and 
Arrian,  are  also  unanimous  in  emphasizing  the  importance  of 
agriculture  and  cultivators.  Here  is  Diodorus'  epitome  of  Megas- 
thenes'  statements: 

The  whole  population  of  India  is  divided  into  seven  castes,  of  which 
the  first  is  formed  by  the  collective  body  of  the  philosophers  which,  in 
point  of  number,  is  inferior  to  the  other  classes,  but  in  point  of  dignity 
pre-eminent  over  all.  .  .  .  The  second  caste  consists  of  the  husband- 
men, who  appear  to  be  far  more  numerous  than  the  others.  Being, 
moreover,  exempted  from  fighting  and  other  public  services,  they  de- 
vote the  whole  of  their  time  to  tillage;  nor  would  an  enemy  coming 
upon  a  husbandman  at  work  on  his  land  do  him  harm,  for  men  of 
this  class,  being  regarded  as  public  benefactors,  are  protected  from  an 
injury.  .  .  .  The  land,  thus  remaining  unravaged,  and  producing 
heavy  crops,  supplies  the  inhabitants  with  all  that  is  requisite  to  make 
life  very  enjoyable.  The  husbandmen  themselves,  with  their  wives  and 
children,  live  in  the  country  and  entirely  avoid  going  into  town.  They 
pay  a  land-tribute  to  the  king,  because  all  India  is  the  property  of  the 
crown,  and  no  private  person  is  permitted  to  own  land.  Besides  the 
land  tribute,  they  pay  into  the  royal  treasury  a  fourth  part  of  the 
produce  of  the  soil. 

Strabo  repeats  this  description  and  adds  that  the  husbandmen 
"are  in  disposition  most  mild  and  gentle." 22 

The  hardship  of  agricultural  wor\  and  its  endless  character  (in 
Buddhist  literature).— By  the  roadside  Buddha  beheld  the  ploughmen 
plodding  along  the  furrows  and  the  writhing  worms,  his  heart  again 
was  moved  with  piteous  feeling.  ...  To  see  those  laborers  at  their 
toil  struggling  with  painful  work,  their  bodies  bent,  their  hair  dishev- 
elled, the  dripping  sweat  upon  their  faces,  their  persons  fouled  with 
mud  and  dust  [grieved  Buddha  very  much]  (XIX,  48).  .  .  .  Agricul- 
tural work  is  never  over.  .  .  .  When  harvest  is  done  you  have  to  do 
just  the  same  next  year,  and  the  same  all  over  again  the  year  after  year. 
One  sees  not  the  end  of  one's  labors.  Even  when  our  fathers  and  fore- 
fathers had  completed  their  time,  even  then  was  their  work  unfinished 
(XX,  225-226)  ,23 

20  English  translation  by  B.  K.  Sarkar,  Allahabad,  1924. 

21  See  J.  J.  Meyer,  Das  altindische  Buck  vom  Welt-Staatsleben,  Leipzig,  1926. 

22  See  the  translation  of  the  statements  of  Diodorus,  Strabo,  Arnan,  and  Pliny  in  F.  J. 
Monahan,  The  Early  History  of  Bengal,  Oxford,  1925,  pp.  141  ft. 

23  See  also  SEE,  Sukra,  III,  552-554,  533-534,  364-367;  IV,  iii,  37;  iv,  54.  Benoy  Ku- 
mar Sarkar,  The  Positive  Background  of  Hindu  Sociology,  Allahabad,  1914,  pp.  ISOff. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  17 

These  fragments  give  some  idea  of  the  general  opinions  of  the 
ancient  Hindu  society  concerning  the  importance  and  the  rank 
of  agriculture  and  agriculturists  in  relation  to  other  occupations 
and  social  classes  of  their  society.  Like  Zoroastrianism,  Hinduism 
ranked  the  cultivators  below  the  classes  of  priests  and  rulers 
(Brahmins  and  Kshatriyas)  but  above  the  occupational  groups 
of  traders,  artisans,  business  men,  and  so  on,  and  above  the  class 
of  nonagricultural  labor  generally. 

VI.  ANCIENT  CHINESE  AND  JAPANESE  RECORDS 

According  tq  the  Chinese  records  the  inventor  of  agriculture 
was  Shonnung  (2737  B.C.),  which  means  "divine  farmer."  He 
was  a  ruler,  who  "cleared  the  fields,  taught  the  universe  [the  Chi- 
nese people]  the  sowing  of  crops  and  the  planting  of  melons,  and 
saved  the  people  from  the  hardships  of  the  chase."  Now  "the 
roaming  tribes"  became  a  sedentary  people  and  "began  to  have 
sufficient  food  and  drink,  getting  provisions  from  grains."  As  a 
rule,  the  subsequent  emperors  of  China  were  in  the  first  place 
"expert  farmers"  and  the  rule  was  that  "the  emperor  himself  must 
plow  so  as  to  have  food  for  sacrifice  and  the  empress  herself  must 
raise  silkworms  to  get  clothes."  The  best  emperors  of  the  classical 
period  (2737-207  B.C.)  were,  according  to  the  records,  the  hus- 
bandmen. The  promotion  and  improvement  of  agriculture  be- 
came the  most  important  function  of  the  government.  A  large 
department  of  agricultural  experts  and  a  developed  system  of 
agricultural  control  by  these  governmental  experts,  led  by  the 
emperor,  a  series  of  ceremonies,  odes,  and  similar  things,  together 
with  corresponding  laws,  were  created  to  promote  agriculture 
and  to  give  to  it  supreme  dignity.24  This  explains  the  high  esteem 
in  which  agriculture  is  held  by  the  Chinese  and  their  positive 
consideration  of  its  importance  and  effects.  The  subsequent  quo- 
tations give  an  idea  of  this  and  some  other  general  items  con- 
nected with  agriculture. 

1.  A  sample  of  the  enforcement  of  agricultural  tuor\  during  the 
Chow  Dynasty  (1122-256  B.C.)  .—Only  people  who  produce  may  en- 
joy the  fruits  of  labor.  People  who  do  not  raise  animals  cannot  have 
animals  for  sacrifice;  those  who  do  not  farm  cannot  have  grain  for  sacri- 
fice. Those  who  do  not  plant  trees  cannot  have  coffins;  those  who  do 

J*  See  the  history  of  Chinese  agriculture  in  Mabel  Ping-Hua  Lee,  The  'Economic  His- 
tory of  China,  pp.  33  ff,  and  passim. 


18      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

not  raise  silkworms  cannot  wear  silk;  and  those  who  do  not  spin  can- 
not wear  linen  in  mourning  (p.  45). 

2.  The  personal  participation  of  the  emperor  in  agricultural 
activities. — "The  son  of  Heaven  on  the  first  day  \hsin\  prays  to 
God  for  a  good  year;  and  afterwards  .  .  .  with  the  handle  and 
share  of  the  plough  in  the  carriage  [accompanied  by  the  princes 
and  ministers]  opens  the  season  ploughing."  And  princes  and 
ministers  do  the  same  "all  with  their  own  hands  to  plough  the 
field  of  God.  .  .  .  The  son  of  Heaven  himself  ploughs  the  ground 
for  the  rice  with  which  to  fill  the  vessels.,  and  the  black  millet."  25 
The  emperor's  and  the  court's  conduct  is  quite  different  during 
the  years  of  plenty  and  in  the  years  of  scarcity.  "If  the  year  were 
not  good  and  fruitful,  the  son  of  Heaven  wore  less  expensive 
clothes,  rode  in  the  plain  and  unadorned  carriage,  and  had  no 
music  at  his  meals"  and  "did  not  have  full  meals."  Correspond- 
ingly, the  expenses  of  the  court  and  the  empire  were  also  re- 
duced (XXVIII,  2-4). 

In  a  certain  month  "the  husbandmen  present  their  grain.  The 
son  of  Heaven  tastes  it  while  still  new,  first  offering  some  in  the 
apartment  at  the  back  of  the  ancestral  temple"  (XXVII,  285). 
Practically  every  phase  of  agricultural  work  was  participated  in 
and  supervised  by  the  emperor  and  his  government  (XXVII, 
210  ff.,  431  ff.;  Ill,  323, 331  ff ;  XXVIII,  167,  338,  265). 

3.  Importance  of  agriculture  and  its  social,  economic,  and  moral 
effects. — In  the  old  records  agriculture  is  usually  styled  as  "the 
root,"  the  "fundamental,"  "the  principal  occupation,"  while  trades 
and  commerce  are  styled  as  "branches"  or  the  "branch  occupa- 
tions." 26 

The  Duke  Wen  of  Kuo  (827  B.C.)  makes  the  following  state- 
ment: 

The  greatest  business  of  the  people  is  agriculture.  From  agriculture 
the  millet  which  is  used  for  the  sacrifice  to  God  is  produced;  the  den- 
sity of  population  grows;  the  expense  of  the  business  is  supplied;  so- 
cial harmony  and  peace  arise;  the  multiplication  of  wealth  begins;  and 
the  characters  of  honesty,  great-mindedness,  integrity  and  solidity  be- 
come a  general  habit  of  the  people.27 

25  SEE,  Li-Ki.,  XXVII,  255;  XXVIII,  338. 

26  See  Lee,  op,  at,,  Part  II,  for  translations  from  the  Chinese  Encyclopedia. 

27  All  the  sources  quoted  were  composed  several  centuries  before  our  era.  According 
to  their  content  they  were  originated  before  Confucius.     "Narrative  of  Nations,"  Bk.  I, 
trans,  by  Chen  Huan-Chang,  in  his  The  Economic  Principles  of  Confucius  and  His 
School,  New  York,  1911,  p.  381. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  19 

Of  the  eight  objects  of  government  the  first  is  food.  ...  It  is  on  the 
basis  of  agriculture  that  the  eight  objects  of  government  (food,  wealth, 
and  articles  of  convenience,  sacrifices,  business,  education  and  instruc- 
tion, justice,  the  observances  to  be  paid  to  guests,  the  army)  can  be 
attained.28 

The  duke  of  Kau  said,  "Oh,  the  superior  man  rests  in  this,  that 
he  will  indulge  in  no  luxurious  ease.  He  first  understands  how 
the  painful  toil  of  sowing  and  reaping  conducts  to  ease,  and  thus 
he  understands  how  the  lower  people  depend  on  this  toil  (for 
their  support)."  The  duke  of  Kau  indicates  further  that  the  best 
kings  of  ancient  China,  such  as  Kung  Zung  (1637-1563  B.C.)  or 
Kao  Zung  (13244266  B.C.)  or  Zu-Kia  (12584226  B.C.),  before 
becoming  kings,  "toiled  at  first  away  from  the  court  and  were 
among  the  lower  people.  .  .  ."  When  they  "came  to  the  throne, 
they  knew  on  what  they  must  depend  for  their  support,  and  were 
able  to  exercise  a  protecting  kindness  towards  their  masses,  and 
did  not  dare  to  treat  with  contempt  the  wifeless  men  and  widows. 
.  .  .  Thus  it  was  that  they  were  grave,  humble,  reverential,  and 
timorously  cautious,  .  .  .  measured  themselves  with  reference  to 
the  decree  of  Heaven,  and  cherished  a  reverent  apprehension  in 
governing  the  people,  not  daring  to  indulge  in  useless  ease."  As  a 
result,  their  ruling  was  the  most  beneficial  and  the  first  of  them 
"enjoyed  the  throne  seventy  and  five  years";  the  second,  fifty  and 
nine  years;  the  third,  thirty  and  three  years.  "The  kings  that  arose 
after  these,  from  their  birth  enjoyed  ease.  Enjoying  ease  from 
their  birth,  they  did  not  know  the  painful  toil  of  sowing  and  reap- 
ing, and  had  not  heard  of  the  hard  labors  of  the  lower  people. 
They  sought  for  nothing  but  excessive  pleasure;  and  so  not  one  of 
them  had  long  life.  They  reigned  for  ten  years,  for  seven  or  eight, 
for  five  or  six,  or  perhaps  only  for  three  or  four."  20 

4.  The  ran\  of  farmers  among  the  social  classes. — Ku-liang's 

^SBE,  The  SM  King,  III,  142;  Chang,  op.  cit.,  p.  381. 

99  SBE,  The  Shu  King,  III,  201-203.  These  maxims  were  also  common  among  the 
Japanese  people.  "Agriculture  is  the  basis  of  all  things  and  the  treasure  of  the  world.  It  is 
the  peasant's  honor  to  be  engaged  in  it."  Many  centuries  before  the  Physiocrats,  the 
Chinese  and  the  Japanese  thinkers  regarded  the  peasantry  as  "the  only  productive  class 
o£  people,"  and  correspondingly  stated  that  "of  the  four  classes  of  people  (i.e.,  gentle- 
men, peasants,  artisans,  and  merchants),  the  peasants  are  the  foundation  of  the  state. 
.  .  .  From  the  emperor  down  to  the  common  people,  men's  lives  depend  upon  food  and 
clothing.  That  food  and  clothes  are  fruits  of  the  peasant's  labor  is  self-evident."  "Notes 
on  Penal  Law,"  compiled  by  Ono  Hiroki.  Manuscript  trans,  by  K,  Asakawa  in  his 
"Notes  on  Village  Government  in  Japan,"  The  Journal  of  the  American  Oriental  So- 
ciety, XXXI,  172. 


20  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

commentary  says:  "In  the  ancient  time  there  were  four  groups 
of  people:  there  was  a  group  of  people  called  students;  there  was 
a  group  of  people  called  merchants;  there  was  a  group  of  people 
called  farmers;  and  there  was  a  group  of  people  called  artisans," 
Confucianism  interpreted  this,  that  all  these  classes  were  equal 
and  no  group  was  higher  than  the  others.  However,  "in  the  Chi- 
nese language  the  order  of  these  four  groups  is  usually  this:  the 
first,  student;  the  second,  farmer;  the  third,  artisan;  and  the 
fourth,  merchant." 30 

5.  The  hardships  of  the  farmers  and  their  exploitation  by  the  cities 
and  rich  people  (period  of  the  Emperor  Wen-ti,  179457  B.C.).— The 
time  was  near  to  the  period  of  Warring  States  and  the  people  all  got 
away  from  the  roots  (agriculture)  and  desired  to  work  on  the  branches 
(trades  and  commerce).  Chia  Yi  (a  scholar  and  statesman  of  the 
time)  said:  "Now  we  ought  to  make  people  go  back  to  the  farms  and 
put  emphasis  on  the  principal  things,  so  that  everyone  will  live  by  his 
own  work;  and  all  kinds  of  laborers  and  wandering  professionals  or 
practitioners  will  go  back  to  the  farms.  Then  the  savings  (stores)  will 
be  plenty  and  everyone  satisfied  and  happy."  The  emperor  was  moved 
by  his  sayings  and  began  to  open  the  imperial  field  and  work  upon  it 
himself  in  order  to  encourage  the  people. 

Chao  Chor  (also  a  statesman  of  the  period)  said:  "Now  all  within 
the  seas  has  become  one  empire;  the  number  of  the  people  and  the 
area  of  the  territory  are  no  less  than  under  Yu  and  Tang.  Besides 
there  are  no  famines,  floods,  or  droughts;  but  the  saving  is  not  as  much 
as  it  used  to  be.  Why?  ...  If  one  does  not  work  on  a  farm,  one  does 
not  wish  to  stay  in  one  place  all  the  time  .  .  .  and  will  not  mind  leav- 
ing his  native  village  and  home.  Such  people  move  about  like  birds 
and  animals.  Even  though  you  have  high  city  walls  and  deep  ditches, 
strict  laws,  and  heavy  punishments,  you  cannot  prevent  them  from 
wandering.  .  .  .  Therefore  if  you  make  the  people  put  emphasis  on 
farm  and  mulberry,  lighten  the  taxation  and  increase  the  saving  (by 
buying  crops),  then  the  official  storehouses  will  be  full  thus  preparing 
for  flood  and  drought.  In  this  way  the  people  will  always  have  plenty. 

Now  at  the  present  time  take  the  case  of  farmers  with  families  of 
five  mouths,  the  working  members  not  less  than  two,  The  land  which 
can  be  cultivated  is  not  more  than  100  mows,  and  the  return  of  this 
land  is  not  much  more  than  100  loads.  Plowing  in  the  spring,  cutting 
weeds  in  the  summer,  harvesting  in  the  fall,  and  saving  in  the  winter, 
cutting  wood  for  fuel,  doing  service  for  the  government.  In  the  spring 
they  must  not  mind  wind  or  dust,  in  summer  they  must  endure  hot 

80  Chen  Huan-Chang,  op,  cit.,  pp.  367-368. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  21 

weather,  in  the  fall,  dark  rains,  in  winter,  frost  and  cold.  So  in  all  four 
seasons  there  is  not  a  day  of  rest.  Besides  they  have  to  entertain  guests, 
provide  for  deaths  and  sickness,  and  the  raising  of  orphans  and  chil- 
dren. Hence  the  toil.  Moreover  they  may  have  to  suffer  flood  or 
drought,  bad  government  and  the  collection  of  taxes  at  inconvenient 
times,  with  orders  issued  in  the  morning  and  changed  in  the  evening. 
When  the  farmers  have  a  harvest  they  have  to  sell  it  at  half-price. 
When  they  do  not  have  a  harvest  they  have  to  borrow  crops  at  double 
interest.  Therefore  some  of  them  are  forced  to  sell  their  houses  and 
farms,  their  sons  and  grandsons  to  pay  their  debts.  On  the  other  hand 
the  big  merchants  accumulate  the  crops  and  double  the  interest;  while 
the  small  merchant  buys  here,  retailing  there,  using  his  wonderful  skill 
in  profit  making  (speculation),  traveling  in  cities  and  markets  daily. 
On  account  of  the  urgent  demand,  the  selling  prices  are  multiplied. 
Therefore  such  men  do  not  have  to  cultivate  the  fields  and  the  women 
need  not  raise  silk  worms  or  spin.  But  their  clothes  are  always  beauti- 
ful and  artistic;  and  their  food  is  always  rice  (meat  and  millet) ;  thus 
they  need  not  suffer  the  hardships  of  the  farmer  but  they  receive  re- 
turns a  hundred  and  thousand  fold  because,  being  wealthy,  they  are 
able  to  make  friends  with  the  dukes  and  princes— their  influence  being 
higher  than  that  of  officers;  and  they  use  their  wealth  as  a  means  to 
overcome  the  people.  So  they  travel  thousands  of  lis,  conspicuous  by 
their  numbers  and  equipage,  riding  in  conveyances,  riding  horseback, 
wearing  footwear  and  clothes  of  silk.  Therefore  this  is  the  way  the 
merchants  eat  up  (accumulate  the  property  of)  the  farmers.  The 
farmers  become  wanderers.  ...  So  the  emperor  issued  an  edict  reduc- 
ing taxation  to  one-half  for  that  year.  And  for  the  following  year  he 
removed  it  entirely.31 

Throughout  the  long  history  of  China  situations  similar  to  the 
above  often  prevail.  The  farmer's  fortunes  rise  and  fall  many 
times.  The  small  owner-operator  farm  is  replaced  many  times  by 
the  concentration  of  the  land  in  the  hands  of  the  rich  and  influ- 
ential, and  as  a  result  we  see  the  exodus  from  the  farms,  the  in- 
crease of  crowds  of  wanderers,  and  their  influx  into  "the  branch 
occupations."  This  is  usually  followed  by  a  series  of  measures  by 
which  the  government  attempts  to  remedy  the  situation,  such  as 
the  reduction  of  taxes,  the  limitation  of  property,  the  confiscation 
of  the  land  of  the  rich,  the  redistribution  of  the  land  among  the 
farmers,  and  so  on.  The  subsequent  quotations  illustrate  these 
evils  and  the  corresponding  measures  by  the  government. 

81  Lee,  op.  at.,  pp,  157-159. 


22      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Emperor  Hsuan  Chung's  edict  (713-755  A.D.),— I  (emperor)  have 
heard  that  some  of  the  princes,  dukes,  officials,  and  influential  and  rich 
people  have  frequently  established  great  sections  of  fields.  They  have 
been  eating  up  the  poor  at  their  will  without  any  fear  of  the  govern- 
ment regulations.  .  ,  .  The  result  is  that  the  poor  have  no  place  to 
live,  having  to  drift  around  to  strange  doors,  and  have  been  doing  work 
on  other  people's  fields.  It  means  that  some  people  have  been  robbed 
of  their  occupation  and  properties,  and  the  defects  and  evils  are  plainly 
obvious.  ...  So  if  we  do  not  correct  the  same,  the  condition  will  be 
still  more  aggravated.  .  .  .  From  now  on,  all  the  perpetual  property 
and  mouth  shares,  no  matter  when  and  where  they  were  transferred, 
must  be  returned  to  the  original  owners  [farmers],  if  such  owners 
still  come  to  receive  them:  and  the  government  will  pay  the  price  to 
the  holder  of  such  property  for  the  poor  people.  Hereafter  no  one  is 
allowed  to  sell  or  buy  the  perpetual  property  and  mouth  shares  against 
the  government  regulations.32 

Hsieh  Fong  San,  imperial  teacher  and  imperial  censor,  reported  to 
the  emperor  [Li  Chung,  1225-1264  A.D.]  as  follows: 

The  evils  of  "eating  up"  by  the  influential  and  strong  people  has 
reached  its  climax  today.  So  we  must  limit  the  land  holding  of  the 
people;  and  it  is  one  of  the  possible  means  by  which  we  might  save 
the  situation.  ...  As  we  all  know,  the  life  of  millions  of  our  people 
depends  upon  the  grains  (rice  and  millet),  and  the  production  of  grain 
depends  exclusively  on  the  land.  But  at  present  all  the  fertile  fields  are 
in  possession  of  the  families  of  influence  and  nobility.  .  .  .  On  the 
other  hand,  the  small  number  of  people  with  100  mows  of  land,  are 
suffering  the  burden  of  public  service  every  year.  ...  As  a  result,  the 
land  of  the  poor  people  becomes  less  and  less  every  day,  and  yet  they 
have  to  be  subject  to  forced  labor  just  the  same.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  land  of  the  great  officials  becomes  multiplied  all  the  time,  yet  the 
service  of  forced  labor  never  reaches  them.  .  .  .  Consequently  the  poor 
have  no  possible  way  to  make  their  living.  ...  At  such  a  critical  mo- 
ment it  must  be  admitted  that  it  would  be  much  better  for  the  rich 
to  contribute  some  money  to  help  the  country  and  relieve  the  present 
and  immediate  pressure,  rather  than  for  them  to  keep  tight  in  their 
hands  their  tremendous  wealth  and  huge  landholdings,  when  they 
know  that  they  cannot  enjoy  these  for  long  anyway  for  if  the  govern- 
ment falls  they  cannot  continue  to  enjoy  their  holdings.  ...  So,  I  re- 
quest the  government  to  take  the  advice  of  some  officers  in  regard  to 
the  limitation  policy,  in  order  to  regulate  field  boundaries,  to  stop  the 
process  of  eating  up,  to  maintain  the  dignity  of  administration,  and 
to  strengthen  the  financial  position  of  the  country.  I  further  request 

82  md.,  p.  240. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  23 

that  your  majesty  shall  not  be  influenced  by  court  favorites  and  that 
the  ministers  shall  not  be  afraid  of  making  enemies  (among  the  rich) 
by  carrying  out  the  best  policy  of  the  time.  Then  it  will  be  for  the 
best  fortune  of  the  whole  empire. 

The  emperor  acted  on  his  advice  and  adopted  the  system  of  land 
limitation.33 

The  entire  history  of  agriculture  in  China  is  filled  with  proc- 
esses and  policies  similar  to  the  foregoing.  There  is  scarcely  any 
plan  or  reconstruction  of  agricultural  policy  directed  toward  help- 
ing farmers  and  peasants  at  the  present  moment  which  was  not 
tried  in  China  many  centuries  ago.  These  policies  will  be  pre- 
sented in  other  sections  of  this  work.  Meanwhile,  the  quotations 
given  show  that  the  importance  of  agriculture  in  China  was  fully 
appreciated  and  that  a  prosperous  agriculture  was  regarded  as 
the  fundamental  factor  of  the  economic,  as  well  as  the  social,  psy- 
chological, and  moral  well-being  of  the  country.  The  excerpts  also 
show  that  prosperous  farming  was  regarded  as  the  most  efficient 
means  of  preventing  migration  from  the  farms,  wandering,  crim- 
inality, and  similar  evils;  that  the  farmers  in  China  were  often 
dispossessed  and  exploited  by  other  predominantly  urban  lords; 
and  that  China  is  a  country  with  the  widest  and  most  varied  ex- 
perience and  experiments  in  the  field  of  governmental  control  of 
agriculture. 

6.  Japanese  records. — Somewhat  similar  was  the  policy  and  the 
ancient  thought  of  Japan  in  the  field  discussed.  In  addition,  it  is 
to  be  mentioned  that  the  governmental  officials,  in  their  paternal- 
istic attitude  toward  the  peasants,  often  gave  some  statements  that 
depict  additional  traits  of  this  class,  viewed  from  "the  official 
standpoint."  The  following  excerpts  indicate  the  "official  social 
psychology  of  the  peasant  class." 

Peasants  are  innocent  and  thoughtless:  they  should  be  led  with  both 
mercy  and  severity.  ...  It  was  said  of  old  that  peasants  were  easy  to 
employ  but  difficult  to  govern.  If  they  were  well  cared  for  by  the  offi- 
cials, they  would  likewise  care  for  the  latter.  ...  If  you  go  to  them 
with  your  mind  filled  with  the  desire  to  improve  their  welfare  .  .  . 
they  will  never  turn  angry  faces  at  you.  .  .  .  Nothing  can  be  enforced 
against  the  peasant  nature.  The  peasant  nature  is  the  genuine  human 
nature.  ...  If  you  ran  counter  to  it,  the  peasants  would  not  submit, 
and  all  the  forces  of  the  world  would  be  unable  to  bend  them.  .  .  . 
*#«/,  pp.  315-317. 


24  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Having  little  sense  of  duty  the  peasants  are  unable  to  control  their 
feelings,  but  think  only  of  their  convenience.  Hence  it  is  said  that  no 
order  contrary  to  this  simple  nature  could  be  executed.  Although  they 
have  a  fear  of  punishment,  they  are  nevertheless  apt  to  violate  a  law 
which  causes  them  present  inconvenience.  No  government  has  ever 
endured  against  the  peasant  nature.  It  is,  therefore,  essential  that  the 
officials  should  learn  to  like  what  the  people  like,  dislike  what  they 
dislike,  and  care  for  them  with  the  same  tenderness  and  wisdom  as  the 
parents  bestow  on  their  children.34 

C.  ANCIENT  GREEK  SOURCES 

Since  the  time  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  a  number  of  Greek  poets, 
writers,  and  thinkers  have  made  various  statements  concerning 
farmers  and  agriculture.  The  most  important  of  these  statements 
— made  by  Hesiod,  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Xenophon — are  given 
subsequently.  Here  we  shall  but  briefly  survey  the  character  of  the 
statements,  often  quite  casual,  made  by  other  writers  of  the  period 
and  related  to  our  topic.  In  Homer's  Iliad  and  Odyssey  we  find 
some  pictures  contrasting  the  city  and  the  country.  As  contrasted 
with  the  rural  people,  the  city  Ilion  is  styled  as  the  abode  "of 
many-languaged  men"  (Iliad,  Bk.  xx,  Alexander  Pope's  transla- 
tion), referring  to  the  greater  heterogeneity  of  the  city  popu- 
lation. Further,  in  the  description  of  the  shield  of  Achilles,  the 
city  is  depicted  as  an  abode  of  tumult,  contention,  noise,  and  war. 
"There  in  the  Forum  swarm  a  numerous  train;  the  subject  of  de- 
bate, a  townsman  slain  .  .  .  there  Tumult,  there  Contention  stood 
confessed."  Meanwhile,  the  country  is  pictured  as  a  peaceful  idyll, 
where  "the  shining  shares  full  many  ploughmen  guide  and  turn 
their  crooked  yokes  on  every  side,"  with  the  children  who  help 
the  elders;  "where  march  a  train  with  baskets  on  their  heads 
(fair  maids  and  blooming  youths),  that  smiling  bear  the  purple 
product  of  the  autumnal  year";  and  where  "the  rustic  monarch 
of  the  field  descries,  with  silent  glee,  the  heaps  around  him  rise." 
(Bk.  xviii.)  Hesiod's  Wor\s  and  Days  is  much  richer  in  material 
for  our  purposes.  The  most  important  fragments  of  his  work  are 
given  later. 

In  the  works  of  the  great  tragedians,  .Sschylus  (died  456  B.C.), 
Sophocles,  and  Euripides  (both  died  406  B.C.),  we  find  little  for 

**  Quoted  from  the  official  orders  and  memoirs,  K.  Asakawa,  op.  cit.,  pp.  184-185. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  25 

our  purposes;  but  what  we  do  find  depicts  them  as  being  the  sym- 
pathizers of  the  husbandmen  and  believers  in  the  healthful  effects 
of  agriculture  upon  a  society.  The  free  farmer  in  Euripides5 
Orestes  is  described  as  "not  of  graceful  mien,  but  a  manly  fellow, 
one  who  seldom  visits  the  city  and  the  market  place,  a  toiler  with 
his  hands,  of  the  class  on  whom  alone  the  safety  of  the  country 
depends;  but  intelligent  and  prepared  to  face  the  conflict  of  de- 
bate, a  guileless  being  of  blameless  life."  In  the  comedies  of  Aris- 
tophanes (approximately  448-380  B.C.)  several  characters  are  de- 
picted as  farmers.  In  his  Ecclesiazusce,  farmers  together  with  the 
rich  classes  are  voting  against  a  communistic  scheme  and  a  mobili- 
zation of  the  fleet  which  would  increase  their  taxes.  In  his  Achar- 
nians  and  Peace,  farmers  are  depicted  as  partisans  of  the  termina- 
tion of  a  useless  war.  One  of  their  leaders  characterizes  himself  as 
a  man  who  "with  my  eyes  ever  turned  to  my  farm,  a  lover  of 
peace,  detesting  the  city  and  hankering  after  my  own  deme,  that 
never  yet  bade  me  buy  charcoal  or  rough  wine  or  olive  oil."  An- 
other calls  himself  a  "skilled  vine-dresser,  one  who  is  no  informer 
or  fomenter  of  troubles  [lawsuits]."  They  are  passionately  at- 
tached to  their  land,  hard-working,  sturdy,  old-fashioned,  reli- 
gious, intelligent,  rough  in  manners,  and  ready  to  fight  for  their 
country,  if  the  fighting  is  justified,  and  suspicious  of  city  people 
as  being  cheaters  and  exploiters  of  the  country  people.  Similar 
characteristics  are  given  to  the  farmers  by  Menander,  another 
writer  of  comedies.  His  rustics,  again,  are  hard  workers  and  al- 
though farm  life  is  characterized  as  being  bitter,  "the  bitter  of 
agriculture  has  a  touch  of  sweet  in  it,"  the  "farm  is  for  all  men  a 
trainer  in  virtue  and  a  freeman's  life,"  and  "farms  that  yield  but 
a  poor  living  make  brave  men." 

The  opinions  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  Xenophon  are  given  in  subse- 
quent passages.  They,  and  like  them,  other  composers  of  ideal 
constitutions— for  instance,  Hippodamus  of  Miletus  and  Phaleas 
of  Chalcedon — view  the  farmer  class  favorably,  as  being  the 
foundation  of  social  order  and  stability,  a  law-abiding,  hard-work- 
ing, vigorous,  healthy,  moral,  patriotic,  religious,  sturdy,  brave, 
and  old-fashioned  group.  Farm  life  is  regarded  as  the  best  school 
for  physical  training,  for  developing  the  best  soldiers,  and  for 
producing  honest  and  industrious  citizens.  But  at  the  same  time, 
the  majority  of  these  authors  put  this  class  below  the  classes  of 


26  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

full-fledged  urban  citizens,  exclude  them  from  citizenship  (Aris- 
totle, Phaleas,  Plato),  and  make  them  unarmed  citizens,  which, 
under  Greek  conditions,  according  to  Aristotle's  remark,  would 
make  them  the  slaves  of  the  military  class  of  the  city.  This  incon- 
sistency in  the  attitudes  toward  farmers  is  to  be  noted.  It  looks  as 
if  everyone  praises  the  farmer,  and,  at  the  same  time,  no  urbanite 
wants  to  become  a  farmer,  or  even  to  place  him  on  an  equal  level 
with  the  full-fledged  citizens  of  the  city.  Subsequent  writers,  such 
as  Demosthenes,  again  praise  farmer  citizens  and  put  them,  to- 
gether with  merchants  and  business  men,  above  the  city  mob  and 
the  corrupt  city  politicians.  The  writers  of  a  later  period  regard 
them  in  a  very  similar  manner.  "Apart  from  slavery,  rustic  life  is 
regarded  as  favorable  to  good  morals:  honest  labor,  frugal  habits, 
freedom  from  urban  temptations."  It  is  commended  "to  fathers 
who  desire  to  preserve  their  sons  from  corrupting  debauchery." 35 
In  all  these  statements,  made  partly  by  country-born  writers 
and  partly  by  urban  persons,  there  prevails  a  remarkable  unanim- 
ity of  opinion  as  to  the  positive  characteristics  of  the  farmer- 
peasant  class.  Such  a  unanimity — applied,  however,  only  to  free 
farmers  and  not  to  the  slaves  working  in  agriculture — suggests 
that,  in  addition  to  an  idealization  and  moralization  of  this  class, 
it  must  have  had  some  of  these  positive  traits  in  order  to  produce 
this  unanimity.  We  can  and  ought  to  discount  a  great  deal  of 
what  is  said  by  these  writers  about  the  idyllic,  bucolic,  moral,  and 
social  virtues  of  the  farmers,  but  to  declare  that  these  virtues  never 
existed  at  all  and  that  all  these  writers  merely  imagined  them 
would  scarcely  be  justified  or  accurate.  The  subsequent  passages 
from  the  works  of  Hesiod,  Aristotle,  and  Xenophon  give  in  a 
developed  form  the  predominant  Greek  opinions  about  the  free 
farmer  class. 

I.  HESIOD 

Hesiod's  Wor\s  and  Days— One  of  the  earliest  works  depicting 
several  socio-psychological  and  moral  aspects  of  country  and  city 
life  and  of  the  respective  classes  of  the  population  is  Hesiod's 
Wor\s  and  Days.  In  addition  to  giving  a  good  picture  of  the  agri- 
cultural life  of  the  period,  the  work  is  interesting  to  us  for  several 
reasons.  Written  probably  at  the  time  of  the  origin  and  growth 
of  the  cities  of  Greece,  it  bears  traces  of  complaint  both  of  the 

85  W.  E.  Heitland,  Agricola,  Cambridge,  1921,  p.  124.  For  details  see  also  pp.  16-131. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  27 

crookedness  of  the  city  and  of  the  city's  oppression  of  the  country. 
Side  by  side  with  this,  in  its  moral  advices,  it  gives  a  very  typical 
characterization  of  the  good  husbandman,  his  psychology,  his 
morals,  and  other  specific  traits.  The  period  of  transition  from  the 
purely  rural  life  to  the  urban  was  generally  painful.  It  led  to  a 
disintegration  of  the  morals,  religion,  family,  and  other  social  and 
traditional  values  of  the  simple  agricultural  and  pastoral  peoples. 
It  was  followed  by  a  series  of  revolts,  disorders,  revolutions,  and 
oppressions.  This  may  be  one  of  the  factors  of  Hesiod's  regressive 
theory  of  the  historical  process,  a  theory  that  we  find  among 
many  ancient  peoples  (for  example,  the  story  of  the  Fall  in  the 
Bible;  a  similar  one  in  Hindu  literature;  and  Confucius'  theory 
of  the  three  stages,  etc.).  According  to  Hesiod's  theory  he  was 
living  in  the  period  of  "the  race  of  iron,"  which  had  been  pre- 
ceded by  four  other  stages:  the  ages  of  the  gold  race,  silver  race, 
bronze  race,  and  the  hero  race.  The  earliest  or  the  golden  age  was 
the  best;  subsequent  ages  were  worse,  but  better  than  the  race  of 
iron  in  which  Hesiod  lived.  The  characterization  of  Hesiod's 
contemporaries  as  a  race  of  iron  has  reference  to  the  city  life  and 
its  crookedness.  These  introductory  remarks  are  sufficient  to  un- 
derstand the  subsequent  passages  from  Hesiod's  Worlds  and  Days. 
The  exact  time  when  Hesiod  lived  is  unknown.  By  various 
specialists  it  is  placed  somewhere  between  the  eleventh  and  the 
eighth  centuries  B.C.  Some  say  that  the  poem  was  written  before 
the  Homeric  poems;  some  claim  it  was  produced  about  the  same 
time  or  shortly  after.  The  authority  of  Hesiod  among  the  later 
Greek  thinkers  and  writers  was  so  great  that  the  majority  of  them 
refer  to  Hesiod  as  the  highest  authority  in  many  social,  moral, 
religious,  philosophical,  and  other  problems. 

1.  HESIOD:  THE  GOOD  HUSBANDMAN* 

The  Race  of  Iron  (Complaints  about  the  City  and  Its  Demorali- 
zation) 

Now  verily  is  a  race  of  iron.  Neither  by  day  shall  they  ever  cease 
from  weariness  and  woe,  neither  in  the  night  from  wasting,  and  sore 
cares  shall  the  gods  give  them.  But  this  race  also  of  mortal  men  shall 
Zeus  destroy  when  they  shall  have  hoary  temples  at  their  birth.  Father 
shall  not  be  like  to  his  children  .  .  .  neither  shall  guest  to  host,  nor 

*  The  following  quotations  are  from  the  English  translation  by  A.  W.  Mair,  Oxford, 


28      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

friend  to  friend,  nor  brother  to  brother  be  dear  as  aforetime:  and  they 
shall  give  no  honor  to  their  swiftly  ageing  parents,  and  shall  chide 
them  with  words  of  bitter  speech,  sinful  men,  knowing  not  the  fear  of 
gods.  Might  shall  be  right,  and  one  shall  sack  the  other's  city.  Neither 
shall  there  be  any  respect  of  the  oath  abiding  or  of  the  just  or  of  the 
good;  rather  shall  they  honor  the  doer  of  evil  and  the  man  of  inso- 
lence. Right  shall  lie  in  might  of  hand,  and  Reverence  shall  be  no 
more:  the  bad  shall  wrong  the  better  man,  speaking  crooked  words 
and  abetting  them  with  oath.  Envy,  brawling,  rejoicing  in  evil,  of 
hateful  countenance,  shall  follow  all  men  to  their  sorrow.  .  .  .  There 
is  the  noise  of  the  haling  of  Justice  wheresoever  bribe-devouring  men 
hale  her,  adjudging  dooms  with  crooked  judgments.  [However], 
Justice  followeth  weeping  .  .  .  into  the  city  and  the  homes  of  men 
who  drive  her  forth  and  deal  with  her  crookedly.  [Where  Justice  is 
respected  there  reigns  peace,  abundance,  prosperity,  fertility.  Where,  as 
in  the  city,  it  is  discarded]  oftentimes  a  whole  city  reapeth  the  recom- 
pense of  the  evil  men  [in  form  of  war,  pestilence,  sterility,  etc.] 
(pp.  5-9). 

Moral  Code  and  Characteristics  of  a  Good  Husbandman 

Wor^. — At  him  are  gods  and  men  wroth,  whoso  liveth  in  idleness. 
Be  it  thy  choice  to  order  the  works  which  are  meet,  that  thy  barns  may 
be  full  of  seasonable  livelihood.  By  works  do  men  wax  rich  in  flocks 
and  gear;  yea,  and  by  work  shall  thou  be  far  dearer  to  immortals  and 
mortals.  Work  is  no  reproach:  the  reproach  is  idleness.  .  .  .  And  what- 
ever be  thy  lot,  work  is  best.  ...  If  thy  heart  is  set  on  wealth,  do  thou 
thus  and  work  one  work  upon  another. 

Be  honest,  thrifty,  and  sternly  just. — Wealth  is  not  seized  violently; 
god-given  wealth  is  better  far.  For  if  a  man  do  seize  great  wealth  by 
violence  of  hand,  or  steal  itgby  craft  of  tongue  .  .  .  lightly  the  gods 
abase  him  and  make  that  man's  house  decay,  and  weal  attendeth  him 
but  for  a  little  while.  .  .  .  Get  no  ill  gains;  ill  gains  are  even  as  dis- 
asters. [Further  he  advises  not  to  wrong  a  suppliant,  a  guest,  brother, 
fatherless  children,  and  so  on.]  Love  him  that  lovest  thee  and  visit  him 
that  visiteth  thee.  And  give  to  him  that  giveth  and  give  not  to  him 
that  giveth  not.  ...  A  gift  is  good,  but  theft  is  evil,  a  giver  of  death. 
.  .  .  Don't  make  thy  friend  as  a  brother.  Sin  not  against  him  first, 
neither  lie  for  the  pleasure  of  the  tongue.  Yet  if  he  first  sins  against 
thee,  remember  thou  to  repay  him  twofold.  .  .  .  Call  to  meat  him  that 
loveth  thee,  but  leave  thine  enemy  alone  (pp.  11-13,  25-26). 

Carefully  choose  thy  neighbor. — An  ill  neighbor  is  a  bane,  even  as 
a  good  neighbor  is  a  great  blessing.  He  who  findeth  a  good  neighbor 
findeth  a  precious  thing. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  29 

In  proper  time  marry  and  carefully  choose  thy  wife. — In  the  flower 
of  thine  age  lead  thou  home  thy  bride  (the  best  time  of  marriage  for 
a  man  is  about  thirty,  for  a  bride  the  fifth  year  past  puberty) .  Marry 
a  maiden  that  thou  mayest  teach  her  good  ways.  Marry  a  neighbor, 
best  of  all,  with  care  and  circumspection,  lest  thy  marriage  be  a  joy 
to  thy  neighbors.  For  no  better  spoil  doth  a  man  win  than  a  good  wife, 
even  as  than  a  bad  woman  he  winneth  no  worse — a  gluttonous  woman, 
that  roasteth  her  husband  without  a  brand,  and  giveth  him  over  to  un- 
timely age  (pp.  25-26). 

Do  your  agricultural  wor\  in  time,  properly,  and  carefully. — Get  a 
house  first  and  woman  and  plowing  ox,  a  slave  woman  (not  wife), 
who  might  also  follow  the  oxen.  .  .  .  Keep  thou  all  things  well  in 
mind  nor  fail  to  mark  either  the  coming  of  grey  spring  or  seasonable 
rain.  [A  long  series  of  the  kinds  of  agricultural  work,  at  what  time 
(day,  week,  or  month),  and  how  it  is  to  be  done,  follows.] 

Get  up  early. — The  morning  taketh  the  third  part  of  man's  business. 
Morning  advanceth  a  man  upon  his  journey  and  advanceth  him  also 
in  his  work. 

Don't  hope  vainly. — The  idle  man  who  waiteth  on  empty  hope  for 
lack  of  livelihood  garnered  many  sorrows  for  his  soul.  Hope  is  a  poor 
companion  for  a  man  in  need  (p.  18). 

Observe  thou  measure. — Due  measure  is  ever  best  (p.  17). 

Be  taciturn. — The  best  treasure  among  men  is  the  treasure  of  a 
sparing  tongue  (p.  26) . 

Be  religious.  Don't  do  anything  without  proper  prayers. — Pray  thou 
unto  Zeus  the  Lord  of  Earth  and  unto  Demeter  that  the  holy  grain  of 
Demeter  be  full  and  heavy.  .  .  .  Never  pour  libation  of  the  sparkling 
wine  to  Zeus  after  dawn  with  hands  unwashed.  [A  long  series  of  reli- 
gious prescriptions  follows.] 

General  eulogy  of  agriculture  and  agricultural  rest. — Good  hus- 
bandry is  best  for  mortal  and  bad  husbandry  is  worst.  .  .  .  [After 
work]  let  me  have  the  shadow  of  a  rock,  and  Bibline  wine,  and  a 
milk  cake,  and  milk  of  goats  drained  dry,  and  flesh  of  a  pastured 
heifer  that  hath  not  yet  borne  a  calf,  and  flesh  of  firstling  kids,  with 
ruddy  wine  to  wash  it  down  withal,  while  I  sit  in  the  shade,  heart- 
satisfied  with  food,  turning  my  face  toward  the  fresh  west  wind,  and 
let  me  from  an  unmuddied  everflowing  spring  .  .  .  pour  three  meas- 
ures of  water  and  the  fourth  of  wine  (p.  22).  [Such  are  the  essential 
characteristics  of  a  good  husbandman  and  his  social  and  moral  con- 
duct, according  to  Hesiod.] 

II.  PLATO 

Plato  (427-347  B.C.)  in  his  Utopia,  Republic,  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  which  on  this  planet  he  himself  did  not  believe,  sets  forth 


30  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

as  the  best  form  of  political  organization  the  government  of  ex- 
perts (the  guardians).  Since  farmers  are  to  be  trained  in  farming 
and  not  in  governing  they  are  logically  to  be  excluded  from  any 
governmental  functions.  Their  situation  generally  is  dealt  with 
but  very  little  in  this  Utopian  work.  However,  in  his  Laws?* 
which  represent  a  later  and  less  fantastic  model  of  an  ideal  soci- 
ety (Laws,  Bk.  v,  742  ff.),  all  citizens  are  to  be  landowners 
(though  the  agricultural  slaves  are  excluded  from  the  citizen- 
ship), and  agriculture  is  recognized  as  the  primary  business  of  the 
state.  On  the  other  hand,  commerce,  trade,  money-lending,  and 
similar  occupations  are  excluded  as  unnecessary  and  undesirable. 
Plato  regarded  agriculture  as  being  more  necessary  and  desirable 
than  the  occupations  of  "ship-owners  and  merchants  and  retailers 
and  inn-keepers  and  tax-collectors  and  mines  and  money-lending 
and  compound  interest  and  innumerable  other  things,  and  bid- 
ding goodbye  to  these,  the  legislator  gives  laws  to  husbandmen 
and  shepherds  and  bee-keepers,  and  the  guardians  and  superin- 
tendents of  their  implements.  Let  us  first  of  all,  then,  have  a  class 
of  laws  which  shall  be  called  the  laws  of  husbandmen."  (Laws, 
Bk.  viii,  842  ff.)  Further,  Plato  pays  considerable  attention  to 
various  regulations  of  the  boundaries  of  land,  forms  of  its  pos- 
session, cultivation,  and  so  on,  but  very  little  is  said  about  the 
sociological  aspects  of  the  farm  population  and  farm  life. 

However,  in  various  places  in  the  Republic  and  the  Laws,  Plato 
makes  some  remarks  that  have  a  sociological  bearing.  In  the  first 
place  he  gives  a  detailed  sketch  of  the  social  and  moral  conditions 
of  the  people  living  in  the  pre-urban  stage.  These  people  were,  at 
the  same  time,  hunters,  shepherds^  and  in  part,  simple  agricul- 
tural people.  For  this  reason  their  description  by  Plato  gives  his 
views  about  many  aspects  of  the  social  life  of  these  peoples.  The 
significant  passages  follow: 

2.  PLATO'S  CHARACTERIZATION  OF  THE  RURAL-URBAN  PEOPLES* 

Pre-urban  people. — The  desolation  of  these  primitive  men  would 
create  in  them  a  feeling  of  affection  and  friendship  towards  one  an- 
other; and  they  would  have  no  occasion  to  fight  for  their  subsistence, 
for  they  would  have  pasture  in  abundance;  on  this  pasture  land  they 

39  Plato,  Laws,  trans,  by  B.  Jowett 
*  Plato,  Laws  and  Republic* 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  31 

would  mostly  support  life  in  that  primitive  age,  having  plenty  of  milk 
and  flesh.  .  .  .  They  would  also  have  abundance  of  clothing  and  bed- 
ding, and  dwellings.  .  .  .  Hence  in  those  days  there  was  no  great  pov- 
erty; nor  was  poverty  a  cause  of  difference  among  men;  and  rich  they 
could  not  be,  if  they  had  no  gold  and  silver,  and  such  at  that  time  was 
their  condition.  And  the  community  which  has  neither  poverty  nor 
riches  will  always  have  the  noblest  principles;  there  is  no  insolence  or 
injustice,  nor,  again,  are  there  any  contentions  or  envying  among  them. 
And  therefore  they  were  good,  and  also  because  of  what  would  be 
termed  the'  simplicity  of  their  natures;  for  what  they  heard  of  the 
nature  of  good  and  evil  in  their  simplicity  they  believed  to  be  true, 
and  practiced.  No  one  had  the  wit  to  suspect  another  of  a  falsehood, 
as  men  do  now;  but  what  they  heard  about  gods  and  men  they  be- 
lieved to  be  true,  and  lived  accordingly.  .  .  .  Would  not  many  genera- 
tions living  on  in  this  way,  although  ruder,  perhaps,  and  more  igno- 
rant of  the  arts  generally,  .  .  .  and  likewise  of  other  arts,  termed  in 
cities  legal  practices  and  party  conflicts,  and  including  all  conceivable 
ways  of  hurting  one  another  in  word  and  deed;  would  they  not,  I  say, 
be  simpler  and  more  manly,  and  also  more  temperate  and  in  general 
more  just?  .  .  .  They  could  hardly  have  wanted  lawgivers  as  yet;  they 
lived  according  to  customs  and  the  laws  of  their  fathers.  .  .  ,  They 
have  neither  councils  nor  judgments,  .  .  .  and  everyone  is  the  judge 
of  his  wife  and  children,  and  they  do  not  trouble  themselves  about  one 
another.  .  .  .  And  among  them  the  eldest  rule  because  government 
originated  with  them  in  the  authority  of  a  father  and  mother,  whom, 
like  a  flock  of  birds,  they  followed,  forming  one  troup  under  the  patri- 
archal rule  and  sovereignty  of  their  parents,  which  of  all  sovereignties 
is  the  most  just  (Laws,  Bk.  iii,  pp.  679-682). 

In  the  primeval  world,  and  a  long  while  before  the  cities  came  into 
being  there  is  said  to  have  been  a  blessed  state  and  way  of  life,  of 
which  the  best  ordered  of  existing  states  is  a  copy  (Laws,  Bk.  iv, 
P-713). 

Importance  of  agriculture  and  distribution  of  land  in  an  ideal  city- 
state. — Let  them  at  once  distribute  their  land  and  houses,  and  not  till 
the  land  in  common,  since  this  sort  of  constitution  goes  beyond  their 
proposed  origin,  and  nurture,  and  education.  But  in  making  the  dis- 
tribution, let  the  several  possessors  feel  that  their  particular  lots  also 
belong  to  the  whole  city;  and  as  the  land  is  the  parent,  let  them  tend 
this  more  carefully  than  children  do  their  mother,  For  she  is  a  goddess 
and  their  queen,  and  they  are  her  mortal  subjects.  Such  also  are  the 
feelings  which  they  ought  to  entertain  to  the  gods  and  demi-gods  of 
the  country  (Laws,  Bk.  v,  p.  740). 


32  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Beneficial  effects  of  shepherdship  and  agriculture.  —  Discussing 
the  greatness  of  the  Persian  king,  Cyrus,  and  the  talentless  and 
vicious  governing  which  his  children  did,  Plato  explains  the  dif- 
ference through  the  agricultural  education  of  the  former  and  the 
luxurious  and  effeminate  education  which  the  children  received 
in  the  city  palaces. 

Their  father  [Cyrus]  had  possessions  of  cattle  and  sheep,  and  many 
herds  of  men  and  other  animals;  but  he  did  not  consider  that  those 
to  whom  he  was  about  to  make  them  over,  were  not  trained  in  his 
own  calling,  which  was  Persian;  for  the  Persians  are  shepherds-sons  of 
a  rugged  land,  which  was  a  stera  mother,  and  well  fitted  to  produce 
a  sturdy  race,  able  to  live  in  the  open  air  and  watch,  and  to  fight  also, 
if  fighting  was  required.  .  .  .  His  sons  were  trained  differently,  being 
educated  in  the  corrupt  Median  fashion  by  women  and  eunuchs  which 
led  to  their  becoming  such  as  people  do  become  when  they  are  brought 
up  unreproved.  And  so,  after  the  death  of  Cyrus,  his  sons,  in  the  full- 
ness of  luxury  and  license,  took  the  kingdom,  and  first  one  slew  the 
other;  and  afterwards  he  himself,  mad  with  wine  and  brutality,  lost 
his  kingdom  (Laws,  Bk.  iii,  p.  695)  . 

Class  struggle,  stratification,  and  lac\  of  solidarity  in  the  city.  —  For 
indeed  any  city,  however  small,  is  in  fact  divided  into  two  [parts], 
one  the  city  of  the  poor,  the  other  of  the  rich;  these  are  at  war  with 
one  another;  and  in  either  there  are  many  smaller  divisions,  and  you 
would  be  altogether  beside  the  mark  if  you  treated  them  all  as  a  single 
state  (Republic,  Bk.  iv,  pp.  422-423;  Bk.  viii,  p.  551). 

Cities  as  the  abode  of  the  greatest  vice  and  virtue.  —  Following 
the  pre-urban  stage  there  appeared  "cities  and  governments,  and 
arts  and  laws,  and  a  great  deal  of  vice  and  a  great  deal  of  virtue" 


Demoralizing  influence  of  the  city  poets,  and  the  contrast  between 
the  primitive  moral  arts  and  the  refined  arts  of  the  city.  —  Under  the 
ancient  laws  .  .  .  music  was  early  divided  into  certain  kinds  and  man- 
ners. One  sort  consisted  of  prayers  to  the  gods,  which  were  called 
hymns;  and  there  was  another  and  opposite  sort  called  lamentations 
and  another  termed  paeans,  and  another  called  dithyrambs.  ...  All 
these  and  others  were  duly  distinguished,  nor  were  they  allowed  to 
intermingle  one  sort  of  music  with  another.  And  the  authority  which 
determined  and  gave  judgment,  and  punished  the  disobedient,  was  not 
expressed  in  a  hiss,  nor  in  the  most  unmusical  "sweet  voices"  of  the 
multitude,  as  in  our  days;  nor  in  applause  and  clapping  of  the  hands. 
The  spectators  had  to  listen  in  silence  to  the  end.  .  .  .  And  then,  as 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  33 

time  went  on,  the  poets  themselves  introduced  the  reign  of  ignorance 
and  misrule.  They  were  men  of  genius,  but  they  had  no  knowledge  of 
what  is  just  and  lawful  in  music.  .  .  .  Ignorantly  affirming  that  music 
has  no  truth,  and,  whether  good  or  bad,  can  only  be  judged  of  rightly 
by  pleasure  of  the  hearer;  and  by  composing  such  licentious  poems, 
they  have  inspired  the  multitude  with  lawlessness  and  boldness,  and 
made  them  fancy  that  they  can  judge  for  themselves  about  melody  and 
song.  And  in  this  way,  the  theaters  from  being  mute  have  become 
vocal,  as  though  they  had  understanding  of  good  and  bad  in  music 
and  poetry;  and  instead  of  an  aristocracy,  an  evil  sort  of  "theatrocracy" 
has  grown  up.  ...  Consequent  upon  this  freedom  comes  the  other 
freedom  of  disobedience  to  rulers;  and  then  the  attempt  to  escape  the 
control  and  exhortation  of  father,  mother,  elders,  and  when  near  the 
end,  the  control  of  the  laws  also;  and  at  the  very  end  there  is  the  con- 
tempt of  oaths  and  pledges,  and  no  regard  at  all  for  the  gods;  and 
Thus  they  .  .  .  lead  an  evil  life,  and  there  is  no  cessation  of  ills  (Laws, 
Bk.  iii,  p.  701;  Republic,  Bk.  ii,  p.  377;  Bk.  iii,  pp.  391-392,  408;  Bk.  x, 
pp.  595 if.). 
III.  ARISTOTLE 

The  subsequent  quotations  from  the  Politic  a  and  Oeconomica 
of  Aristotle  (384-322  B.C.)  give  the  essentials  of  his  views  con- 
cerning the  agricultural  population  and  life.  Two  remarks  only 
is  it  necessary  to  add.  First,  as  with  almost  all  ancient  writers,  his 
positive  characterizations  concern  the  free  cultivator,  farmer,  or 
peasant  who  works  his  farm  alone  or  with  the  help  of  a  few 
slaves;  they  do  not  concern  the  unfree  agricultural  population, 
slaves  and  serfs,  who,  like  all  other  slaves,  were  supposed  to  be 
different  from  the  free  farmers.  Second,  in  spite  of  his  very  posi- 
tive characterization  of  the  agricultural  class,  he,  in  his  outline  of 
the  ideal  city-state,  excluded  it  from  citizenship.  The  reason  for 
this  is  not  so  much  the  inferiority  of  farmers  as  their  lack  of  train- 
ing for  highly  responsible  governmental  functions,  together  with 
their  lack  of  leisure  for  discharging  the  functions  of  citizens.  Be- 
lieving that  the  best  government  is  that  by  highly  trained  and 
selected  experts  who  should  give  all  their  energy  and  time  to  this 
vocation,  Aristotle  thought  that  these  requirements  could  not  be 
met  by  the  farm  population,  who  were  busy  with  work  and  who 
often  lived  outside  of  the  cities.  Hence  this  exclusion  of  farmers 
from  citizenship  in  his  ideal  city-state.  However,  surveying  the 
existing  facts  as  they  were,  and  not  as  they  ought  to  be  in  the 


34      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ideal  state  (conjectured  in  the  conditions  of  Greece  as  they  were 
in  time  of  Aristotle),  "the  king  of  philosophers"  emphatically 
stressed  the  positive  characteristics  of  the  class  studied  and  its  su- 
periority— physical,  military,  moral,  political,  and  social—over  the 
city  rabble  and  the  bulk  of  the  city  population.  The  same  high 
position  among  occupations  is  given  to  the  pursuit  of  agriculture. 

3.  ARISTOTLE:  THE  ART  OF  AGRICULTURE* 

Now  in  the  course  of  nature  the  art  of  agriculture  is  prior,  and  next 
come  those  arts  which  extract  the  products  of  the  earth,  mining  and 
the  like.  Agriculture  ranks  first  because  of  its  justice;  for  it  does  not 
take  anything  away  from  men,  either  with  their  consent,  as  do  retail 
trading  and  the  mercenary  arts,  or  against  their  will,  as  do  the  warlike 
arts.  Further,  agriculture  is  natural;  for  by  nature  all  derive  their  sus- 
tenance from  their  mother,  and  so  men  derive  it  from  the  earth.  In 
addition  to  this  it  also  conduces  greatly  to  bravery;  for  it  does  not 
make  men's  bodies  unserviceable,  as  do  the  liberal  arts,  but  it  renders 
them  able  to  lead  an  open  air  life  and  work  hard;  furthermore  it 
makes  them  adventurous  against  the  foe,  for  husbandmen  are  the  only 
citizens  whose  property  lies  outside  the  fortifications  (Vol.  X,  Bk.  i, 
1343). 

4.  ARISTOTLE:  DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  HUSBANDMEN! 

Of  the  four  kinds  of  democracy,  as  was  said  in  the  previous  discus- 
sion, the  best  is  that  which  comes  first  in  order;  it  is  also  the  oldest  of 
them  all.  I  am  speaking  of  them  according  to  the  natural  classification 
of  their  inhabitants.  For  the  best  material  of  democracy  is  an  agricul- 
tural population;  there  is  no  difficulty  in  forming  a  democracy  where 
the  mass  of  the  people  live  by  agriculture  or  tending  of  cattle.  Being 
poor,  they  have  no  leisure,  and  therefore  do  not  often  attend  the  assem- 
bly, and  not  having  the  necessaries  of  life  they  are  always  at  work,  and 
do  not  covet  the  property  of  others.  Indeed,  they  find  their  employ- 
ment pleasanter  than  the  cares  of  government  or  office  where  no  great 
gains  can  be  made  out  of  them,  for  the  many  are  more  desirous  of 
gain  than  of  honor.  A  proof  is  that  even  the  ancient  tyrannies  were 
patiently  endured  by  them,  as  they  still  endure  oligarchies,  if  they  are 
allowed  to  work  and  are  not  deprived  of  their  property;  for  some  of 
them  grow  quickly  rich  and  the  others  are  well  enough  off.  Moreover, 
they  have  the  power  of  electing  the  magistrates  and  calling  them  to 
account;  their  ambition,  if  they  have  any,  is  thus  satisfied.  .  .  . 

*  Aristotle,  Oeconomica,  in  The  Works  of  Aristotle,  trans,  by  W.  D.  Ross,  Oxford, 
1921, 

Aristotle,  Politico,  in  The  Wor\s  of  Aristotle,  trans,  by  W.  D.  Ross,  Oxford,  1921 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  35 

Hence  it  is  both  expedient  and  customary  in  the  afore-mentioned 
type  o£  democracy  that  all  should  elect  to  offices,  and  conduct  scruti- 
nies, and  sit  in  the  law  courts,  but  that  the  great  offices  should  be  filled 
up  by  election  and  from  persons  having  a  qualification;  the  greater  re- 
quiring a  greater  qualification,  or,  if  there  be  no  offices  for  which  a 
qualification  is  required,  then  those  who  are  marked  out  by  special 
ability  should  be  appointed.  Under  such  a  form  of  government  the 
citizens  are  sure  to  be  governed  well  (for  the  offices  will  always  be  held 
by  the  best  persons;  the  people  are  willing  enough  to  elect  them  and 
are  not  jealous  of  the  good). 

The  good  and  the  notables  will  then  be  satisfied,  for  they  will  not  be 
governed  by  men  who  are  their  inferiors,  and  the  persons  elected  will 
rule  justly,  because  others  will  call  them  to  account.  Every  man  should 
be  responsible  to  others,  nor  should  anyone  be  allowed  to  do  just  as 
he,  pleases;  for  where  absolute  freedom  is  allowed  there  is  nothing  to 
restrain  the  evil  which  is  inherent  in  every  man. 

But  the  principle  of  responsibility  secures  that  which  is  the  greatest 
good  in  states;  the  right  persons  rule  and  are  prevented  from  doing 
wrong,  and  the  people  have  their  due.  It  is  evident  that  this  is  the  best 
kind  of  democracy,  and  why?  Because  the  people  are  drawn  from  a 
certain  class.  Some  of  the  ancient  laws  of  most  states  were,  all  of  them, 
useful  with  a  view  to  making  the  people  husbandmen.  They  provided 
either  that  no  one  should  possess  more  than  a  certain  quantity  of  land, 
or  that,  if  he  di'd,  the  land  should  not  be  within  a  certain  distance 
from  the  town  or  the  acropolis.  Formerly  in  many  states  there  was  a 
law  forbidding  anyone  to  sell  his  original  allotment  of  land.  There  is 
a  similar  law  attributed  to  Oxylus,  which  is  to  the  effect  that  there 
should  be  a  certain  portion  of  every  man's  land  on  which  he  could  not 
borrow  money.  A  useful  corrective  to  the  evil  of  which  I  am  speaking 
would  be  the  law  of  the  Aphytasans,  who,  although  they  are  numerous, 
and  do  not  possess  much  land,  are  all  of  them  husbandmen.  For  their 
properties  are  reckoned  in  the  census,  not  entire,  but  only  in  such 
small  portions  that  even  the  poor  may  have  more  than  the  amount 
required. 

Next  best  to  an  agricultural,  and  in  ma^ny  respects  similar,  are  a  pas- 
toral people,  who  live  by  their  flocks;  they  are  the  best  trained  of  any 
for  war,  robust  in  body  and  able  to  camp  out.  The  people  of  whom 
other  democracies  consist  are  far  inferior  to  them,  for  their  life  is 
inferior;  there  is  no  room  for  moral  excellence  in  any  of  their  em- 
ployments, whether  they  be  mechanics  or  traders  or  laborers.  Besides, 
people  of  this  class  can  readily  come  to  the  assembly,  because  they 
are  continually  moving  about  in  the  city  and  in  the  agora;  whereas 
husbandmen  are  scattered  over  the  country  and  do  not  meet,  or 


36      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

equally  feel  the  want  of  assembling  together.  Where  the  territory 
also  happens  to  extend  to  a  distance  from  the  city,  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  making  an  excellent  democracy  or  constitutional  government; 
for  the  people  are  compelled  to  settle  in  the  country,  and  even  if  there 
is  a  town  population  the  assembly  ought  not  to  meet  in  democracies, 
when  the  country  people  cannot  come.  We  have  thus  explained  how 
the  first  and  best  form  of  democracy  should  be  constituted;  it  is  clear 
that  the  other  or  inferior  sorts  will  deviate  in  a  regular  order,  and  the 
population  which  is  excluded  will  at  each  stage  be  of  a  lower  kind 
(Vol.  X,  Bk.  vi,  1318-1319). 

IV.  XENOPHON 

There  is  scarcely  any  prominent  Greek  thinker  who  so  enthusi- 
astically, and  in  such  detailed  form,  stressed  the  positive  charac- 
teristics of  free  agricultural  population  and  the  beneficial  effects 
of  agriculture  as  Xenophon  (born  about  431  or  444;  died  354 
B.C.),  the  famous  pupil  of  Socrates.  The  subsequent  passage  gives 
the  essentials  of  his  views  upon  these  subjects. 

5.  XENOPHON:  COMPARISON  OF  HUSBANDMEN  WITH  ARTISANS* 

SOCRATES.  A  good  suggestion,  Critobulus,  for  the  base  mechanic  arts, 
so-called,  have  got  a  bad  name;  and  what  is  more,  are  held  in  ill  repute 
by  civilized  communities,  and  not  unreasonably;  seeing  they  are  the 
ruin  of  the  bodies  of  all  concerned  in  them,  workers  and  overseers 
alike,  who  are  forced  to  remain  in  sitting  postures  and  to  hug  the 
gloom,  or  else  to  crouch  whole  days  confronting  a  furnace.  Hand  in 
hand  with  physical  enervation  follows  apace  enfeeblement  of  soul, 
while  the  demand  which  these  base  mechanic  arts  make  on  the  time  of 
those  employed  in  them  leaves  them  no  leisure  to  devote  to  the  claims 
of  friendship  and  the  state.  How  can  such  folk  be  other  than  sorry 
friends  and  ill  defenders  of  the  fatherland?  So  much  so  that  in  some 
states,  especially  those  reputed  to  be  warlike,  no  citizen  is  allowed  to 
exercise  any  mechanical  craft  at  all. 

The  clearest  proof  of  this,  we  said,  could  be  discovered  if,  on  the 
occasion  of  a  hostile  inroad,  one  were  to  seat  the  husbandmen  and  the 
artisans  apart  in  two  divisions,  and  then  proceed  to  put  this  question 
to  each  group  in  turn :  "Do  you  think  it  better  to  defend  our  country 
districts  or  to  retire  from  the  fields  and  guard  the  walls?"  And  we 
anticipated  that  those  concerned  with  the  soil  would  vote  to  defend 
the  soil;  while  the  artisans  would  vote  not  to  fight,  but,  in  docile 

*  Xenophon,  The  Economist,  in  The  Wor^s  of  Xenophon,  trans,  by  H.  G.  Dakyns, 
London,  1897. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  37 

obedience  to  their  training,  to  sit  with  folded  hands,  neither  expending 
toil  nor  venturing  their  lives  .  .  .  (Ill,  213,  223). 

6.  XENOPHON:  EULOGY  OF  AGRICULTURE* 

All  this  I  relate  to  you  (continued  Socrates)  to  show  you  that  quite 
high  and  mighty  people  find  it  hard  to  hold  aloof  from  agriculture, 
devotion  to  which  art  would  seem  to  be  thrice  blest,  combining  as  it 
does  a  certain  sense  of  luxury  with  the  satisfaction  of  an  improved 
estate,  and  such  a  training  of  physical  energies  as  shall  fit  a  man  to 
play  a  free  man's  part.  Earth,  in  the  first  place,  freely  offers  to  those 
that  labor  all  things  necessary  to  the  life  of  man;  and,  as  if  that  were 
not  enough,  makes  further  contribution  of  a  thousand  luxuries.  It  is 
she  supplies  with  sweetest  scent  and  fairest  show  all  things  where- 
with to  adorn  the  altars  and  statues  of  the  gods,  or  deck  man's  person. 
It  is  to  her  we  owe  our  many  delicacies  of  flesh  or  fowl  or  vegetable 
growth;  since  with  the  tillage  of  the  soil  is  closely  linked  the  art  of 
breeding  sheep  and  cattle,  whereby  we  mortals  may  offer  sacrifices 
well  pleasing  to  the  gods,  and  satisfy  our  personal  needs  withal. 

And  albeit  she,  good  cateress,  pours  out  her  blessings  upon  us  in 
abundance,  yet  she  suffers  not  her  gifts  to  be  received  effeminately, 
but  inures  her  pensioners  to  suffer  gladly  summer's  heat  and  winter's 
cold.  Those  that  labor  with  their  hands,  the  actual  delvers  of  the  soil, 
she  trains  in  a  wrestling  school  of  her  own,  adding  strength  to 
strength;  whilst  those  others  whose  devotion  is  confined  to  the  over- 
seeing eye  and  to  studious  thought,  she  makes  more  manly,  rousing 
them  with  cockcrow,  and  compelling  them  to  be  up  and  doing  in 
many  a  long  day's  march.  Since,  whether  in  city  or  afield,  with  the 
shifting  seasons  each  necessary  labor  has  its  hour  of  performance. 

Or  to  turn  to  another  side.  Suppose  it  to  be  a  man's  ambition  to  aid 
his  city  as  a  trooper  mounted  on  a  charger  of  his  own:  why  not  com- 
bine the  rearing  of  horses  with  other  stock?  It  is  the  farmer's  chance. 
Or  would  your  citizen  serve  on  foot?  It  is  husbandry  that  shall  give 
him  robustness  of  body.  Or  if  we  turn  to  the  toil-loving  fascination 
of  the  chase,  here  once  more  earth  adds  incitement,  as  well  by  furnish- 
ing facility  of  sustenance  for  the  dogs  as  by  nurturing  a  foster  brood 
of  wild  animals.  And  if  horses  and  dogs  derive  benefit  from  this  art 
of  husbandry,  they  in  turn  requite  the  boon  through  service  rendered 
to  the  farm.  The  horse  carries  his  best  of  friends,  the  careful  master, 
betimes  to  the  scene  of  labor  and  devotion,  and  enables  him  to  leave 
it  late.  The  dog  keeps  off  the  depredations  of  wild  animals  from 
fruits  and  flocks,  and  creates  security  in  the  solitary  place. 

*Xenophon,  op.  cit. 


38      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Earth,  too,  adds  stimulus  in  wartime  to  earth's  tillers;  she  pricks 
them  on  to  aid  the  country  under  arms,  and  this  she  does  by  fostering 
her  fruits  in  open  field,  the  prize  of  valor  for  the  mightiest.  For  this 
also  is  the  art  athletic,  this  of  husbandry;  as  thereby  men  are  fitted  to 
run,  and  hurl  the  spear,  and  leap  with  the  best. 

This,  too,  is  that  kindliest  of  arts  which  makes  requital  tenfold  in 
kind  for  every  work  of  the  laborer.  For  where  else,  save  in  some 
happy  rural  seat  of  her  devising  shall  a  man  more  cheerily  cherish 
content  in  winter,  with  bubbling  bath  and  blazing  fire?  or  where, 
save  afield,  in  summer  rest  more  sweetly,  lulled  by  babbling  streams, 
soft  airs,  and  tender  shades? 

For  myself,  I  marvel  greatly  if  it  has  ever  fallen  to  the  lot  of  free- 
born  man  to  own  a  choicer  possession,  or  to  discover  an  occupation 
more  seductive,  or  of  wider  usefulness  in  life  than  this. 

But,  furthermore,  earth  of  her  own  will  gives  lessons  in  justice  and 
uprightness  to  all  who  can  understand  her  meaning,  since  the  nobler 
the  service  of  devotion  rendered,  the  ampler  the  riches  of  her  recom- 
pense. One  day,  perchance,  these  pupils  of  hers,  whose  conversation 
in  past  times  was  in  husbandry,  shall,  by  reason  of  the  multitude  of 
invading  armies,  be  ousted  from  their  labors.  The  work  of  their  hands 
may  indeed  be  snatched  from  them,  but  they  were  brought  up  in  stout 
and  manly  fashion.  They  stand,  each  one  of  them,  in  body  and  soul 
equipped;  and,  save  God  himself  shall  hinder  them,  they  will  march 
into  the  territory  of  those  their  human  hinderers,  and  take  from  them 
the  wherewithal  to  support  their  lives.  Since  often  enough  in  war  it  is 
surer  and  safer  to  quest  for  food  with  sword  and  buckler  than  with 
all  the  instruments  of  husbandry. 

But  there  is  yet  another  lesson  to  be  learnt  in  the  public  school  of 
husbandry — the  lesson  of  mutual  assistance.  "Shoulder  to  shoulder" 
must  we  march  to  meet  the  invader;  "shoulder  to  shoulder"  stand  to 
compass  the  tillage  of  the  soil.  Therefore  it  is  that  the  husbandman 
who  means  to  win  in  his  avocation,  must  see  that  he  creates  enthusiasm 
in  his  workpeople  and  a  spirit  of  ready  obedience;  which  is  just  what 
a  general  attacking  an  enemy  will  scheme  to  bring  about,  when  he 
deals  out  gifts  to  the  brave  and  castigation  to  those  who  are  disorderly. 

It  was  an  excellent  saying  of  his  who  named  husbandry  "the  mother 
and  nurse  of  all  the  arts,"  for  while  agriculture  prospers  all  other  arts 
alike  are  vigorous  and  strong,  but  where  the  land  is  forced  to  remain 
desert,  the  spring  that  feeds  the  other  arts  is  dried  up;  they  dwindle, 
I  had  almost  said,  one  and  all,  by  land  and  sea. 

Furthermore,  other  craftsmen  (the  race,  I  mean  in  general  of 
artists)  are  each  and  all  disposed  to  keep  the  most  important  features 
of  their  several  arts  concealed;  with  husbandry  it  is  different.  Here  the 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  39 

man  who  has  most  skill  in  planting  will  take  most  pleasure  in  being 
watched  by  others;  and  so  too  the  most  skilful  sower.  Ask  any  ques- 
tion you  may  choose  about  results  thus  beautifully  wrought,  and  not 
one  feature  in  the  whole  performance  will  the  doer  of  it  seek  to  keep 
concealed.  To  such  height  of  nobleness  does  husbandry  appear,  like 
some  fair  mistress,  to  conform  the  soul  and  disposition  of  those  con- 
cerned with  it  (III,  218-221,  265). 

D,  ANCIENT  ROMAN  SOURCES 

Rome's  foundation  and  its  expansion  during  the  early  period 
was  due  to  the  Roman  farmers  who,  at  the  same  time,  were  Ro- 
man soldiers.  The  Roman  army  of  that  period  was  an  army  of 
farmers  and  what  was  taken  by  the  force  of  arms  was  firmly  con- 
solidated by  the  power  of  the  plough  of  the  Roman  farmer- 
soldier  colonist.  Stability  of  the  social  order,  simplicity  of  life,  stern 
virtue,  and  a  successful  expansion  of  the  empire,  all  these  left  un- 
forgettable and  fascinating  impressions  upon  subsequent  genera- 
tions; this  applies  especially  to  those  who  lived  during  the  social 
instability,  disorder,  increased  complexity,  and  difficulties  of  the 
later  highly  urbanized  Roman  Empire.  It  is  not  surprising,  there- 
fore, that  practically  all  prominent  Roman  writers  who  discussed 
the  problems  of  the  sociological  aspects  of  the  farm  population 
and  agriculture  were  unanimous  in  their  views  on  the  important 
aspects  of  those  problems. 

The  majority  of  the  writers  whose  works  have  reached  us  lived 
in  this  period  of  increased  difficulties  in  the  Roman  Empire;  some 
of  them  lived  in  the  period  of  great  disorganization  and  at  the 
beginning  of  the  decay.  This  facilitated  still  more  a  positive  and 
idealized  interpretation  of  the  early  period  of  Roman  history  and 
its  farmer-soldier  population.  This  explains  the  conspicuous  simi- 
larity of  the  opinions  of  the  prominent  Roman  writers  in  this 
field.  From  Varro's  work  we  learn  that  the  number  of  writers 
about  agricultural  problems  in  Rome  was  great.  But  many  works 
were  lost.  Of  the  ones  surviving,  those  of  Cato,  Varro,  Cicero,  Sal- 
lust,  Virgil,  Horace,  Columella,  Palladius,  Seneca,  Lucan,  Muso- 
nius,  Pliny,  Tacitus,  Dion  Chrysostom,  Martial,  Juvenal,  Apule- 
ius,  Libanius,  and  a  few  others  have  some  bearing  upon  our 
problems.  Although  varying  in  many  respects,  they  have  in 
common  a  very  high  estimation  of  the  class  of  free  farmers  and 


40  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  effects  of  agricultural  occupations  upon  the  body  and  mind 
of  the  individual  and  upon  the  social  order  and  social  life  of  so- 
ciety. Side  by  side  with  this,  some  of  them  try  to  establish  a  series 
of  correlations  between  "the  agricultural  variables"  and  several 
classes  of  social  phenomena.  From  these  works  there  follow  the 
most  important  passages  from  Cato,  Virgil,  Varro,  Columella, 
and  Polybius.37 

I.  CATO 

The  De  Re  Rustica  of  Marcus  Porcius  Cato  (234449  B.C.)  is  a 
treatise  in  practical  farm  management.  Although  valuable  in  this 
respect,  the  work  contains  only  a  few  short  remarks  that  have  a 
sociological  bearing, 

7.  CATO:  OF  THE  DIGNITY  OF  THE  FARMER* 

The  pursuits  of  commerce  would  be  as  admirable  as  they  are  profit- 
able if  they  were  not  subject  to  so  great  risks;  and  so,  likewise,  of 
banking,  if  it  was  always  honestly  conducted.  For  our  ancestors  con- 
sidered, and  so  ordained  in  their  laws,  that,  while  the  thief  should  be 
cast  in  double  damages,  the  usurer  should  make  four-fold  restitution. 
From  this  we  may  judge  how  much  less  desirable  a  citizen  they 
esteemed  the  banker  than  the  thief.  When  they  sought  to  commend 
an  honest  man,  they  termed  him  good  husbandman,  good  farmer. 
This  they  rated  the  superlative  of  praise.  Personally,  I  think  highly 
of  a  man  actively  and  diligently  engaged  in  commerce,  who  seeks 
thereby  to  make  his  fortune,  yet,  as  I  have  said,  his  career  is  full  of 
risks  and  pitfalls.  But  it  is  from  the  tillers  of  the  soil  that  spring  the 
best  citizens,  the  staunchest  soldiers;  and  theirs  are  the  enduring  re- 
wards which  are  most  grateful  and  least  envied.  Such  as  devote  them- 
selves to  that  pursuit  are  least  of  all  men  given  to  evil  counsels  (pp. 
19-20). 

II.  VARRO 

Marcus  Terentius  Varro  (116-27?  B.C.)  is  regarded  as  the  most 
learned  scholar  of  Rome.  He  wrote  490  books,  among  them  The 
Antiquities  Human  and  Divine,  which  possibly  would  be  of  the 
greatest  value  for  a  social  scientist.  This  work,  however,  like 
almost  all  the  other  works  of  Varro,  is  lost.  Only  his  Rerum  Rus- 
ticarum  Libri  Tres  remains.  The  subsequent  passages  give  all  the 

87  Cf.  Heitland's  work  quoted. 

*  Taken  from  Roman  Farm  Management:  the  Treatises  of  Cato  and  Varro,  trans,  by 
a  Virginia  farmer,  New  York,  1913. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  41 

most  important  sociological  passages  from  this  treatise  on  farm 
management. 

8.  VARRO:  ON  FARMING* 

Stages  of  social  evolution. — Human  life  must  have  come  down 
from  the  highest  antiquity  to  our  time,  stage  by  stage,  and  the  re- 
motest stage  must  have  been  the  state  of  Nature  when  man  lived  on 
those  things  which  the  virgin  earth  produced  spontaneously.  Then 
from  this  mode  of  life  they  must  have  descended  to  the  second  mode, 
the  pastoral,  in  which  by  plucking  from  wild  and  woodland  trees  and 
shrubs,  acorns,  arbutus  berries,  and  mulberries,  they  made  a  store  of 
fruit  for  subsequent  use,  and  in  the  same  way  and  for  the  same  end 
captured  such  wild  animals  as  they  could  and  shut  them  up  and  tamed 
them.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  among  these  animals  sheep  were 
the  first  adopted,  on  account  of  their  usefulness  and  gentle  nature,  for 
they  are  by  nature  extremely  gentle  and  especially  fitted  for  associa- 
tion with  man's  life,  for  through  them  milk  and  cheese  were  added 
to  his  food,  and  for  his  body  they  furnished  clothing  in  the  shape  of 
skins.  .  .  .  Finally,  with  the  third  stage,  they  reached,  from  the  pas- 
toral mode  of  life,  the  agricultural,  retaining  in  it  much  of  the  two 
former  stages,  and  went  on  long  in  the  stage  which  they  had  reached 
before  they  could  attain  our  present  civilization  (Bk.  ii,  chap.  i). 

Agriculture  as  an  art. — In  the  first  place,  agriculture  is  not  only  an 
art,  but  an  art  as  important  as  it  is  necessary;  it  teaches  us  what  crops 
are  to  be  sown  and  what  methods  adopted  on  each  and  every  soil,  and 
what  kind  of  land  yields  continuously  the  greatest  increase  (Bk.  i, 
chap.  Hi). 

Rural  and  urban  modes  of  life.— -In  the  history  of  mankind  we  find 
two  modes  of  life,  that  of  the  country  and  that  of  the  town,  and  it  is 
obvious  that  these  two  differ  not  only  as  to  place,  but  as  to  time  when 
they  began  to  be.  The  country  life  is  much  the  more  ancient  of  the 
two,  seeing  that  there  was  once  a  time  when  men  lived  in  the  country 
and  had  no  town  at  all.  For  the  oldest  Greek  town  known  to  history 
is  the  Boetian  Thebes,  which  was  built  by  King  Ogygos;  the  oldest 
town  in  Roman  territory,  Rome,  which  King  Romulus  built.  .  .  .  Well, 
Thebes,  which  was  founded  it  is  said  before  the  Ogygian  deluge,  has 
yet  not  existed  for  more  than  2,100  years.  And  if  you  consider  those 
years  with  reference  to  that  far-off  time  when  fields  began  to  be  culti- 
vated, and  man  lived  in  huts  and  hovels  nor  knew  what  a  wall  or 
a  gate  was,  you  will  see  that  farmers  are  more  ancient  than  the 
dwellers  in  towns  by  an  astounding  number  of  years;  and  small  won- 

*  Varro  on  Farming,  trans,  by  Lloyd  Storr-Best,  London,  1912. 


42  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

der,  for  divine  nature  made  the  country,  but  man's  skill,  the  towns, 
and  all  the  arts  were  discovered  in  Greece,  'tis  said,  within  the  space 
of  a  thousand  years;  but  there  was  never  a  time  when  there  were  in 
the  world  no  fields  which  could  be  cultivated. 

And  not  only  is  farming  more  ancient,  it  is  also  better;  wherefore 
our  ancestors  with  good  reason  sent  their  citizens  from  the  town  back 
to  the  land,  for  in  peace  they  were  fed  by  the  rustic  Romans  and  in 
war  were  defended  by  them.  With  good  reason,  too,  did  they  call  the 
same  land  by  the  name  of  "Mother"  and  "Ceres,"  and  believed  that 
they  who  cultivated  her  lived  a  holy  and  useful  life,  and  were  all  that 
remained  of  the  race  of  good  King  Saturn.  .  .  .  The  first  farmers 
were  unable,  owing  to  their  poverty,  to  distinguish  in  practice  between 
different  kinds  of  farming,  and,  being  the  children  of  shepherds,  both 
sowed  and  grazed  the  same  land  .  .  .  (Bk.  iii,  chap.  i). 

Comparative  health  of  the  country  and  the  city  people. — Good  rea- 
son had  our  great  ancestors  for  setting  the  Romans  of  the  country 
above  those  of  the  town.  For,  just  as  in  the  country  those  who  live 
and  work  inside  the  farmhouse  are  of  slacker  fibre  than  those  who 
work  on  the  land,  so  those  who  led  the  sedentary  life  of  a  town  were 
accounted  by  our  ancestors  a  feebler  folk  than  those  who  tilled  the 
fields.  Accordingly,  in  dividing  their  year  they  arranged  for  the  trans- 
action of  the  city  business  every  ninth  day  only,  giving  the  remaining 
seven  days  of  each  "week"  to  the  cultivation  of  the  fields.  And  as 
long  as  they  maintained  this  custom  two  ends  were  achieved:  by  culti- 
vation they  made  and  kept  their  lands  most  productive,  while  they 
themselves  enjoyed  a  lustier  health,  and  might  dispense  with  the  town 
gymnasia  of  the  Greek.  Whereas  nowadays  men  are  hardly  satisfied 
with  one  gymnasium  apiece,  and  do  not  consider  that  they  possess  a 
country  house  unless  it  is  dignified  by  a  lot  of  Greek  names  which  they 
give  to  its  separate  parts.  .  .  .  And  now  that  nearly  all  heads  of  fami- 
lies have  deserted  scythe  and  plough,  and  sneaked  within  the  city 
walls,  preferring  to  keep  their  hands  astir  in  theater  and  circus  rather 
than  amidst  corn  crops  and  vineyards,  we  contract  with  [foreign] 
people  to  bring  us  the  corn,  whereby  we  may  grow  fat,  from  Africa 
and  Sardinia,  and  get  in  the  vintage  by  ship  from  the  islands  of  Cos 
or  Chios.  And  so  in  that  country  where  the  city's  founders  were 
shepherds  and  taught  agriculture  to  their  descendants,  these  descend- 
ants have  reversed  the  process,  and,  through  covetousness  and  in  de- 
spite of  laws,  have  turned  corn  land  into  meadows,  not  knowing  the 
difference  between  agriculture  and  grazing  .  .  .  (Bk.  ii,  Introduction) . 

Among  the  shepherds  and  cattle-breeders  in  Liburnia  [Croatia] 
you  saw  their  Liburnian  housewives  carrying  logs,  and  at  the  same 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  43 

time  children,  whom  they  were  suckling;  thus  proving  how  feeble 
and  contemptible  are  our  modern  newly  delivered  mothers,  who  he 
for  days  inside  mosquito  nets.  ...  In  Illyricum  it  often  happens  that 
a  pregnant  woman  when  the  time  of  delivery  has  come,  retires  a  little 
distance  from  the  scene  of  her  work,  is  there  delivered,  and  comes 
back  with  a  child  whom  you  would  think  she  has  found,  not  brought 
into  the  world  (Bk.  ii,  chap,  x) . 

Like  Greek  thinkers,  practically  all  Roman  writers  testify  to 
the  better  health  and  vitality  of  the  rural  population  compared 
with  the  urban.  "The  strongest  soldiers  come  from  the  rough 
country,  while  the  lazy  ones  come  from  the  city,"  says  Seneca 
(Epilogue  51:1041).  This  is  commonly  supported  by  all  great 
writers  of  Rome,  Greece,  and  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

III.  VIRGIL 

Like  Cato,  Varro,  and  others,  Publius  Virgilius  Maro  (70-19 
B.C.),  the  greatest  Roman  poet,  held  that  the  welfare  of  Italy  de- 
pended upon  agriculture.  Like  them,  he  knew  country  life  well, 
sympathized  with  it,  and  correspondingly  made  it  the  subject  of 
his  Georgics  and  Eclogues.  If  the  Eclogues  are  too  bucolic,  the 
Georgics  are  realistic  to  a  considerable  degree.  They  describe  in 
detail  the  many  and  complex  operations  of  agricultural  work,  the 
care,  the  intelligence,  the  hardships,  and  the  delights  of  it,  and 
give  a  very  vivid  picture  of  Roman  farming  and  Roman  farm 
life.  In  the  first  place  he  points  out  that  farmers  are  "a  tribe  as 
hard  as  stone,"  and  mentions  "the  farmer's  toil  of  which  there  is 
no  end."  He  also  laments  the  destruction  of  farming  in  time  of 
war  or  urbanization,  and  the  exploitation  of  the  farmers  by  the 
cities.  In  his  time  (a  period  of  civil  war  and  urbanization)  "no 
honor  due  is  given  the  sacred  plough;  our  fields  and  farms,  their 
masters  taken,  rankly  lie  unfilled."  And  his  farmer  says  that 
"although  sleek  cattle  of  my  fold  were  sold  for  sacrifice,  and  from 
my  presses  cheese,  cheese  of  the  best,  went  to  the  thankless  town, 
still  I  came  always  empty-handed  home"  (Eclogues,  I,  126).  Nev- 
ertheless farm  life  has  its  own  delights  and  blessings.38  The  subse- 
quent passage  gives  a  striking  picture  of  these  positive  aspects  of 
it  as  contrasted  with  the  unKoly  city  life. 

88  Quotations  are  from  The  Georgics  and  Eclogues  of  Virgil,  trans,  by  Theodore 
Chickering  Williams,  Cambridge,  1915. 


44       SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

9.  VIRGIL:  PICTURE  OF  RUSTIC  LIFE* 

Yet  happy  he 

Who  knows  a  shepherd's  gods,  protecting  Pan, 
Sylvan  of  hoary  head,  and  sisterhoods 
Of  nymphs  in  wave  and  tree.   He  lives  unmoved 
By  public  honors  or  the  purple  pall 
Of  kingly  power,  or  impious  strife  that  stirs 
'Twixt  brothers  breaking  faith.  .  .  . 

he  need  not  weep 

For  pity  of  the  poor,  nor  lustful-eyed 
View  great  possessions.  He  plucks  mellow  fruit 
From  his  own  orchard  trees  and  gathers  in 
The  proffered  harvest  of  obedient  fields. 
Of  ruthless  laws,  the  forum's  frenzied  will, 
Of  public  scrolls  of  deed  and  archive  sealed, 
He  nothing  knows.   Let  strangers  to  such  peace 
Trouble  with  oars  the  boundless  seas  or  fly 
To  wars,  and  plunder  the  palaces  of  kings; 
Make  desolate  whole  cities.  ...  A  man  here  hoards 
His  riches,  dreaming  of  his  buried  gold; 
Another  on  the  rostrum's  flattered  pride 
Stares  awe-struck.  Him  th'  applause  of  multitudes, 
People  and  senators,  .  .  . 

quite  enslaves. 

With  civil  slaughter  and  fraternal  blood 
One  day  such  reek  exultant,  on  the  next 
Lose  evermore  the  long-loved  hearth  and  home. 
Meanwhile  the  husbandman  upturns  the  glebe 
With  well-curved  share,  inaugurating  so 
The  whole  year's  fruitful  toil,  by  which  he  feeds 
His  native  land,  his  children's  children  too, 
His  flocks  and  herds  and  cattle  worth  his  care. 
Ever  the  gifts  flow  on.  .  .  . 

The  livelong  year 

His  gathered  children  to  his  kisses  cling. 
His  honest  house  lives  chastely;  full  of  milk 
Is  all  his  herd,  and  on  his  meadows  fair 
The  lusty  he-goats  lock  their  butting  horns 
Such  master  keeps  full  well  each  festal  day. 
Couched  on  green  turf  around  the  central  fire, 
The  revellers  with  garlands  wreath  the  bowl 

*  Virgil,  op.  ctt. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  45 

Pouring  to  thee,  Lenaeus,  with  due  prayer.  .  .  . 
Such  way  of  life  the  ancient  Sabines  knew, 
And  Remus  with  his  twin;  thus  waxed  the  power 
Of  the  Etrurian  cities;  thus  rose  Rome 
The  world's  chief  jewel.  .  .  . 

Yea,  ...  ere  impious  man 
Began  on  murdered  flocks  to  feast  his  kind, 
Such  life  on  earth  did  golden  Saturn  show. 
None  heard  the  trumpet's  blast,  nor  direful  clang 
Of  smitten  anvils  loud  with  shaping  swords. 

— Georgics,  II,  66-68 
IV.  COLUMELLA 

The  DC  Re  Rustica 39  of  L.  Junius  Moderatus  Columella  (first 
century  A.D.)  is  possibly  the  fullest  of  all  the  Roman  treatises  on 
agriculture  that  have  come  down  to  us.  In  various  parts  of  this 
work  there  are  scattered  many  sociological  remarks  and  state- 
ments. The  majority  of  them  are  given  in  the  fragments  from  the 
work  which  follow.  Of  other  statements  of  Columella  which  have 
sociological  bearing  we  can  note  the  following  ones.  First,  the 
nature  of  agricultural  work  requires  people  more  robust  in  health, 
endurance,  character,  industry,  morality,  and  circumspection  than 
the  majority  of  urban  trades  (Bk.  i,  chap.  ix).  Second,  the  rural 
neighborhood  is  much  more  integrated,  and  the  quality  of  the 
neighbors  in  a  rural  environment  is  much  more  important  than 
in  the  cities  (Bk.  i,  chap.  iii).  Third,  agricultural  work  and  land 
tie  an  individual  to  the  place  of  his  work  and  make  him  less 
mobile  or  shifting  than  many  other  occupations  (Bk.  i,  chap.  vii). 
Fourth,  urban  slaves  are  more  demoralized  and  worse  than  rural 
slaves  (Bk.  i,  chap.  ix).  Fifth,  in  the  preceding  agricultural  stage, 
the  happiness,  the  standard  of  living,  and  the  food  of  the  poor 
classes  were  more  satisfactory  and  healthful  than  in  Columella's 
time,  a  period  of  urbanization  (Bk.  x,  preface).  Sixth,  the  family 
and  the  relationship  of  husband  and  wife  and  the  estimation  of 
women  were  much  better  and  harmonious  in  agricultural  Rome 
than  in  urbanized  Rome. 

Both  among  the  Greeks  and  afterwards  among  the  Romans,  even 
down  to  the  memory  of  our  fathers,  the  matron  took  all  the  domestic 
labor  upon  herself  (in  accordance  with  the  nature  of  women);  the 

30  L.  Junius  Moderatus  Columella,  De  Re  Rustica,  Bks.  i  to  xii,  with  illustrations  from 
Pliny,  Cato,  Varro,  Palladius,  and  other  ancient  and  modern  authors,  London,  1745, 


46      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

masters  of  families,  when  they  laid  aside  all  care  of  public  affairs,  and 
business  without  door,  retiring  into  their  own  houses,  as  into  a  place 
of  rest :  for  the  highest  reverence  and  regard  were  mixed  with  concord 
and  diligence,  and  the  beautifullest  woman  did  burn  with  emulation 
to  excel  in  diligence,  studying,  by  her  care,  to  make  better  the  affairs 
and  circumstances  of  her  husband.  There  was  no  separate  or  divided 
interest  seen  in  the  house,  nothing  that  either  the  husband  or  the  wife 
would  properly  call  their  own;  but  they  both  conspired  together  for 
their  common  and  mutual  advantage.  .  .  .  But  now-a-days,  when  most 
part  of  wives  are  so  dissolved  in  luxury  and  idleness  that  they  do  not, 
indeed,  vouchsafe  to  take  upon  themselves  the  care  of  manufacturing 
wool  for  their  own  clothes,  but  disdain  clothes  made  at  home,  and 
with  a  perverse  desire,  by  fair  words,  obtain  from  their  husbands 
others  that  are  more  costly  .  .  .  and  cost  almost  the  whole  yearly  in- 
come of  their  estates;  it  is  no  wonder  at  all,  that  these  same  ladies 
think  themselves  mightily  burdened  with  the  care  of  rural  affairs,  and 
of  the  implements  of  husbandry,  and  esteem  it  a  most  sordid  and 
mean  business,  to  stay  a  few  days  in  their  country  houses  (Bk.  xii, 
Preface). 

Other  views  of  Columella  are  given  in  the  subsequent  excerpts. 
10.  COLUMELLA:  ANALYSIS  OF  RURAL  LIFE* 

To  Publius  Silvinus:  I  frequently  hear  the  principal  men  of  our  city 
blaming,  sometimes  the  unfruitfulness  of  the  ground,  at  other  times 
the  intemperateness  of  the  weather,  as  hurtful  to  the  fruits  of  the  earth 
for  many  ages  now  past :  some  also  I  hear  mitigating,  in  some  measure, 
as  it  were,  the  foresaid  complaints,  because  they  are  of  opinion  that 
the  ground,  being,  by  its  overmuch  fruitfulness  during  the  former  part 
of  its  duration,  become  barren,  and  worn  out  of  heart,  is  not  now  able, 
with  its  wonted  bounty,  to  afford  sustenance  to  mortals.  Which  causes, 
Publius  Silvinus,  I  am  full  persuaded,  are  very  remote  from  the  truth; 
because  it  is  neither  lawful  to  think,  that  the  nature  of  the  ground, 
which  that  original  Farmer  and  Father  of  the  universe  endowed  with 
perpetual  fecundity,  is  affected  with  barrenness,  as  with  a  certain 
disease;  nor  does  it  become  a  wise  man  to  believe,  that  the  earth, 
which,  having  a  divine  and  everlasting  youth  bestowed  upon  it,  is 
called  the  common  parent  of  all  things,  because  it  has  always  brought 
forth,  and  will  henceforth  bring  forth,  all  things  whatsoever,  is  grown 
old,  like  a  woman. 

Nor,  after  all,  do  I  think  that  these  things  befall  us  from  the  dis- 

*  Columella,  op.  cit. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  47 

temperature  of  the  weather;  but  rather  from  our  own  fault,  who  com- 
mit our  husbandry  to  the  very  worst  of  our  servants,  as  a  criminal  to 
a  public  executioner,  which  all  the  best  of  our  ancestors  were  wont  to 
treat  with  the  greatest  gentleness:  and  I  cannot  enough  wonder  why 
they,  who  desire  to  learn  eloquence,  are  so  nice  in  their  choice  of  an 
orator,  whose  eloquence  they  may  imitate;  and  they,  who  search  after 
the  knowledge  of  surveying  or  mensuration,  and  of  numbers,  look  out 
for  a  master  of  the  art  they  delight  in;  and  they,  who  are  desirous  of 
some  skill  in  dancing  and  music,  are  exceeding  scrupulous  in  their 
choice  of  one  to  modulate  their  voice,  and  teach  them  to  sing  agree- 
ably; .  .  .  but  husbandry  alone,  which,  without  all  doubt,  is  next  to, 
and,  as  it  were,  near  akin  to  wisdom,  is  in  want  of  both  masters 
and  scholars.  For  hitherto  I  have  not  only  heard,  that  there  are,  but 
I  myself  have  seen,  schools  of  professors  of  rhetoric,  and,  as  I  have 
already  said,  of  geometry,  and  of  music;  .  .  .  but,  of  agriculture,  I  have 
never  known  any  that  professed  themselves  either  teachers  or  students. 
For,  even  suppose  the  city  should  want  professors  of  the  foresaid 
arts,  nevertheless  the  commonwealth  might  be  in  a  very  flourishing 
condition,  as  in  ancient  times;  for,  of  old,  cities  were  happy  enough, 
and  will  hereafter  still  be  so,  without  ludicrous  arts,  yea,  even  without 
advocates  also:  but  without  husbandmen,  it  is  manifest,  that  mortals 
can  neither  subsist,  nor  be  maintained.    For  which  reason,  what  is 
come  to  pass,  is  the  more  like  a  prodigy,  that  a  thing  so  necessary  and 
convenient  for  our  bodies,  and  the  advantages  of  life,  should,  to  this 
very  time,  of  all  things  whatsoever,  have  had  the  least  consummation; 
and  that  this  perfectly  innocent  way  of  enlarging  and  preserving  one's 
patrimony  should  be  despised.   For  those  other  different,  and,  as  it 
were  repugnant  ways  of  doing  this,  are  contrary  and  disagreeable  to 
justice;  unless  we  think  it  more  agreeable  to  equity  to  have  acquired 
booty  by  a  military  profession,  which  brings  us  nothing  without  blood 
and  slaughter,  and  the  ruin  and  destruction  of  others.  Or,  to  such  as 
hate  war,  can  the  hazard,  uncertainty,  and  danger  of  the  sea,  and  of 
trade,  be  more  desirable?    That  man,  a  terrestrial  animal,  breaking 
through  the  boundary  and  law  of  nature,  and  exposing  himself  to  the 
rage  of  the  winds  and  sea,  shbuld  dare  to  commit  himself  to  the  waves, 
and,  after  the  manner  of  the  fowls  of  the  air,  always  a  stranger  upon 
a  far  distant  and  foreign  shore,  wander  over  the  unknown  world  ?  Or 
is  usury,  which  is  odious,  even  to  those  whom  it  seems  to  relieve,  more 
to  be  approved?   Or  is,  forsooth,  that  canine  study  and  employment, 
as  the  ancients  called  it,  of  snarling,  and  barking  at,  and  slanderously 
accusing  every  man  of  the  greatest  substance;  and  that  open  robbery 
of  pleading  against  the  innocent,  and  for  the  guilty,  which  was  neg- 
lected and  despised  by  our  ancestors,  but  even  permitted  and  allowed 


48      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  by  us  within  the  walls,  and  in  the  very  Forum  itself,  more  excellent 
and  honorable?  Or,  should  I  reckon  more  honest  and  honorable,  the 
most  deceitful,  lying,  and  beggarly  hawking  of  a  mercenary  levee- 
haunter,  who  is  constantly  flying  about  from  the  threshold  of  one 
great  man  in  power  to  that  of  another,  and  guessing,  by  the  report  of 
others,  whether  his  patron  is  awake,  or  not?  Nor,  indeed,  do  the 
servants  vouchsafe  to  answer  him,  when  he  asks  what  is  a  doing 
within-doors:  or,  should  I  think  it  more  fortunate,  after  having  met 
with  a  repulse  from  the  porter  with  his  chains  upon  him,  to  loiter  and 
hang  about  the  ungrateful  and  hateful  doors,  oft-times  till  it  be  late  at 
night,  and,  by  a  most  mean  and  pitiful  servitude  and  attendance,  pur- 
chase with  disgrace  the  honor  of  the  fasces,  or  a  government,  or  a  com- 
mand in  the  army  or  navy,  and,  after  all,  squander  away  one's  own 
patrimony?  For  honor  is  not  bestowed,  as  a  reward,  upon  disinter- 
ested service  and  attendance,  but  upon  such  as  make  presents,  and 
give  bribes. 

Now,  if  all  good  men  ought  to  avoid  these  very  things,  and  others 
like  to  them,  there  is  still  remaining,  as  I  said,  one  way  of  increasing 
one's  substance,  worthy  of  a  freeman,  and  a  gentleman;  which  arises 
from  husbandry,  of  which  if  the  precepts  were  put  in  practice,  suppose 
it  were  but  imprudently,  by  such  as  have  not  been  instructed  in  it, 
provided  nevertheless  they  were  possessors  and  proprietors  of  the  lands 
which  they  cultivate,  as  was  the  ancient  custom,  rural  affairs  would 
suffer  less  damage;  for  the  industry  and  diligence  of  the  masters, 
would,  in  many  things,  compensate  the  loss  occasioned  by  ignorance; 
and  they,  whose  own  interest  lay  at  stake,  would  not  appear  to  be  all 
their  lifetime  willingly  ignorant  of  their  own  business;  but  thereby 
becoming  more  desirous  of  learning,  would  attain  to  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  husbandry. 

Now  we  disdain,  and  think  it  below  us,  to  live  upon,  and  cultivate 
our  own  lands  ourselves,  and  look  upon  it  as  a  matter  of  no  moment, 
to  make  choice  of  a  man  of  the  best  sense  and  skill  we  can  find,  for 
our  Bailiff;  or,  if  he  be  ignorant,  at  least  of  a  man  of  vigor,  vigilance, 
and  activity,  that  he  may  learn  the  more  speedily  what  he  is  ignorant 
of.  But,  whether  he  be  a  rich  man  that  purchases  a  piece  of  ground, 
he  picks,  out  of  his  crew  of  footmen  and  chairmen,  one  that  is  the 
feeblest,  and  the  most  worn  out  with  years,  and  banishes  him  into  the 
country:  whereas  that  business  requires,  not  only  knowledge,  but 
green  age,  and  strength  of  body,  to  bear  labor  and  fatigue:  or  if  he 
be  a  master  of  a  middling  estate,  he  commands  one  of  his  hirelings, 
who  now  refuses  to  pay  that  daily  tribute  of  service  required  of  him, 
and  cannot  thereby  increase  his  income,  to  be  director  and  overseer, 
who  is  ignorant  of  the  business  he  is  to  have  the  oversight  of.  Which 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  49 

things  when  I  observe,  frequently  considering  and  revolving  in  my 
mind,  with  how  base  and  shameful  an  agreement  and  consent  rural 
discipline  is  deserted,  and  worn  out  of  use,  I  am  in  dread,  lest  it  should 
be  accounted  villainous,  and,  in  some  measure,  shameful  and  dishon- 
orable, for  freeborn  men.  But  when,  by  the  records  and  writings  of 
many  authors,  I  am  put  in  mind,  that  our  worthy  ancestors  looked 
upon  it  as  their  glory,  to  take  care  of  their  rural  affairs,  and  to  employ 
themselves  in  husbandry,  from  which  Quintus  Cincinnatus  came,  and 
rescued  the  besieged  Consul  and  his  army,  being  called  from  the 
plough  to  the  dictatorship;  and  again,  having  laid  down  the  fasces, 
which,  when  a  conqueror,  he  more  hastily  surrendered,  than  he  had 
assumed  them  when  he  was  made  general,  he  returned  to  the  same 
steers,  and  his  small  manor  of  four  jugera  of  land,  left  him  by  his 
ancestors;  and  Caius  Fabricius  also,  and  Curius  Dentatus;  the  one, 
after  having  driven  Pyrrhus  out  of  the  confines  of  Italy;  and  the  other, 
after  he  had  subdued  the  Sabines,  did  no  less  industriously  cultivate, 
than  they  had  bravely  gained  with  their  swords,  their  dividend  of 
seven  jugera  of  land  a  man,  which  they  received  of  the  land  they  had 
taken  from  the  enemy. 

And  that  I  may  not  now  unseasonably  make  mention  of  them  one  by 
one,  when  I  behold  so  many  other  renowned  and  memorable  Captains 
of  the  Roman  nation,  who  were  always  in  great  reputation  for  this 
two-fold  study;  either  of  defending,  or  of  cultivating,  their  paternal  or 
acquired  estates;  I  perceive,  that  the  ancient  custom,  manners,  and 
manly  life  of  our  ancestors,  are  disagreeable  to  our  luxury,  and  volup- 
tuous delicacy.  For  (as  Marcus  Varro  formerly  complained  in  our 
grandfathers'  times)  all  we,  who  are  masters  of  families,  having  aban- 
doned the  pruning-hook,  and  the  plough,  have,  in  a  sneaking  manner, 
crept  within  the  walls;  rather  move  our  hands  in  the  circus  and  thea- 
ters, than  in  our  cornfields  and  vineyards:  and  with  astonishment 
we  admire  the  postures  of  effeminate  wretches;  because,  by  their 
woman-like  motions,  they  counterfeit  a  sex  which  nature  has  denied 
to  men;  and  deceive  the  eyes  of  the  spectators.  Then,  presently  after, 
that  we  may  come  in  good  plight  to  public  places  of  riot  and  de- 
bauchery, we  consume  and  dry  up  our  daily  crudities  in  bagnio's;  and, 
by  sweating  out  the  moisture  of  our  bodies,  we  endeavor  to  procure  an 
appetite  for  drinking;  and  spend  the  nights  in  libidinous  gratifications 
and  drunkenness,  and  the  days  in  gaming,  or  sleeping;  and  account 
ourselves  happy,  because  we  neither  see  the  rising  nor  the  setting  of 
the  sun.  Therefore  the  consequence  of  this  idle  and  slothful  way  of 
living  is  bad  health:  for  thus  the  bodies  of  young  men  are  so  unbraced, 
relaxed,  and  enfeebled,  that  death  will  not  seem  to  make  any  altera- 
tion or  change  in  them. 


50  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

But,  verily,  that  true  and  genuine  progeny  of  Romulus,  being  con- 
stantly exercised  in,  and  inured  to  hunting,  and  no  less  to  country 
business  and  labor,  excelled  in,  and  were  highly  esteemed  for  their 
exceeding  great  strength  and  firmness  of  body;  and,  when  the  service 
of  their  country  required  it,  in  time  of  war,  they  easily  supported  the 
fatigues  of  a  military  life,  being  hardened  by  their  laborious  exercises 
in  times  of  peace;  and  they  always  preferred  the  country  commonalty, 
to  that  of  the  city.  For,  as  they,  who  still  kept  within  the  inclosures 
of  the  manor-house,  were  accounted  more  slothful  and  faint-hearted, 
than  those  who  labored  the  ground  without  doors;  so  they  who  saun- 
tered, and  spent  their  time  idly  within  the  walls,  under  the  shade  of 
the  city,  w^re  looked  upon  as  more  lazy  and  unactive,  than  those  who 
cultivated  the  fields,  and  managed  business  relating  to  husbandry.  It 
is  also  evident,  that  their  ninth-day  fairs  or  markets,  where  they  assem- 
bled themselves  together,  were  established,  and  kept  up,  for  this  very 
purpose,  that  city  affairs  might  be  transacted  every  ninth  day  only,  and 
rural  affairs  on  the  other  days.  For,  in  those  times,  as  we  said  before, 
the  people  of  quality,  and  principal  men  of  the  city,  lived  in  the  coun- 
try, upon  their  own  lands;  and  when  their  advice  about  public  affairs 
was  wanted,  they  were  sent  for  from  their  villas,  to  attend  the  Senate; 
from  which  thing,  they  who  were  sent  to  summon  them  were  called 
viatores\  and  while  this  custom  was  observed,  and  kept  up,  by  a  most 
persevering  desire  of  cultivating  their  lands,  those  ancient  Sabines, 
who  became  citizens  of  Rome;  and  our  old  Roman  ancestors,  though 
exposed  on  every  hand  to  fire  and  sword,  and  to  have  their  corns,  and 
other  fruits  of  the  ground,  wasted  by  hostile  incursions,  notwithstand- 
ing, laid  up  greater  store  of  them,  than  we,  who,  by  the  permission 
of  a  long  continued  peace,  have  had  it  in  our  power  to  enlarge  and 
improve  our  husbandry. 

Therefore  things  are  now  come  to  such  a  pass,  that  in  this  Latium 
and  country  where  Saturn  lived,  where  the  gods  taught  their  own 
children  the  art  of  cultivating  the  ground;  even  there  we  let,  by  public 
auction,  the  importation  of  corn  from  our  provinces  beyond  sea,  that 
we  may  not  be  exposed  to  a  famine;  and  we  lay  in  our  stores  of  fruits 
and  wines  from  the  Cyclad  islands,  and  from  the  regions  of  Baetica 
and  Gaul.  Nor  is  it  any  wonder,  seeing  the  vulgar  opinion  is  now 
publicly  entertained  and  established,  that  husbandry  is  a  sordid  em- 
ployment; and  that  it  is  a  business  which  does  not  want  the  instruc- 
tion of  a  master.  But  as  for  myself,  when  I  consider  and  review,  either 
the  greatness  of  the  whole  thing,  resembling  some  vastly  extended 
body;  or  the  number  of  its  parts,  as  so  many  members  in  particular; 
I  am  afraid,  lest  my  last  day  should  surprise  me,  before  I  can  acquaint 
myself  with  the  whole  of  rural  discipline. 


ANCIENT  SOURCES  51 

For  he  that  would  profess  himself  to  be  perfect  in  this  science,  must 
be  exceedingly  well  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  things;  must  not  be 
ignorant  of  the  several  latitudes  of  the  world;  that  he  may  be  sure  of 
what  is  agreeable,  or  what  is  repugnant,  to  every  climate;  that  he  may 
perfectly  remember  the  time  of  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  stars,  that 
he  may  not  begin  his  works  when  winds  and  rains  are  coming  upon 
him,  and  so  frustrate  his  labor.  Let  him  consider  the  temperature  and 
constitution  of  the  weather,  and  of  the  present  year;  for  neither  do 
they,  as  it  were  by  a  settled  law,  always  wear  the  same  dress;  nor  does 
the  summer  or  winter  come  every  year  with  the  same  countenance: 
nor  is  the  spring  always  rainy,  nor  the  autumn  moist:  which  I  cannot 
believe  any  man  can  know  beforehand,  without  an  enlightened  mind, 
and  without  the  most  excellent  arts  and  sciences. 

Now  very  few  have  the  talent  to  discern  the  great  variety  itself  of 
the  ground,  and  the  nature  and  disposition  of  every  soil,  what  each  of 
them  may  promise  or  deny  us.  Yea,  when  has  any  one  man  whatso- 
ever had  the  opportunity  to  contemplate  all  the  parts  of  this  art,  so 
as  thoroughly  to  understand  the  use,  advantage,  and  management  of 
all  sorts  of  corns,  and  of  tillage,  and  the  various  and  different  sorts  of 
earth,  most  unlike  to  one  another  ?  of  which,  some  deceive  us  by  their 
color,  some  by  their  quality:  and,  in  some  countries,  the  black  earth, 
which  they  call  brown,  or  dusky,  deserves  to  be  commended;  in  others, 
that  which  is  fat,  and  red-colored,  answers  better  .  .  .  And  who  is  it 
that  thoroughly  \nows  everything  that  is  requisite  in  planting  and 
preserving  trees  and  vineyards,  of  which  there  are  innumerable  kinds; 
and  in  purchasing,  breeding,  and  keeping  all  sorts  of  cattle;  since  we 
have  also  taken  in  this  as  a  part  of  husbandry;  whereas  the  grazier's 
knowledge  and  skill  is  distinct  and  separate  from  the  art  of  husban* 
dry  (pp.  1-10). 

V.  POLYBIUS 

Of  several  generalizations  of  Polybius  (205-123  B.C.),  the  Greek 
historian  of  Rome,  two  concern  the  growing  depravity  of  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  luxurious  urban  environment  and  the  falling  birth 
rate  of  such  a  population. 

11.  POLYBIUS:  URBANIZATION  AND  DEPOPULATION* 

When  a  commonwealth  has  arrived  at  a  high  pitch  of  prosperity  and 
undisputed  power,  it  is  evident  that,  by  the  lengthened  continuance 
of  great  wealth  within  it,  the  manner  of  life  of  its  citizens  will  become 
more  extravagant.  .  .  .  And  as  this  state  of  things  goes  on  more  and 

*The  Histories  of  Polybius,  trans,  by  Evelyn  S.  Shuckburgh,  London,  1889. 


52  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

more,  the  desire  for  office  and  the  shame  of  losing  reputation,  as  well 
as  the  ostentation  and  extravagance  of  living,  will  prove  the  beginning 
of  deterioration.  ...  In  their  passionate  resentment  and  acting  under 
the  dictates  o£  anger,  they  will  refuse  to  obey  any  longer,  or  to  be  con- 
tent with  having  equal  powers  with  their  leaders,  but  will  demand  to 
have  all  or  far  the  greatest  themselves.  And  when  that  comes  to  pass 
the  constitution  will  receive  a  new  name,  which  sounds  better  than 
any  other  in  the  world,  liberty  or  democracy;  but,  in  fact,  it  will  be- 
come that  worst  of  all  governments,  mob-rule  (I,  507). 

In  our  time  all  Greece  was  visited  by  a  dearth  of  children  and  gener- 
ally a  decay  of  population,  owing  to  which  the  cities  were  denuded 
of  inhabitants,  and  a  failure  of  productiveness  resulted,  though  there 
were  no  long-continued  wars  or  serious  pestilences  among  us.  ... 
This  evil  grew  upon  us  rapidly,  and  without  attracting  attention,  by 
our  men  becoming  perverted  to  a  passion  for  show  and  money  and 
the  pleasures  of  an  idle  life,  and  accordingly  either  not  marrying  at 
all,  or,  if  they  did  marry,  refusing  to  rear  the  children  that  were  born 
or  at  most  one  or  two  out  of  a  great  number,  for  the  sake  of  leaving 
them  well  off  or  bringing  them  up  in  extravagant  luxury.  For  when 
there  are  only  one  or  two  sons,  it  is  evident  that,  if  war  or  pestilence 
carries  off  one,  the  houses  must  be  left  heirless:  and,  like  swarms  of 
bees,  little  by  little  the  cities  become  sparsely  inhabited  and  weak 
(II,  510). 


CHAPTER  II 

HISTORY  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY:  FOURTEENTH  TO 
NINETEENTH  CENTURIES 

A.  ARABIAN  RURAL-URBAN  SOCIOLOGY  OF  THE 
MIDDLE  AGES 

In  Europe  the  first  twelve  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  left 
relatively  few  works  in  which  our  problems  are  treated,  even  in 
a  general  way.  There  are  a  few  sources  in  which  some  concrete 
pictures  and  characteristics  of  the  class  of  the  peasants,  unfree  and 
free  laborers,  as  well  as  of  the  landlords,  are  given,  but  they  do 
not  tend  to  generalize  the  situation.  Although  valuable  for  a  his- 
torian of  the  agricultural  classes,  for  our  purposes  they  are  useless.1 
Only  since  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  in  Europe  do 
we  begin  to  find  a  few  casual  remarks;  as  we  continue,  they  in- 
crease more  and  more  in  number  and  in  generality.  However,  up 
to  the  seventeenth  century  we  do  not  find  in  Europe  any  substan- 
tial principles  and  theories  of  rural-urban  sociology.  Only  since 
that  century  have  such  theories  begun  to  appear  and  to  grow.  The 
best  samples  of  these  theories  in  their  fragmentary,  as  well  as 
developed,  form  are  given  later  on. 

Meanwhile,  before  we  pass  to  them,  we  must  make  a  trip  to 
Arabia.  We  know  that  the  centuries  from  the  fifth  to  the  twelfth 
were  marked  by  a  great  awakening  of  the  Arabian  people,  by  the 
appearance  and  marvelous  growth  of  Mohammedanism,  by  the 
brilliant  victories  of  the  Arabs  over  many  peoples  and  countries; 
and  by  a  rapid  growth  of  the  Arabian  caliphates,  cities,  and  com- 
plex societies.  All  this  was  followed  by  the  extraordinary  progress 
of  the  Arabians  in  science,  arts,  literature,  and  civilization.  During 
several  of  these  centuries  the  Arabian  countries  led  their  con- 

1  Contrasted  with  the  scarcity  of  sociological  analysis  of  rural  life  and  people,  the  lit- 
erature devoted  to  the  purely  agronomical  side  o£  agriculture  and  profitableness  of  this 
or  that  method  of  farming  and  farm  management  was  rather  well  developed  and  rich 
from  ^  the  fourteenth  century  on.  However,  this  literature  is  outside  our  field  and  there- 
fore is  entirely  omitted.  A  good  summary  of  it  for  England  is  given  in  R.R.  E.Pro- 
thero's  English  Farming,  Past  and  Present,  London,  1912;  see  also  N.  S,  B.  Gras,  A  His- 
tory of  Agriculture,  New  York,  1925. 

[53] 


54      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

temporary  European  societies  in  all  these  respects.  This  leadership 
manifested  itself  also  in  the  field  of  social  science,  and  especially 
in  the  field  of  sociology,  particularly  rural-urban  sociology.  The 
most  important  treatise  in  this  field  is  that  of  Ibn-Khaldun.  There- 
fore, before  passing  to  Europe  we  must  give  the  essentials  of  the 
rural-urban  sociology  of  Ibn-Khaldun. 
I.  IBN-KHALDUN 

Ibn-Khaldun  (1332-1406),  the  great  Arabian  historian,  states- 
man, and  sociologist  is,  as  much  as  any  one  man,  entitled  to  be 
called  the  "founder  of  sociology,"  and  possibly  more  than  any- 
body else  is  he  entitled  to  be  regarded  as  "the  founder  of  rural- 
urban  sociology."  His  Prolegomenes  to  his  famous  Universal 
History — a  work  of  many  volumes  of  which  the  Prolegomenes 
makes  up  three  large  volumes — represents,  possibly,  the  earliest 
systematic  treatise  both  in  sociology  and  in  rural-urban  sociology. 
Living  in  an  age  when  the  rapid  transformation  of  the  nomadic 
Arabian  tribes  into  the  victorious  complex  societies  was  still  re- 
cent; when  the  transition  of  the  Arabs  from  the  simple  nomadic 
desert  and  simple  rural  life  to  the  voluptuous  and  luxurious — pre- 
dominantly consumptive,  commercial,  and  administrative — city 
life  was  still  going  on  before  his  eyes,  this  scholar  and  genius 
could  observe,  analyze,  and  study  this  process  directly.  The  results 
of  his  study  are  incorporated  in  his  voluminous  and  outstanding 
work.  Throughout  all  its  volumes  are  scattered  many  sociological 
generalizations; 2  but  his  essentially  rural-urban  sociology  is  given 
in  the  second  section  of  the  Prolegomenes,  which  is  devoted  en- 
tirely to  this  topic.  The  most  essential  parts  of  it  are  given  later. 
Reading  them,  one  must  keep  in  mind  that  Ibn-Khaldun's  con- 
frontations concern,  on  the  one  hand,  the  nomadic  and  rural  life; 
on  the  other,  the  sedentary  and  urban  life.  Some  of  the  most  im- 
portant generalizations  of  the  author  may  be  summarized  thus: 
first,  according  to  Ibn-Khaldun,  nomadic  and  rural  life  preceded 
the  sedentary  and  urban  life;  second,  nomadic  and  rural  people 
are  more  healthy,  more  sound,  more  brave,  more  resourceful,  more 
self-reliant,  more  independent,  and  more  stern,  less  immoral,  less 
degenerate,  than  the  urban  people;  third,  the  family  life  is  cleaner 
and  the  familism  is  stronger  in  the  rural  districts  than  in  the 
cities;  fourth,  V esprit  de  corps  is  again  more  necessary  and  incom- 

2  See  for  instance  the  second  book  of  his  Histoire  des  Berberes,  Paris,  1925,  I,  2  ff. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        55 

parably  more  alive  in  the  rural  than  in  the  urban  population; 
fifth,  consequently  sociality  and  mutual  aid  are  developed  more 
in  the  desert  and  country  than  in  the  city;  sixth,  the  position 
of  women  and  older  people  is  better  and  they  are  more  re- 
spected and  valued  in  the  country  than  in  the  city;  seventh,  the 
city  population  is  incessantly  replenished  by  the  migration  of  the 
people  from  the  country;  eighth,  the  migrants  to  the  cities  are 
recruited  chiefly  from  the  well-to-do  families  of  the  country; 
ninth,  owing  to  unhealthy  conditions,  luxury,  vice,  indulgences, 
and  other  mollifying  conditions,  city  life  leads  to  the  degeneration 
of  the  people  and  in  this  way  to  the  decay  of  the  entire  society. 
The  climax  of  the  growth  of  the  city  and  the  development  of  city 
arts,  sciences,  and  commerce  is  the  beginning  of  the  decay  and  de- 
generation of  the  city  and  the  whole  society.  This  degeneration  is 
inevitable  and  the  average  length  of  the  curve  of  the  rising  and 
degenerating  of  the  urban  people  is  the  span  of  four  generations. 
Besides  these  there  are  many  other  generalizations  in  the  works 
of  Ibn-Khaldun.  The  subsequent  quotations  develop  some  of  these 
generalizations. 

12.  IBN-KHALDUN:  COMPARISON  OF  RURAL  AND  URBAN  PEOPLE* 

Nomadic  life  and  sedentary  life  both  are  comformable  with  nature. — 
The  differences  that  one  notes  in  the  customs  and  institutions  of 
diverse  peoples  depend  upon  the  means  by  which  each  of  them  pro- 
vides for  its  subsistence.  Men  join  themselves  together  into  a  society 
only  in  order  to  obtain  the  means  of  life.  They  first  seek  the  simple 
necessities;  after  which  they  strive  to  satisfy  artificial  needs;  then  they 
aspire  to  live  in  abundance.  Some  devote  themselves  to  agriculture, 
planting  and  sowing;  others  occupy  themselves  with  producing  cer- 
tain animals  such  as  sheep,  cattle,  goats,  bees,  silkworms,  etc.,  for  the 
purpose  of  causing  these  to  multiply  and  thus  to  obtain  profit.  People 
of  these  two  classes  are  obliged  to  inhabit  the  country;  for  the  cities 
do  not  offer  them  any  land  to  sow,  any  fields  to  cultivate,  nor  any  pas- 
tures for  their  flocks.  Constrained  by  circumstances  to  live  in  the 
country,  they  form  themselves  into  a  society  in  order  to  aid  each  other 
and  to  procure  for  themselves  only  those  things  that  their  manner  of 
life  and  their  degree  of  civilization  render  indispensable.  Nourishment, 
sufficient  shelter,  means  of  keeping  warm:  these  are  all  that  are  neces- 

*  Ibn-Khaldun,  "Prolegomen.es  historiques,"  in  Notices  et  extraits  des  manuscripts  de 
la  Bibliotfoque  Impend,  Vols.  XIX  and  XX,  Paris,  1862. 


56      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

sary  for  them,  but  only  enough  to  maintain  their  existence.  They  are 
at  first  incapable  of  obtaining  more  from  these  surroundings.  Later, 
when  they  find  themselves  in  better  circumstances  and  when  their 
possessions  put  them  beyond  bare  need,  they  begin  to  enjoy  tran- 
quility  and  comfort.  Again  combining  their  efforts,  they  strive  to 
obtain  more  than  simple  necessities;  one  observes  them  amass  goods, 
seek  fine  clothes,  erect  large  houses,  found  villages  and  cities  in  order 
to  give  themselves  shelter  from  hostile  attacks.  Ease  and  abundance 
introduce  habits  of  luxury,  which  develop  vigorously  and  which  reflect 
themselves  in  methods  of  preparing  food,  in  the  improvement  of  the 
cuisine,  in  the  custom  of  using  clothes  of  silk,  brocade,  and  other  fine 
fabrics,  etc.  Houses  and  palaces  acquire  great  height,  are  constructed 
solidly  and  embellished  in  style.  They  indicate  how  the  disposition  for 
art  passes  from  the  potential  to  the  actual  and  becomes  perfected. 
Some  persons  construct  castles  and  houses  whose  interiors  are  orna- 
mented with  fountains;  they  construct  beautiful  edifices  decorated 
with  extreme  care.  Many  persons  are  occupied  in  rivalry  to  improve 
the  objects  of  everyday  use  such  as  clothes,  beds,  dishes,  and  kitchen 
utensils.  Of  such  a  nature  are  men  who  have  become  townsmen 
(hader).  Among  these,  some  engage  in  crafts  for  a  living;  some  de- 
vote their  efforts  to  commerce,  and  by  virtue  of  the  great  profits  which 
they  make  at  this,  they  surpass  the  people  of  the  country  in  wealth 
and  comforts.  Delivered  from  the  drudgery  of  poverty,  they  live  in 
a  manner  befitting  their  means.  One  sees  by  this  that  the  life  of  the 
country  and  that  of  the  cities  are  two  states,  each  subject  to  natural 
laws  (XIX,  254-255). 

The  various  ways  of  earning  a  living:  agriculture. — Agriculture  has 
an  intrinsic  superiority  over  the  other  means  of  earning  a  living  be- 
cause it  is  easy,  natural,  and  conforms  to  the  innate  disposition  of  men; 
it  requires  neither  learning  nor  science,  and  for  that  reason  people 
attribute  its  invention  to  Adam,  the  father  of  the  human  species.  "It 
was  he,"  they  say,  "who  first  taught  and  practiced  it."  By  these  words 
they  wish  to  imply  that  it  is  the  most  natural  and  the  most  ancient 
means  of  procuring  subsistence.  The  arts  come  in  the  second  place 
and  follow  agriculture,  because,  being  complicated,  before  being 
learned  they  require  the  use  of  reflection  and  concentration.  That  is 
why  they  ordinarily  flourish  only  in  sedentary  life,  a  mode  of  existence 
which  is  preceded  by  nomadic  life.  It  was  for  the  same  reason  that 
the  invention  of  the  arts  was  attributed  to  Enoch,  the  second  father  of 
mortals,  who,  directed  by  divine  inspiration,  had  invented  them  for 
the  use  of  his  posterity.  Commerce,  considered  as  a  means  of  earning 
a  living,  conforms  to  nature;  although  in  most  of  its  operations  it 
uses  tricks  to  establish  a  difference  between  the  purchase  price  and 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        57 

the  sale  price  from  which  to  obtain  a  profit.  The  law  permits  the 
use  of  these  tricks  although  they  fall  in  the  category  of  contingencies, 
because  they  do  not  aim  to  take  the  goods  of  others  without  giving 
something  in  return.  "But  God  knows  better  than  we  what  they  are" 
(XX,  325). 

Life  in  the  country  preceded  that  in  the  city.  It  was  the  cradle  of 
civilization.  Cities  are  indebted  to  the  country  for  their  origin  and  their 
population. — We  have  said  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  are  lim- 
ited to  strict  necessities  in  everything  which  concerns  them  and  that 
they  have  not  the  means  to  transcend  necessity,  while  the  people  of  the 
cities  are  occupied  in  satisfying  needs  created  by  luxury  and  in  perfect- 
ing everything  which  has  to  do  with  their  habits  and  manner  of  living. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  one  must  necessarily  think  of  necessities  before 
he  concerns  himself  with  artificial  needs  or  seeks  for  ease.  Necessity  is, 
so  to  speak,  the  root  out  of  which  luxury  grows.  Rural  life  must  pre- 
cede that  in  cities;  in  fact,  man  thinks  first  of  necessities,  and  he  must 
procure  these  for  himself  before  aspiring  to  a  life  of  ease.  The  rugged- 
ness  of  life  in  the  country  preceded  the  refinements  of  settled  life;  we 
also  note  that  civilization,  born  in  the  fields  or  country,  terminates  in 
the  establishment  of  towns  and  has  a  definite  tendency  towards  this 
end.  As  soon  as  the  people  of  the  country  come  to  that  stage  of  well- 
being  which  makes  them  disposed  to  luxury,  they  seek  the  comforts 
of  life  and  adopt  a  sedentary  mode  of  living.  This  is  what  has  hap- 
pened to  all  nomadic  tribes.  The  resident  of  the  town,  on  the  contrary, 
does  not  desire  to  live  in  the  country  unless  he  is  forced  to  do  so  nor 
does  he  desire  to  be  deprived  of  the  ease  which  is  enjoyed  in  the 
towns.  Another  fact  also  demonstrates  that  nomadic  life  preceded  a 
settled  mode  of  living  and  gave  birth  to  it.  If  we  take  the  statements 
of  the  inhabitants  of  any  city  on  this  point,  we  will  find  that  the  most 
of  them  are  descended  from  families  which  have  lived  m  the  villages 
of  that  vicinity  or  in  the  neighboring  rural  districts.  Their  ancestors  ac- 
quired wealth  and  settled  in  the  town  in  order  to  enjoy  peace  and  the 
comforts  which  the  town  afforded.  This  example  shows  that  sedentary 
life  has  followed  the  life  of  a  nomad  or  countryman  and  that  it  has 
grown  out  of  the  latter  as  a  branch  from  the  stump  of  a  tree.  The 
reader  is  asked  to  note  the  importance  of  this  principle.  We  can  add 
further  that  all  city  populations  are  not  alike  in  their  manner  of  living, 
as  is  also  true  with  rural  peoples.  Certain  peoples  and  certain  tribes 
are  more  powerful  than  others,  and  there  are  some  cities  which  surpass 
the  rest  in  greatness  or  in  population. 

On  the  basis  of  these  observations  one  realizes  that  rural  life  existed 
before  life  in  towns,  and  that  the  former  gave  birth  to  the  latter.  One 
would  also  agree  that  the  ease  and  habits  of  luxury  which  one  enjoys 


58  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  cities,  whether  great  or  small,  have  appeared  later  than  those  cus- 
toms which  result  from  the  necessity  of  providing  the  basic  needs  of 
life  (XIX,  257-259), 

Lf  esprit  de  corps  and  purity  of  blood  in  the  city  and  the  country.— 
In  the  large  and  small  cities  the  reciprocal  enmity  of  the  inhabitants 
has  no  grave  consequences;  the  government,  in  the  persons  of  the  mag- 
istrates, prevents  violence  and  maintains  order  among  the  people.  The 
physical  force  and  authority  of  the  sultan  suffices  to  restrain  evil  im- 
pulses, always  with  the  exception  of  tyranny  on  the  part  of  the  ruler. 
If  the  city  has  external  enemies  it  has  a  circle  of  walls  to  protect  it, 
either  in  case  the  inhabitants  abandon  themselves  to  sleep  at  night  or 
are  too  weak  to  resist  during  the  day.  They  also  have  a  body  of  sol- 
diers to  defend  them  which  is  maintained  by  the  government  and  is 
always  ready  to  fight.  Among  the  tribes  of  tie  desert,  hostilities  cease 
at  the  voice  of  the  elders  and  of  their  rulers,  to  whom  everyone  shows 
the  greatest  respect.  In  order  to  protect  their  camps  against  external 
enemies  they  each  have  a  select  troup  composed  of  their  best  warriors 
and  young  men  who  are  most  distinguished  for  their  bravery.  But 
that  band  would  never  be  strong  enough  to  repulse  attacks  unless  all 
its  members  belonged  to  the  same  family  and  were  animated  by  the 
same  esprit  de  corps.  It  is  precisely  this  fact  which  renders  the  troops 
composed  of  desert  Arabs  so  strong  and  formidable;  each  combatant 
has  only  a  single  thought,  that  is  to  protect  his  tribe  and  his  family. 
Affection  for  parents  and  devotion  for  those  to  whom  one  is  linked 
by  blood  are  part  of  the  qualities  that  God  has  implanted  in  the  hearts 
of  men.  Under  the  influence  of  these  sentiments,  these  persons  sustain 
each  other;  they  lend  mutual  assistance  and  thus  make  themselves  an 
affliction  for  their  enemies.  .  .  . 

People  without  / 'esprit  de  corps  would  scarcely  inhabit  the  desert, 
for  they  would  become  the  prey  of  any  peoples  who  might  wish  to 
attack  them.  In  order  to  dwell  together  in  the  desert  it  is  necessary  to 
have  a  means  of  self-defense.  When  one  realizes  this  fact,  he  will  rec- 
ognize that  such  should  also  be  the  case  with  men  who  present  them- 
selves as  prophets,  and  with  those  who  undertake  to  found  an  empire 
or  to  establish  a  religious  sect.  In  order  to  attain  their  aim  such  leaders 
must  employ  the  force  of  arms  in  order  to  conquer  that  spirit  of  oppo- 
sition which  forms  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  human  race.  In 
order  to  engage  in  battle  it  is  necessary  to  have  partisans  who  are  ani- 
mated with  the  same  esprit  de  corps.  This  is  a  rule  of  which  the  reader 
will  see  the  application  in  what  is  to  follow.  Let  God  aid  us  in  this 
task.  .  .  . 

L 'esprit  de  corps  is  known  only  among  people  linked  by  blood  or 
similar  ties.  The  ties  of  blood  have  an  influence  which  most  men  rec- 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        59 

ognize  by  a  natural  sentiment.  The  influence  of  these  ties  is  shown 
when  one  is  troubled  over  the  condition  of  his  parents  or  kin  when 
they  suffer  an  injustice  or  are  in  danger  of  losing  their  lives.  The  evil 
that  someone  has  done  to  one  of  our  parents,  the  outrages  that  oppress 
them,  appear  as  injuries  to  ourselves;  with  the  result  that  we  would 
wish  to  protect  them  by  interposing  ourselves  between  them  and  the 
source  of  danger.  Since  men  have  existed,  this  sentiment  has  been  in 
their  hearts.  When  two  persons  extend  mutual  aid  and  are  related 
closely  enough  to  be  united  in  heart  and  sentiment,  it  is  due  to  the 
influence  of  ties  of  blood  which  are  manifest  in  the  conduct  of  these 
related  persons.  Ties  of  blood  are  quite  sufficient  to  produce  this  re- 
sult. .  .  . 

Purity  of  blood  is  found  only  among  Arabs  and  other  desert  peoples 
who  are  semisavage.  Purity  of  racial  stock  exists  among  nomadic  peo- 
ples because  they  are  exposed  to  want  and  privation  and  because  they 
inhabit  sterile  and  inhospitable  regions,  a  type  of  life  which  fate  has 
imposed  upon  them  and  necessity  has  forced  them  to  adopt.  In  order 
to  procure  the  means  of  existence  they  give  themselves  to  the  care 
of  their  camels;  their  only  occupation  is  to  find  pasturage  for  their 
beasts  and  to  make  them  multiply.  They  have  had  to  adopt  the  unciv- 
ilized life  of  the  desert  because  that  region  is  the  only  one  which  pro- 
vides these  animals  with  the  shrubs  adapted  to  their  nourishment  and 
the  sandy  places  where  they  can  put  their  small  feet.  Although  the 
desert  is  a  place  of  privation  and  hunger,  these  people  came  to  inhabit 
it  and  raised  a  second  generation  for  whom  it  was  second  nature  tc 
support  the  young  and  to  endure  want.  No  person  of  another  race  has 
desired  to  share  their  lot  or  to  adopt  their  manner  of  life.  Moreover, 
these  nomads  change  their  state  and  position  if  occasion  requires. 
Their  isolation  is  thus  a  sure  guarantee  against  the  corruption  of  blood 
which  results  from  unions  contracted  with  strangers.  Among  nomadic 
peoples  a  race  preserves  its  purity  .  .  .  (XIX,  268-272). 

Rural  people  are  less  corrupted  than  urban  people. — The  inhabitants 
of  the  cities  are  usually  occupied  with  their  pleasures  and  they  abandon 
themselves  to.  luxurious  living;  they  seek  the  things  of  this  transitory 
world  and  surrender  completely  to  their  passions.  Among  townspeople 
trie  soul  corrupts  itself  with  the  evil  qualities  which  are  acquired  in 
great  number;  and  the  more  it  perverts  itself,  the  more  it  strays  from 
the  path  of  virtue.  It  sometimes  happens  that  the  people  even  forget 
all  the  ordinary  decencies  in  their  conduct.  We  have  frequently  met 
persons  who  indulge  in  vulgar  and  rude  expressions  in  their  meetings 
and  before  their  superiors;  they  did  not  abstain  even  in  the  presence 
of  their  women.  Accustomed  to  the  use  of  obscene  words  and  to  con- 


60      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ducting  themselves  in  an  indecent  manner,  the  sentiment  of  modesty 
no  longer  has  any  power  over  them. 

The  people  who  live  in  the  country  also  seek  the  good  things  of  this 
world,  but  they  desire  only  those  which  are  absolutely  necessary;  they 
do  not  seek  the  pleasures  procured  by  wealth,  the  means  of  satiating 
their  lust,  nor  of  increasing  their  pleasures.  The  principles  which  guide 
their  conduct  are  as  simple  as  their  life.  One  can  find  many  things  to 
criticize  in  their  acts  and  in  their  character;  but  these  facts  do  not  ap- 
pear grave  if  one  also  notes  the  behavior  of  people  who  live  in  towns. 
Compared  with  the  latter  they  are  much  more  closely  related  to  nat- 
ural men,  and  their  minds  are  less  exposed  to  the  reception  of  impres- 
sions resulting  from  bad  habits.  It  is  thus  clear  that  one  would  have 
less  difficulty  in  correcting  the  shortcomings  and  restoring  the  good 
habits  of  rural  peoples  than  of  the  inhabitants  of  towns.  Later  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  demonstrate  that  settled  life  is  the  state  in  which  civ- 
ilization comes  to  a  halt  and  degenerates;  it  is  in  town  life  that  evil 
attains  its  full  force  and  the  good  can  scarcely  appear. 

What  has  preceded  suffices  to  show  that  the  residents  of  the  country 
are  more  inclined  to  virtue  than  the  inhabitants  of  the  cities.  "God 
loves  those  who  fear  him"  (Koran,  IX,  vs.  4)  (XIX,  259-260). 

The  rural  people  are  more  brave  than  the  urban. — The  inhabitants 
of  the  cities,  being  devoted  to  ease  and  peace,  immerse  themselves  in 
the  pleasures  offered  by  ease  and  comfort,  and  they  relinquish  the  pro- 
tection of  their  lives  and  goods  to  their  ruler  or  commander.  Insured 
against  danger  by  the  presence  of  an  army  charged  with  their  defense, 
surrounded  with  walls,  protected  by  outworks,  they  are  not  alarmed  at 
anything,  and  they  do  not  seek  to  make  war  with  their  neighbors. 
Freed  from  care,  living  in  entire  security,  they  renounce  the  practice 
of  arms  and  leave  a  posterity  which  resembles  them  in  this  respect. 
Similar  to  women  and  children  who  are  subject  to  the  authority  of 
the  head  of  the  family,  they  live  in  a  state  of  heedlessness  which  be- 
comes second  nature  for  them. 

Nomads,  on  the  contrary,  remain  remote  from  the  great  centers  of 
population.  Accustomed  to  austere  ways  acquired  in  the  vast  plains  of 
the  desert,  they  shun  the  vicinity  of  the  soldiers  to  whom  the  estab- 
lished governments  confide  the  protection  of  their  frontiers,  and  they 
disdainfully  reject  the  suggestion  to  arbitrate  behind  walls  and  doors. 
Strong  enough  to  protect  themselves,  they  never  confide  in  others  the 
care  of  their  defense;  and,  always  under  arms,  they  reveal  an  extreme 
vigilance  in  their  expeditions.  They  never  sleep  except  for  short  inter- 
vals during  their  assemblies  at  evening  or  while  they  travel  mounted 
on  their  camels,  but  they  are  always  alert  to  catch  the  slightest  sign  of 
danger.  Secluded  in  the  solitude  of  the  desert  and  proud  of  their  pow- 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        61 

er,  they  trust  in  themselves  and  show  by  their  conduct  that  audacity 
and  bravery  have  become  second  natures  to  them.  At  the  first  warning 
or  cry  of  alarm,  they  throw  themselves  into  the  midst  of  perils,  placing 
their  dependence  upon  their  courage.  The  townsmen  who  meet  them 
in  the  desert  [to  trade]  or  in  military  expeditions  are  always  depend- 
ent upon  them,  being  incapable  of  doing  anything  of  themselves,  as 
one  can  see  with  his  own  eyes.  They  (townsmen)  overlook  the  posi- 
tions of  landmarks  and  of  oases;  they  do  not  know  the  destinations  of 
desert  routes.  This  ignorance  arises  out  of  the  fact  that  the  nature  of 
man  depends  upon  customs  and  manners  and  not  on  nature  or  tem- 
perament. The  things  to  which  one  is  accustomed  give  rise  to  new 
abilities,  a  second  nature,  which  replaces  innate  nature.  Examine  this 
principle,  study  men,  and  you  will  see  that  it  is  nearly  always  true. 
"God  creates  what  He  wishes;  He  is  the  Creator,  the  all-knowing  Be- 
ing" (Koran,  XV,  86).  Further,  submission  to  the  authorities  in  the 
city  hinders  the  development  of  bravery  among  urban  people  and  takes 
from  them  the  habit  of  self-protection.  None  are  masters  of  their  ac- 
tions except  a  small  number  of  rulers  who  command  other  men.  One 
is  nearly  always  subject  to  a  higher  authority,  which  fact  necessarily 
leads  to  one  of  two  results.  If  the  authority  is  marked  by  its  modera- 
tion and  justice,  if  it  does  not  make  its  force  and  coercive  power  felt 
too  frequently,  those  who  are  subject  to  it  show  a  spirit  of  independ- 
ence which  rules  them  according  to  the  amount  of  their  courage.  Be- 
lieving themselves  free  of  all  control,  they  reveal  a  presumption  which 
has  become  a  second  nature  for  them,  and  they  know  no  other  guide. 
If,  on  the  contrary,  the  authority  is  based  on  force  and  violence,  the 
subjects  lose  their  energy  and  their  spirit  of  resistance;  for  the  oppres- 
sion dulls  their  spirits,  as  will  be  shown  later  (XIX,  263-265). 

The  art  of  medicine  is  necessary  for  sedentary  peoples  but  useless  for 
nomads. — Medicine  is  absolutely  necessary  in  all  towns  because  of  its 
well-recognized  utility.  It  conserves  the  health  of  those  who  are  well 
and  rids  the  sick  of  their  infirmities  by  submitting  these  sick  persons 
to  a  treatment  which  restores  their  health  to  them.  .  .  . 

Diseases  are  very  numerous  among  sedentary  peoples  and  inhabi- 
tants of  cities  because  of  the  abundance  in  which  they  live  and  the 
variety  of  things  which  they  eat.  They  rarely  limit  themselves  to  a 
single  kind  of  food;  they  eat  all  kinds,  exercising  no  precaution,  and 
in  culinary  procedures  they  mix  diverse  substances  together,  at  the 
same  time  adding  condiments,  vegetables,  and  fruits,  thus  combining 
foods  some  of  which  are  by  nature  dry  and  some  moist.  They  are  not 
content  with  a  single  dishful  nor  even  with  several:  I  have  counted  in 
one  of  these  menus  more  than  forty  types  of  vegetables  and  meats. 
All  these  substances  when  introduced  in  the  stomach  form  a  mixture 


62  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

which  usually  is  neither  suited  to  the  body  nor  to  the  parts  of  which 
the  mixture  is  composed. 

Let  us  add  that  in  the  cities  the  air  is  usually  tainted  by  a  mixture  of 
putrid  exhalations  from  many  kinds  of  filth.  When  the  air  is  pure  it 
excites  the  activity  of  animal  spirits  and  thus  strengthens  the  influence 
exercised  by  the  warmth  of  the  organs  on  the  digestive  process.  Fur- 
thermore, the  inhabitants  do  not  take  enough  exercise;  they  are  ordi- 
narily very  sedentary  and  love  repose.  The  little  amount  of  exercise 
that  they  do  get  does  not  produce  any  effect  and  has  no  useful  result. 
Besides,  diseases  are  more  common  in  cities,  and  the  more  common 
they  are  the  greater  the  need  of  medicine. 

The  people  of  the  desert  ordinarily  eat  but  little,  and,  as  they  do  not 
have  much  wheat,  they  so  frequently  suffer  from  pangs  of  hunger  that 
it  becomes  an  habitual  state  for  them.  Their  fortitude  in  enduring 
hunger  is  such  that  one  would  be  disposed  to  regard  it  as  an  innate 
disposition.  Condiments  are  rarely  used  or  are  entirely  lacking  among 
them.  Luxurious  conditions  which  would  tend  to  give  rise  to  the  art 
of  preparing  foods  with  spices  and  fruits  are  totally  unknown  to  them. 
Their  foods,  which  they  eat  without  mixing,  are  of  a  kind  which 
greatly  resembles  and  is  well  suited  to  the  nature  of  the  body  itself. 
While  they  are  in  their  tents,  the  air  which  they  breathe  contains  few 
foul  particles  because  of  the  lack  of  humid  and  foul  substances;  and 
when  they  are  en  route  the  air  is  constantly  changing.  They  do  not 
lack  physical  exercise  for  they  are  always  moving:  they  mount  their 
horses,  join  in  the  chase,  search  for  needed  things,  and  labor  to  pro- 
cure necessities.  All  these  activities  make  the  digestion  normal  and 
healthy.  They  do  not  overload  their  stomachs  and  they  enjoy  an  excel- 
lent constitution  which  makes  them  little  susceptible  to  disease.  This 
means  that  they  rarely  have  need  of  medical  aid.  One  never  finds  doc- 
tors in  the  desert,  for  one  does  very  well  without  them  there.  If  they 
had  been  necessary  they  would  have  been  established  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  life.  "Such  is  the  plan  which  God  follows  in  regard  to  his 
creatures,  and  the  ways  of  God  are  unchanging"  (Koran)  (XX,  386- 
391). 

Men  of  small  importance  and  needy  countrymen  are  the  only  per- 
sons who  ma\e  a  living  by  agriculture. — These  persons  adopt  agricul- 
ture because  it  is  an  art  whose  practice  is  most  embedded  in  human 
nature  and  whose  techniques  are  the  most  simple.  One  rarely  sees 
townsmen  or  rich  men .  make  a  living  in  this  way.  Those  who  follow 
it  are  even  regarded  as  degraded  beings.  The  Prophet  has  said  upon 
seeing  a  plowshare:  "These  things  never  enter  into  a  house  without 
degradation  entering  also  therein."  El-Bokhari  has  understood  this 
statement  as  being  directed  against  an  excessive  engrossment  in  agri- 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        63 

culture;  and  for  that  reason  he  has  inserted  it  in  his  book  under  the 
following  title:  Some  consequences  to  be  jeared  if  one  occupies  himself 
with  farming  implements  and  if  one  goes  beyond  the  limits  which  one 
has  been  commanded  to  obey.  This  degradation  arises,  in  my  opinion, 
from  the  fact  that  the  cultivation  of  a  field  carries  the  obligation  to 
pay  a  tax  which  places  the  cultivator  under  the  rule  of  arbitrary  power 
and  violence.  From  this  results  the  debasement  of  the  taxpayer  who 
finally  falls  into  wretchedness  in  consequence  of  the  oppression  and 
tyranny  which  come  to  harass  him  (XX,  347-348). 

Agricultural  peoples  are  subject  to  the  authority  of  the  cities. — The 
civilization  of  the  countryman  is  inferior  to  that  of  the  city  man;  all 
the  objects  of  prime  necessity  are  found  among  the  latter  and  are  often 
lacking  for  the  former.  The  fields  cannot  furnish  the  many  agricul- 
tural implements  to  the  cultivators  nor  offer  them  all  the  means  which 
facilitate  the  culture  of  the  earth;  the  manual  arts  above  all  are  lack- 
ing. One  finds  neither  carpenters,  nor  tailors,  nor  blacksmiths  in  the 
country.  None  of  the  arts  which  contribute  to  the  basic  needs  of  life 
and  furnish  the  most  indispensable  tools  to  agriculture  exist  outside 
of  the  cities.  Countrymen  have  neither  gold  nor  silver  money,  but 
they  possess  the  equivalent  of  it  in  the  products  of  their  fields  and 
flocks.  Milk  is  not  lacking,  nor  wool,  nor  hair  of  camel  and  goat,  nor 
hides,  nor  other  things  of  which  town  residents  have  need.  They  ex- 
change these  goods  for  currency.  We  observe  that  the  countryman 
has  need  of  the  city  man  when  he  wishes  to  procure  important  imple- 
ments, while  the  city  man  can  dispense  with  the  former  in  so  far  as 
he  does  not  seek  the  things  which  to  him  are  of  secondary  necessity 
or  which  can  contribute  to  his  well-being.  A  people  which  continues 
to  inhabit  the  open  country  without  founding  an  empire  or  conquer- 
ing the  cities  would  scarcely  depart  from  the  vicinity  of  an  urban 
population.  The  rural  population  must  work  for  the  city  men  and 
conform  to  the  orders  and  the  requisitions  of  their  government.  If 
the  city  is  commanded  by  a  king,  the  people  of  the  country  humiliate 
themselves  before  the  power  of  the  monarch.  If  it  has  no  king,  it  must 
have  a  chief  for  a  governor  or  some  type  of  council  formed  of  citizens 
possessing  power,  for  a  city  without  government  could  scarcely  pros- 
per. This  chief  causes  the  countrymen  to  obey  and  to  serve  him. 
Their  submission  can  be  either  voluntary  or  constrained.  In  the  first 
case  it  is  obtained  by  money  and  by  the  gift  of  some  objects  of  first 
necessity  which  the  city  alone  can  furnish.  A  country  people  from 
whom  one  buys  services  does  not  cease  to  prosper.  In  the  second  case, 
the  city  chief,  if  he  is  powerful  enough,  employs  the  force  of  arms 
against  the  unsubdued  tribes;  or  he  may  strive  to  sow  seeds  of  dis- 
union among  them  and  to  use  a  part  of  them  by  the  aid  of  which  he 


64      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

will  be  able  to  succeed  in  dominating  all  of  them.  They  submit  in 
order  to  avoid  the  destruction  of  their  homesteads.  If  they  should  wish 
to  abandon  that  region  to  occupy  another  they  could  scarcely  effect 
their  plan,  for  they  usually  discover  that  the  desired  land  is  already 
in  the  control  of  a  nomadic  people  intent  on  guarding  it.  In  the  im- 
possibility of  finding  a  sanctuary  they  must  resign  themselves  to  sub- 
mission to  the  authority  of  the  city;  they  can  only  submit  and  obey. 
"God  is  the  absolute  ruler  of  His  creatures,  He  is  the  only  Lord,  the 
sole  Being  to  be  worshipped"  (Koran)  (XIX,  316-317). 

The  sciences  flourish  only  in  those  places  where  civilization  and 
sedentary  life  are  highly  developed. — We  have  said  that  education  is 
one  of  the  arts  and  that  the  arts  develop  most  strikingly  in  the  great 
cities.  The  greater  the  population  of  a  city  and  the  more  prominent 
the  civilization  and  luxury,  the  more  the  arts  develop  and  multiply. 
This  occurs  because  the  culture  of  the  arts  begins  after  the  subsistence 
of  the  people  is  assured,  When  men  who  are  established  in  a  society 
have  been  able  to  procure  by  their  labors  more  than  is  required  for 
them  to  live,  they  direct  their  attentions  to  a  more  distant  end,  occupy 
themselves  with  matters  such  as  sciences  and  arts,  which  pertain  more 
intimately  to  human  nature.  If  the  native  of  a  village  or  a  city  which  is 
not  a  metropolis  is  motivated  by  a  natural  disposition  to  acquire  scien- 
tific knowledge,  he  will  not  find  the  means  of  instruction;  for  educa- 
tion is  itself  an  art  and  the  arts  do  not  exist  among  the  people  of  the 
country,  as  we  have  already  shown.  Thus  it  is  necessary  to  repair  to 
a  great  city  in  order  to  learn.  It  is  thus  with  all  the  arts. 

Let  the  reader  recall  what  we  said  concerning  Bagdad,  Cordova, 
Cairo,  etc.,  when  we  were  speaking  of  the  great  prosperity  that  these 
cities  enjoyed  in  the  early  days  of  Islamism  and  of  the  civilization  that 
prevailed  in  them.  The  ocean  of  the  sciences  was  full  to  overflowing  in 
these  cities,  the  inhabitants  had  adopted  many  technological  systems 
for  the  practice  of  teaching  and  of  the  other  arts,  many  were  occupied 
in  solving  scientific  problems  and  in  following  the  sciences  in  all  their 
branches;  and  these  cities  and  their  people  ended  by  excelling  the 
ancients  and  even  the  moderns.  But  when  these  cities  had  declined 
from  their  prosperous  state  and  their  inhabitants  were  dispersed  in  all 
directions,  the  carpet  of  science  that  had  been  unrolled  was  rolled  up 
and  carried  away  with  all  that  covered  it.  The  sciences  then  disap- 
peared from  these  places,  along  with  education,  being  transported  to 
other  Moslem  cities  (XX,  448-449). 

The  art  of  writing  is  natural  to  man,  but  it  must  be  learned. — Writ- 
ing acquires  a  high  degree  of  beauty  in  the  cities  in  harmony  with  the 
progress  which  men  have  made  in  social  life  and  civilization  and  with 
their  zeal  to  approach  the  various  types  of  perfection.  Writing,  in  fact, 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        65 

is  one  of  the  arts,  and  we  have  previously  stated  one  of  the  conditions 
of  all  the  arts  is  that  they  follow  the  progress  of  civilization.  We  have 
also  seen  that  most  of  the  nomads  do  not  know  how  to  read  or  to 
write,  and  that  if  any  of  them  possesses  these  talents,  the  writing  is 
unpolished  and  the  reading  is  defective. 

In  the  great  capitals  where  civilization  reaches  a  high  point,  the 
teaching  is  more  efficient,  more  free,  and  more  methodical  because  the 
practice  of  this  art  is  solidly  established  in  these  places  (XX,  391-392). 

13.  IBN-KHALDUN:  URBANIZATION  AND  DECAY* 

A  sedentary  civilization  mar\$  the  highest  attainable  degree  of  prog- 
ress and  is  an  omen  of  decay. — Reason  and  history  both  tell  us  that  in 
the  space  of  forty  years  the  powers  and  the  growth  of  man  attain  their 
maximal  limit,  that  nature  then  suspends  her  action  for  a  time,  and 
that  decadence  follows.  It  is  the  same  with  the  civilization  of  sedentary 
life;  it  is  the  point  beyond  which  there  is  no  more  progress.  A  people 
that  finds  itself  living  in  ease  naturally  turns  toward  the  customs  of 
sedentary  life  and  promptly  adopts  them.  In  this  mode  of  existence 
civilization  consists,  as  has  been  said,  in  the  introduction  of  all  types  of 
luxury,  in  the  search  for  what  is  better,  and  in  a  zeal  to  cultivate  the 
several  arts:  those,  for  example,  which  have  been  invented  to  improve 
the  cuisine,  objects  of  attire,  fine  edifices,  carpets,  dishes,  and  all  the 
other  things  that  have  a  role  in  household  economy.  In  order  to 
achieve  a  satisfying  result  in  each  of  these  realms  the  cooperation  of 
many  arts  is  necessary,  arts  for  which  there  is  no  need  in  nomadic  Hfe 
and  which  are  not  at  all  sought  therein.  When  one  has  carried  every- 
thing associated  with  the  household  to  the  final  limit  of  elegance,  one 
turns  to  the  cultivation  of  his  passions,  and  habits  of  luxury  impart 
a  variety  of  taints  to  the  soul  which  prevent  its  maintaining  itself  in 
the  path  of  religion  and  prejudice  its  happiness  in  the  world. 

These  customs  regarded  from  the  religious  point  of  view  take  away 
the  refinement  of  the  soul  and  leave  upon  it  some  blemishes  which  are 
only  with  difficulty  removed.  Regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
mundane  world,  they  create  so  many  needs  and  impose  so  many  de- 
mands that  one  cannot  gain  enough  by  work  to  satisfy  them.  In  order 
to  make  this  clearer,  let  us  observe  that  the  great  variety  of  arts  which 
.are  born  in  the  civilization  of  great  cities  involves  the  inhabitants  in 
great  expense.  The  degree  of  that  civilization  varies  with  the  size  of 
the  population;  the  greater  the  population  the  more  complete  the  civili- 
zation. We  have  already  said  that  all  cities  comprising  a  numerous 
population  are  distinguished  by  the  high  prices  of  the  foods  displayed 

*  Ibn-Khaldun,  op.  ctt. 


66  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  the  markets  and  of  all  objects  that  supply  the  needs  of  life.  The 
duties  imposed  by  the  government  on  this  merchandise  contribute  to 
the  high  prices.  These  taxes  are  very  considerable,  for  the  civilization 
attains  its  high  development  only  in  the  period  when  the  government 
has  arrived  at  its  highest  degree  of  power,  an  epoch  during  which  the 
administration  is  always  establishing  new  imposts  because  it  has  great 
expenses  at  this  time,  as  we  have  shown.  These  taxes  have  the  effect  of 
increasing  the  cost  of  everything  that  is  sold  .  .  .  and  obligate  the  in- 
habitants of  the  city  to  spend  much  and  to  depart  from  the  limits  of 
moderation,  to  throw  themselves  into  prodigality.  They  could  scarcely 
do  otherwise,  for  they  have  become  the  slaves  of  their  luxurious  habits. 
They  spend  all  they  earn  and  allow  themselves  to  be  involved,  one 
after  another,  in  poverty  and  destitution.  When  the  majority  of  them 
have  been  reduced  to  poverty,  the  number  of  purchasers  decreases, 
commerce  languishes,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  city  suffers.  All  this  is 
caused  by  civilization  carried  to  the  extreme  and  luxury  that  has  gone 
beyond  all  limits. 

These  are  the  causes  that  do  harm  in  a  general  way  to  a  city  because 
they  injure  its  commerce  and  its  population.  Those  that  do  harm  to 
the  city  by  acting  on  the  individuals  are:  first,  the  fatigue  and  weari- 
ness which  they  experience  in  trying  to  satisfy  habits  of  luxury  which 
have  become  necessities  for  them,  and  second,  the  demoralizing  im- 
pressions experienced  by  the  soul  in  seeking  to  satisfy  the  requirements 
of  vicious  habits.  The  evil  done  by  this  process  to  the  soul  constantly 
increases  because  each  blemish  that  it  receives  is  followed  by  another. 
Depravity,  wickedness,  dishonesty,  and  the  inclination  to  help  them- 
selves by  all  possible  means,  good  or  bad,  are  augmented  in  these  indi- 
viduals. The  soul  turns  from  virtue  to  reflect  on  these  matters  in  order 
to  become  absorbed  with  their  study  and  to  devise  some  tricks  by 
means  of  which  it  can  accomplish  its  designs.  One  also  sees  these  men 
boldly  resort  to  lies,  deceit,  fraud,  theft,  and  perjury  in  the  sale  of 
their  goods.  One  will  further  note  that  their  striking  tendency  to  satis- 
fy their  passions  and  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  introduced  by  luxury  has 
rendered  them  familiar  with  all  types  of  vice  and  with  immorality  in  all 
its  forms.  They  make  an  open  display  of  indecency,  and  throwing  aside 
all  reserve  they  indulge  in  immodest  conversations  without  being  re- 
strained by  the  presence  of  their  parents  or  their  women.  In  this  re- 
spect it  is  quite  different  in  nomadic  life,  where  the  respect  one  bears 
toward  women  prevents  one's  speaking  any  obscene  words  before 
them.  One  will  also  recognize  that  in  the  cities  there  are  people  who 
are  most  skillful  in  the  use  of  ruses  and  of  tricks  in  order  to  avoid  the 
forces  of  justice  when  it  is  about  to  catch  them  and  to  prevent  the 
punishment  which  they  know  to  be  due  them  on  account  of  their 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        67 

misdeeds.  That  has  even  become  a  habit  and  second  nature  for  all  of 
them  except  those  whom  God  has  preserved  from  sin.  The  city  teems 
with  a  population  of  the  lowest  type,  with  a  crowd  of  men  with  vile 
inclinations  whose  rivals  in  wrongdoing  are  some  young  men  belong- 
ing to  the  great  families,  some  sons  of  good  birth  left  to  themselves, 
excluded  by  the  government  from  the  group  of  officials.  These  men, 
despite  their  noble  origin  and  the  respectability  of  their  families,  have 
allowed  themselves  to  be  involved  in  vice  by  associating  with  bad  com- 
pany. That  fact  is  understood  when  one  remembers  that  vice  lowers 
all  men  to  a  common  level.  One  must  also  remember  that  in  order  to 
distinguish  himself  and  to  maintain  himself  in  the  public  esteem  and 
to  be  known  by  his  honorable  character,  it  is  necessary  for  one  to  strive 
to  grow  in  merit  and  to  avoid  all  that  is  vile.  One  who  has  contracted, 
no  matter  in  what  way,  a  strong  taint  of  depravity  and  who  has  lost 
the  sentiment  of  virtue  will  avail  nothing  by  being  able  to  claim  mem- 
bership in  a  noble  family  or  a  pure  race.  That  is  why  so  many  persons 
who  come  from  noble  families,  illustrious  and  of  high  rank,  are  re- 
jected from  society,  relegated  to  the  crowd,  and  obliged  because  of 
their  corrupted  morals  to  follow  the  most  vile  occupations  in  order  to 
obtain  a  living.  When  there  are  many  of  these  people  in  a  city  or  a  na- 
tion, it  is  the  sign  by  which  God  announces  the  decay  and  the  ruin  of 
this  people. 

One  will  now  understand  the  meaning  of  these  words  of  God:  "And 
when  we  wished  to  destroy  a  city,  we  addressed  ourselves  to  those 
who  live  in  luxury  therein,  and  they  hastened  to  commit  some  abomi- 
nations; thus  our  sentence  was  found  justified,  and  we  destroyed  the 
city  from  top  to  bottom"  (Koran,  XVII,  vs.  17).  This  is  how  de- 
moralization occurs:  when  one  does  not  gain  the  things  to  supply  his 
needs,  to  satisfy  the  numerous  habits  that  one  has  built  up,  or  to  main- 
tain the  ardor  with  which  the  soul  seeks  its  pleasures,  the  fortunes 
become  disordered;  and  when  that  comes  successively  to  many  per- 
sons in  the  city,  everything  becomes  chaos  and  the  city  falls  into 
ruin.  .  .  . 

Another  cause  o£  the  corruption  of  morals  in  the  city  or  a  sedentary 
civilization  is  the  zeal  with  which,  amidst  pronounced  luxury,  one 
loosens  the  bridle  of  his  passions,  in  order  to  plunge  himself  in  de- 
bauchery. Then  one  invents,  for  the  sake  of  his  stomach,  the  most 
savory  foods  and  agreeable  beverages.  One  subsequently  alters  the  be- 
havior to  humor  the  carnal  desires.  .  .  . 

The  reader  who  will  have  understood  and  appreciated  what  we 
have  just  said  will  recognize  that  civilization  is  sedentary  life  and  lux- 
ury, that  it  indicates  the  last  stage  of  the  progress  of  a  society,  and  that, 
from  this  time  on,  the  nation  commences  to  decline,  to  become  cor- 


68  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rupted,  and  to  fall  into  a  state  of  decrepitude—a  process  which  occurs 
in  the  natural  life  of  all  animals.  We  will  even  go  so  far  as  to  state  that 
the  character  of  men  formed  under  the  influence  of  sedentary  life  and 
luxury  is  in  itself  the  personification  of  evil.  A  man  is  not  a  man  un- 
less he  is  able  to  procure  by  his  own  efforts  that  which  will  be  useful 
to  him  and  is  able  to  reject  that  which  would  be  harmful;  it  is  for  this 
purpose  that  he  has  received  such  a  perfectly  organized  body.  The 
resident  of  the  city  is  incapable  of  providing  his  prime  needs.  Slothful- 
ness  contracted  from  living  in  ease  hinders  him  in  this  attempt;  or  it 
may  even  be  the  pride  resulting  from  an  education  acquired  in  the 
midst  of  well-being  and  luxury.  These  two  are  equally  at  fault.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  cities,  whose  youth  has  been  passed  under  the  con- 
trol of  preceptors  charged  with  teaching  them  and  punishing  them, 
and  who  live  thereafter  in  luxury,  lose  all  their  courage,  have  no 
longer  enough  energy  to  defend  themselves  against  what  would  do 
them  harm,  and  become  a  burden  to  the  government  which  is  obliged 
to  protect  them.  That  disposition  is  also  harmful  from  the  religious 
point  of  view  because  of  the  blemish  of  evil  which  the  bad  habits  to 
which  they  are  slaves  have  imprinted  on  their  souls.  That  is  a  princi- 
ple which  we  have  already  established  and  which  admits  few  excep- 
tions. When  a  man  has  lost  the  force  of  acting  according  to  his  good 
qualities  and  his  piety,  he  has  lost  the  character  of  a  man  and  falls  to 
the  level  of  the  beasts.  When  one  views  civilization  in  this  way,  one 
understands  why  those  of  the  sultan's  troops  who  have  been  reared  in 
the  harsh  conditions  of  nomadic  life  are  more  effective  and  more  use- 
ful than  those  who  have  spent  their  lives  amidst  the  customs  of  seden- 
tary life.  This  fact  is  noted  in  all  empires.  It  is  thus  evident  that  civili- 
zation marks  the  point  of  arrest  in  the  development  of  a  people  or  o£ 
an  empire.  "God  is  the  only  One,  the  all-powerful  One"  (Koran) 
(XX,  300-307). 

B.  THE  EUROPEAN  PEASANT  DURING 
THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

European  writers  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  has  been  mentioned, 
touched  the  problems  here  discussed  only  casually.  Diverse  re- 
marks and  statements  are  scattered  here  and  there  in  various 
political  and  philosophical  treatises,  in  historical  narratives,  in 
literature,  and  in  poetry,  but  they  do  not  add  a  great  deal  to  our 
discussion.  Before  we  begin  a  survey  of  the  most  important  of 
these  statements,  let  us  glance  at  the  character  of  the  stories  and 
the  poetry  that  depict  rural  life.  The  characteristics  of  the  peasants 
as  they  appear  in  literature  are  exemplified  in  the  subsequent 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        69 

fragments  from  Paul  Meissner's  Der  Bauer  in  der  enghschen 
Literatur.  What  Meissner  says  of  the  medieval  English  stories, 
poems,  and  fiction  may  be  said  of  the  medieval  literature  of  Eu- 
rope generally. 

14.  MEISSNER:  THE  PEASANT  IN  MEDIEVAL  ENGLISH  LITERATURE* 

The  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  not  favorable  to  the  peasants, 
for  it  has  decidedly  aristocratic  forms,  and  the  peasant  is  too  much  an 
everyday  matter  to  seem  at  all  worthy  of  artistic  consideration. f 
Where  we  meet  the  peasant,  he  is  first  of  all  depicted  as  the  coarse  and 
clumsy  yokel  about  whom  one  laughs.  When  we  investigate  this  in  the 
corresponding  works,  we  meet  first  of  all  the  figure  of  Cain  in  the 
Totvneley  Plays  of  the  fourteenth  century.  To  be  sure,  judgment  must 
be  somewhat  restrained  at  this  point.  It  is  true,  the  peasant  is  "de- 
cidedly clumsy  and  coarse  and,  in  addition,  brutal;  the  comedy  which 
he  represents  also  corresponds  entirely  to  his  rustic  manner,  comedy 
that  is  of  the  very  lowest  type,  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  is  expressed  chiefly  in  the  most  obscene  language,  as  well  as  in  oaths 
and  cuffs,  which  he  bestows  generously  on  his  laborer."  (Cf.  Eckhardt, 
Die  lustige  Person  im  "dlteren  englischen  Drama,  p.  30.) 

But  Cain  is  not  merely  the  comical  peasant.  Even  Eckhardt  grants 
him  a  strong  realistic  trait,  when  he  says:  "Cain  carries  here  clearly  the 
characteristics  of  a  north-English  peasant  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
He  is  depicted  as  such  with  considerable  fidelity  and  vivacity."  This 
should  have  been  emphasized  even  more,  for  already  Cain  appears 
clearly  as  the  type  of  the  niggardly  peasant.  The  scene  in  which  we 
see  this  peasant  haggling  with  God  really  displays  an  extraordinarily 
keen  power  of  observation.  He  has  never  demanded  anything  of  God; 
how  then  can  He  at  all  demand  that  Cain  should  bring  him  a  sacri- 
fice? And  further,  when  he  finally  does  condescend  to  give  up  part  of 
his  wealth,  we  detect  a  trace  of  this  peasant  cunning,  which  believes 
that  it  can  nevertheless  outwit  God.  Each  sheaf  of  grain  and  each  head 
of  cattle  is  counted  double,  so  that  finally  he  is  giving  up  only  half  of 
the  amount  due.  These  are  clear  beginnings  of  a  psychological  con- 
ception of  the  peasant. 

This  same  double  character  is  found  in  John  the  Reeve  (ed.  Laing, 
p.  43)  from  the  fourteenth  century.  John  is  a  rich  peasant  who  pos- 
sesses a  fine  estate  in  a  distant  forest  region.  With  true  peasant  arro- 

*  Paul  Meissner,  Der  Bauer  in  der  englischen  Litcrcttur,  Peter  Hanitein,  Bonn.,  1922, 
pp.  17-25.  Translated  and  printed  with  the  permission  of  the  publisher. 

t  EDITORS'  NOTE. — This  is  generally  true  of  the  writings  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
the  exception  of  the  writings  of  several  prominent  thinkers.  See  G.  von  Below,  Problemc 
der  Wirtschajtsgfschichte,  Tubingen,  1926,  p.  94. 


70  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

gance  he  looks  down  upon  the  activity  of  his  estate,  though  again  he 
is  conceived  as  a  clumsy  yokel.  "With  gentlemen  I  have  nothing  to 
doe,"  is  his  declaration  when  the  lost  king  asks  him  for  hospitality.  Yet 
finally  he  is  persuaded  to  admit  the  lost  king  to  his  home.  The  meal 
there  is  extraordinarily  simple,  but  that  is  merely  a  trick  of  the  crafty 
peasant,  for  he  fears  for  his  possessions  should  the  king  discover  the 
extent  of  his  wealth.  Actually,  however,  as  he  declares  with  boastful 
peasant  pride,  although  he  "goes  in  a  russet  gowne"  he  can  afford  just 
as  good  wine  as  the  king.  The  guest  now  promises  to  remain  silent, 
and  immediately  a  splendid  meal,  to  which  all  do  justice,  is  served. 

Typically  comical  in  the  medieval  sense  is  Vice  Mischief  in  Man- 
'kj-nd,  a  morality  play  of  the  time  of  Henry  VI.  He  appears  as  a  farm 
laborer  in  the  first  scene  and  indulges  in  obscenities.  The  same  is  true 
of  Horestes,  a  tragedy  by  John  Pikeryng,  which  originated  about  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Two  peasants  appear  in  this,  Hodge 
(the  typical  peasant  abbreviation  for  Roger)  and  Rusticus,  who  are 
beaten  by  Vice.  He  then  sets  them  by  the  ears  until  they,  to  his  great 
pleasure,  pummel  each  other  lustily. 

Besides  the  above,  however,  there  existed  during  the  Middle  Ages 
a  purely  didactic,  ethical  conception  of  the  peasant.  He  appears  there 
as  the  representative  of  a  class  that  is  held  up  to  all  others  as  a  model. 
That  is  in  keeping  with  the  customary  reversal  of  current  evaluations 
by  the  moralists  and  occasionally  also  by  an  outstanding  poet  such  as 
Chaucer. 

First  mention  is  to  be  made  of  William  Langland  in  his  allegorical 
vision,  Piers  the  Ploughman,  which  becomes  significant  for  us  from 
the  moment  that  the  peasant,  Piers,  comes  into  the  foreground  and  at- 
tempts to  show  the  road  to  Truth,  to  the  seven  deadly  sins— the  alle- 
gorical figures  which  are  in  conflict  with  Reason  (Passus  VI).  He 
wants  to  become  the  leader,  but  declares  previously: 

bi  Peter  the  Apostel, 

I  have  an  half  aker,  to  herie  bi  the  heije  weye. 
Weore  he  well  i-eried,  thenne  with  ou  wolde  I  wende, 
And  wissen  on  the  rihte  weye,  til  je  founden  treuthe, 

(Passus  VII,  4  iff.) 

We  see  that  the  labor  of  the  peasant  plays  a  certain  role  here.  And 
this  impression  is  strengthened  by  what  follows,  for  the  road  to  Truth 
leads  only  through  Labor.  Therefore  the  peasant  assigns  difficult  tasks 
to  all  who  would  follow,  and  he  who  refuses  is  threatened  with  the 
specter  of  hunger.  So  in  this  poem  there  is  already  a  faint  indication  o£ 
something  noble  in  the  peasant.  To  be  sure,  we  do  not  find  in  the 
poem  anything  of  that  which  seems  most  important  to  us,  namely, 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        71 

peasant  activity  and  peasant  life.  It  has  already  been  mentioned  that 
this  was  of  no  interest  to  the  poet  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  poetical  productions  linked  with  Langland's  poems,  "Piers 
Plowman's  Crede"  (1394)  and  "The  Plowman's  Tale"  (1395),  are  to 
be  evaluated  in  exactly  the  same  manner  and  therefore  will  merely  be 
mentioned  here.  Especial  emphasis  may  be  placed  on  "God  Spede  the 
Plough,"  which  is  immediately  related  to  the  "Crede."  The  poet  ques- 
tions the  peasant  regarding  his  activity,  and  receives  the  answer, 

For  all  the  Yere  we  labour  with  the  lande 

With  many  a  comberous  clot  of  claye. 

Here  we  detect  something  of  an  understanding  of  the  hard  labor  of 
the  peasant,  on  whom,  in  addition,  the  heaviest  taxes  are  often  im- 
posed. The  poem  closes  entirely  in  the  spirit  of  Burns: 

God  give  them  grace  such  life  to  lede 

That  in  there  conscience  maye  be  mercy  enough, 

And  haven  blisse  to  be  their  mede 

And  ever  I  praye:  "God  spede  the  plough." 

Here  we  must  also  mention  "How  the  Plowman  Learned  his  Pater 
Noster."  This  is  the  story  of  the  peasant  who  could  not  recite  the 
Lord's  Prayer.  When  the  priest  discovered  that  in  confession,  he  or- 
dered him  to  learn  it  quickly  if  he  wished  to  go  to  heaven.  But  "I 
wolde  threshe,  sayd  the  Plowman,  yeres  ten,  rather  than  I  it  wolde 
leren,"  and  he  promises  the  cleric  ten  bushels  of  wheat  and  forty 
shillings  if  he  will  teach  him  the  prayer.  The  matter  is  finally  solved 
thus:  the  peasant  is  ordered  to  feed  forty  poor  persons  and  ask  each 
for  his  name;  the  names  of  the  recipients  are  one  or  more  words  of  the 
prayer,  which  the  peasant  learns  in  this  manner.  These  are  all,  as  one 
sees,  more  or  less  clearly  didactic  poems,  which  do  not  yield  much  for 
an  actual  understanding  of  the  peasant. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  Skelton's  "Colin  Clout."  Here,  also,  the 
peasant  is  the  representative  of  the  poor,  religiously  needy  people,  who 
complain  about  the  fact  that  high  ecclesiastical  positions  can  be  pur- 
chased, about  the  love  of  splendor  among  the  clerics,  and  the  negli- 
gence of  the  administration,  in  short,  about  everything  that  would 
have  seemed  vulnerable  to  a  political,  satirical  pamphleteer  under  the 
system  of  Wolsey. 

The  traits  which  Chaucer  attributes  to  his  peasants  in  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  are  perhaps  a  bit  more  personal.  There  is  the  Plowman, 
"That  hadde  y-lad  of  dong  full  many  a  fother"  (Prologue,  530).  He 
seems  very  likable.  Unfortunately  the  figure  is  not  sufficiently  deline- 
ated to  give  a  well-rounded  picture,  but  in  the  few  lines  we  find  simi- 
larities to  Burns.  Of  him  also  it  is  said  that  "he  was  Livinge  in  pees 


72  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  parfit  charitee"  (532) .  Praise  is  also  bestowed  upon  his  piety  and 
his  love  for  his  neighbor  which  goes  so  far  that 

He  wolde  threshe,  and  therto  dyke  and  delve, 

For  Cristes  sake,  for  every  poure  wight, 

Withouten  hyre,  if  it  lay  in  his  might. 

(536  ff.) 

The  Yeoman  appearing  in  the  Prologue  also  appeals  to  us,  but  he 
is  conceived  more  as  a  forester  and  attendant  on  his  lord  than  as  a 
peasant.  The  type  of  the  well-situated  peasant  is  also  indicated  in 
Chaucer,  for  example  by  the  Frankelyn  (Prologue,  331  if.).  He  loved 
his  wine  even  in  the  morning. 

To  liven  in  delyt  was  ever  his  wone. 

He  is  decidedly  an  Epicurean,  whose  cellar  and  storerooms  burst 
with  supplies.  He  eats  and  drinks,  but  not  without  preferences: 

After  the  sundry  seasons  of  the  year 
So  changed  he  his  mete  and  his  soper. 

In  summary,  we  might  say  that  during  the  Middle  Ages  a  certain 
interest  arises  in  the  ethical  side  of  the  peasant,  as  well  as  in  the  merely 
comical  one — an  interest  born  out  of  the  religious  and  social  criticism 
of  that  time. 

C.  EUROPEAN  THINKERS  BEFORE  THE  EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY 

After  this  outline  of  the  character  of  medieval  fiction  and 
stories  about  the  peasants  and  rural  life,  let  us  pass  to  a  brief  sur- 
vey of  the  opinions  of  prominent  medieval  thinkers  in  the  field. 
These  opinions  are  also  somewhat  casual.  But  as  we  proceed  to 
the  sixteenth  and  the  seventeenth  centuries,  the  theories  become 
more  and  more  developed  and  detailed. 
I.  JOHN  OF  SALISBURY 

In  the  Policraticus,  John  of  Salisbury  (1120-1180),  like  Vegetius 
Renatus  and  almost  all  writers  of  antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages, 
claims  that  the  best  soldiers  are  "country-folk  who  have  been 
brought  up  under  the  open  sky  and  in  habits  of  work,  trained 
to  endure  the  sun's  heat,  caring  nothing  for  the  shade,  ignorant 
of  pleasures  of  the  bath  and  other  luxuries,  simple-minded,  con- 
tent with  little  food,  their  limbs  hardened  to  endure  all  manner 
of  toil,  and  with  whom  it  was  a  habit  from  the  country  life  to 
wield  a  sword,  dig  a  ditch,  and  carry  a  load,"  a  statement  which 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        73 

later  on  is  repeated  by  Machiavelli,  almost  literally,  although 
without  reference  to  his  sources. 

It  is,  of  course,  not  to  be  denied  that  from  the  foundation  of  Rome 
it  was  from  the  city  that  the  Romans  always  went  forth  to  their  wars; 
but  then  it  was  a  city  where  there  was  no  indulgence  in  luxuries.  The 
soldier  and  the  husbandman  were  one  and  the  same  man;  he  only 
changed  the  character  of  his  implements,  which  was  true  to  the  point 
even  that  the  dictatorship  was  offered  to  Quintus  Cincinnatus  while 
he  was  plowing;  and  "his  flurried  wife  clothed  him  with  the  dictator's 
robes  while  the  cattle  looked  on,  and  a  lictor  drove  home  his  plow." 
From  the  fields  and  farms,  then,  the  strength  of  the  army  is  to  be 
chiefly  recruited.3 

On  the  other  hand,  the  author  satirizes  the  youth  of  the  cities, 
depicts  the  pernicious  effects  of  the  town's  comforts  and  luxury, 
such  as  softening,  effeminacy,  licentiousness,  lack  of  vigor,  cour- 
age, and  determination,  etc.4 

Another  point  in  the  work  is  the  comparison  of  the  social  status 
of  the  husbandmen  with  that  of  other  social  orders.  While,  in  the 
Policraticui  organic  analogy,  the  prince  is  compared  with  the 
head  of  the  social  organism,  the  senate  with  the  heart,  the  officials 
with  the  belly,  the  governors  of  the  provinces  with  the  eyes,  ears, 
and  tongues,  the  army  with  the  armed  hands,  the  small  officials 
with  the  unarmed  hands,  the  husbandmen  and  artisans  are  com- 
pared with  the  feet  of  a  social  organism.  Among  this  last  class  the 
husbandmen  are  first  mentioned.5  Translating  this  into  our  ter- 
minology, the  class  of  husbandmen  was  placed  by  the  Policraticus 
below  that  of  professionals,  clergy,  nobility,  and  officials,  but  not 
below  any  other  class  of  medieval  society.  This  ranking,  in  its 
essence,  is  identical  with  that  of  the  Hindu,  Zoroastrian,  Chinese, 
-and,  in  part,  the  Greek  and  Roman  sources. 
II.  ST.  THOMAS  AQUINAS 

In  sharp  contradiction  to  the  opinions  of  the  majority  of  the 
great  social  thinkers  stands  St.  Thomas  Aquinas'  (1225-1274) 
estimation  of  the  peasant  class.  It  is  given  by  him  in  his  Com- 
mentaries to  Aristotle's  Politics.  Though  the  work  seems  not  to 
have  been  written  entirely  by  him,  nevertheless  it  expresses  his 

8  The  Statesman's  Book,  of  John  Salisbury,  in  the  Policraticus,  trans,  by  J.  Dickinson, 
New  York,  1927,  pp.  181-183. 
4  Ibid.,  193,  221  passim. 
*lbid..  p.  243. 


74  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ideas.  Like  Aristotle  he  regards  the  state  as  the  most  perfect  and 
highest  form  of  socio-political  organization.  But,  contrary  to  Aris- 
totle, he  interprets  the  state  as  a  city  composed  of  many  houses 
and  divided  into  many  streets,  every  one  of  which  is  the  location 
for  a  certain  occupational  group  whose  totality  makes  the  city 
self-sufficient.  Dwelling  in  such  a  city  he  regards  as  a  natural  state 
of  man,  and  dwelling  outside  of  it  as  an  unnatural  state.  For  this 
reason,  the  peasants  who  live  outside  of  the  city  do  it,  not  because 
they  would  not  like  to  dwell  in  the  city,  but  because  of  their  pov- 
erty, lack  of  ability,  and  inferiority;  they  are  in  the  same  position 
as  a  man  with  one  arm  or  one  eye,  who  is  thus  hampered,  not 
because  he  would  not  like  to  have  two  arms  or  two  eyes  but  be- 
cause he  cannot  have  them.  That  such  an  interpretation  of  St. 
Thomas'  statements  is  correct  is  shown  by  his  definite  statements 
that,  though  his  self-sufficient  city  must  have  its  own  lands  and 
agricultural  population  to  provide  agricultural  products,  yet  this 
class  of  the  population  is  the  lowest  among  all  the  classes  in  the 
city.6  These  comments  about  the  Politics  of  Aristotle  who,  as  we 
saw,  estimated  husbandmen  much  higher  than  city  artisans  and 
workers,  show  quite  clearly  that  St.  Thomas  did  not  care  to  fol- 
low Aristotle  on  this  point  and  that  he  deliberately  deviated  from 
his  opinions.7 
III.  SIR  THOMAS  MORE 

Writers  such  as  Sir  Thomas  More  (1478-1535)  and  Sir  John 
Fortescue  expressed  opinions  similar  to  those  of  John  of  Salis- 
bury. Fortescue  regarded  the  rural  masses  of  his  day  as  the  best 
soldiers  and  the  most  healthy  people.  More  in  his  Utopia  made 

fl  "It  is  impossible  that  all  the  citizens  (the  inhabitants  of  the  city)  should  cultivate 
the  city's  land;  it  is  appropriate  that  the  superiors  take  care  of  the  business  while  the 
inferiors  take  care  of  agriculture:  and  it  is  appropriate  that  the  superiors  who  work  less 
in  agriculture  should  receive  more  from  its  products."  Other  statements  of  St.  Thomas 
cast  still  less  pleasant  invectives  upon  the  husbandmen,  so  much  so  that  Max  Weber  only 
slightly  exaggerates  the  situation  by  saying:  "Thomas  Aquinas,  in  discussing  the  dif- 
ferent social  classes  and  their  relative  worth,  speaks  with  extreme  contempt  of  the 
peasant."  (Max  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  p.  317.)  See  the  details  of  this  point 
in  Max  Maurenbrecher,  Thomas  von  Aquino's  Stellung  zum  Wtrtschajtsleben  seiner  Zeit, 
pp.  40-41,  70  ff.;  see  there  other  literature.  Explaining  this  attitude  of  St.  Thomas, 
Maurenbrecher  is  not  far  from  the  truth  in  saying  that  it  was  probably  due  to  the  great 
poverty  of  the  peasants  in  Italy.  They  were  in  almost  complete  dependency  upon  the 
cities  in  the  thirteenth  century.  St.  Thomas,  also  being  an  urbanite  and  knowing  little, 
if  anything,  about  peasant  life,  simply  reflected  the  existing  social  situation  as  it  appeared 
to  an  urbanite.  Ibid,,  pp.  73-74. 

T  See  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Vlll  libros  poltticorum  sett  de  rebus  civilibus,  ed.  Farm., 
XXI,  364-716. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        75 

agriculture  an  occupation  which,  for  a  period  of  two  years,  was 
obligatory  upon  all  persons  of  his  ideal  society,  regardless  of 
whether  they  were  born  in  the  city  or  the  country. 

They  have  in  the  country  in  all  parts  of  the  shire  houses  or  farms 
builded,  well  appointed  and  furnished  with  all  sorts  of  instruments 
and  tools  belonging  to  husbandry.  These  houses  be  inhabited  of  the 
citizens,  which  come  thither  to  dwell  by  course.  No  household  or  farm 
in  the  country  hath  fewer  than  forty  persons,  men,  and  women.  .  .  . 
Out  of  every  one  of  these  families  or  farms  cometh  every  year  into  the 
city  twenty  persons  which  have  continued  two  years  before  in  the 
country.  In  their  place  so  many  fresh  be  sent  thither  out  of  the  city. 
.  .  .  This  manner  and  fashion  of  yearly  changing  and  renewing  the 
occupiers  of  husbandry,  though  it  be  solemn  and  customably  used,  to 
the  intent  that  no  man  shall  be  constrained  against  his  will  to  con- 
tinue long  in  that  hard  and  sharp  kind  of  life,  yet  many  of  them  have 
such  a  pleasure  and  delight  in  husbandry,  that  they  obtain  a  longer 
space  of  years.8 

IV.  NICCOLO  MACHIAVELLI 

Niccolo  Machiavelli  (1469-1527)  made  but  casual  remarks  on 
these  subjects.  He  stressed  many  times  the  facts  that  the  city  easily 
breeds  tumult,  disorder,  luxury,  vice,  and  licentiousness,  and  that 
class  struggle  very  often  and  very  successfully  originates  and  de- 
velops in  the  cities.  In  this  way  the  city  is  often  a  factor  in  social 
disorganization  and  demoralization.  However,  he  does  not  regard 
these  concomitants  of  city  life  as  absolutely  inevitable  and  un- 
avoidable.9 He  also  gives  a  sound  theory  of  the  origin  of  the 
cities.10  Of  the  specific  characteristics  of  the  rural  people  he  em- 
phasizes particularly  their  endurance,  physical  fitness,  industrious- 
ness,  lack  of  maliciousness  and  deceit,  and  their  possession  of 
other  qualities  which  are  necessary  for  good  soldiers: 

Those  that  have  written  of  such  matters  (whether  to  chuse  the  sol- 
diers from  the  city  or  the  country  people) ,  doe  all  agree,  that  it  is  best 
to  chuse  them  out  of  the  countrie,  being  men  accustomed  to  no  ease, 
nurished  in  labours,  used  to  stonde  in  the  sunne,  to  flie  the  shadow, 
knowing  how  to  occupy  the  spade,  to  make  a  diche,  to  carrie  a  burden, 
and  to  bee  without  any  deceite,  and  without  malisiousness.11 

8  Sir  Thomas  More,  The  Utopia,  London,  G.  Routledge  &  Sons,  pp.  84-85. 

°See  N.  Machiavelli,  The  Florentine  History  (Tudor  Translations),  London,  1905, 
pp.  130-177  and  passim;  "Discorsi  sopra  la  prima  dcca  di  Tito  Livio"  in  Opere  com- 
plete di  N.  Machiavelli,  Florence,  1843,  pp.  279  ff.  and  passim;  The  Prince  (Tudor 
Translations),  London,  1905,  pp.  293-294. 

10  N.   Machiavelli,    "Discorsi"    in    Opere    complete    di    N,    Machiavelli,   pp.    2560. 

11  The  Arte  of  Warre  (Tudor  Translations),  pp.  44,  49-50,  70. 


76  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Finally  in  his  sketch,  "La  Mente  di  un  uomo  di  stato3/  he  stresses 
that  agriculture,  together  with  commerce,  is  the  foundation  of 
prosperity;  and  that  "the  possession  of  land  is  more  stable  and 
firm  wealth  than  the  wealth  based  on  mercantile  industry."  12 

V.  FRANCIS  BACON 

The  casual  remarks  of  Francis  Bacon  (1561-1626)  show  that  he 
viewed  agriculture  and  husbandmen  rather  favorably.  In  his  essay 
"Of  Riches,"  which  discusses  the  best  ways  to  increase  riches,  he 
awards  the  first  place  to  agriculture. 

The  improvement  of  the  ground  is  the  most  natural  obtaining  of 
riches;  for  it  is  our  great  mother's  blessing,  the  earth's;  but  it  is  slow; 
and  yet,  where  men  of  great  wealth  do  stoop  to  husbandry,  it  multi- 
plieth  riches  exceedingly.  .  .  .  The  gains  of  ordinary  trades  and  voca- 
tions are  honest.  .  .  .  Usury  is  the  certainest  means  of  gain,  though 
one  of  the  worst.  .  .  ,13 

VI.  GIOVANNI  BOTERO 

Of  the  social  thinkers  of  the  sixteenth  century  Giovanni  Botero 
(1540-1617)  deserves  especial  mention.  His  treatise  Delia  ragion 
di  stato,  libri  died.  Con  tre  libri  delle  cause  della  grandezza 
e  rnagnificenza  della  citta^  (1590)  represents,  in  the  first  part, 
a  remarkable  treatise  upon  the  causes  of  the  growth  and  the  ag- 
grandizement of  the  state  and  the  causes  of  its  decay;  while,  in  the 
second  part,  it  gives  a  still  more  interesting  analysis  of  the  causes 
of  the  aggrandizement  and  decay  of  cities.  Like  the  majority 
of  ancient  and  medieval  thinkers,  Botero  is  a  partisan  of  a  cyclical 
theory  of  the  historical  process:  states  and  cities  appear,  grow, 
reach  their  climax,  and  decay,  by  virtue  of  the  "intrinsic"  causes 
(sedition,  revolt,  incompetence  of  the  rulers,  vice,  licentiousness, 
loss  of  virility,  energy,  etc.)  or  "the  extrinsic"  (calamity,  war, 
pestilence,  etc.)  (pp.  3-5,  328-334).  In  so  far  as  the  growth  of  a 
state  manifests  itself  in  the  growth  of  cities  and  their  splendor, 
wealth,  and  luxury,  the  development  of  urbanized  states  is  but 
a  prelude  to  a  decay  because 

with  the  grandeur  of  the  state  (or  the  city)  wealth  grows;  with  it,  vice, 
luxury,  pride,  licentiousness,  avarice,  the  root  of  all  evils;  and  the  states 
whom  frugality  led  to  growth  are  now  disorganized  through  opulence; 

12  N.  Machiavelli,  Opere  complete,  pp.   1163-1164. 

"Francis  Bacon,  The  Essays  or  Counsels,  Civil  and  Moral, Oxford,  1911, pp.  112-113. 
14 See  the  first   edition:   "In  Ferrara.   MDXC.   Appresso   Vittono  Baldini  stampator 
)  con  licenza  de  i  Superiori." 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        77 

in  addition,  grandeur  leads  to  overconfidence  in  the  state's  force  and 
security;  overconfidence  leads  to  negligence,  to  arrogance,  and  to 
contempt  for  the  people  and  for  enemies.  .  .  .  Valor,  developed 
through  difficulties,  leads  to  the  grandeur  of  the  state;  but  valor,  re- 
maining in  peaceful  and  luxurious  conditions,  degenerates  into  crimi- 
nality and  becomes  mortified  by  voluptuousness;  under  such  circum- 
stances there  appear  a  lack  of  generous  ideas,  excellent  plans,  and 
honorable  enterprises;  instead  of  them  the  ostentation,  arrogance,  am- 
bition, and  avarice  of  the  magistrates  grow;  the  crowd  becomes  im- 
pertinent, the  military  leaders  transform  themselves  into  buffoons;  the 
soldiers  become  babblers;  the  truth  is  replaced  by  adulation;  respect 
for  virtue,  by  that  for  wealth;  justice,  by  bribery;  simplicity,  by  decep- 
tion; and  goodness,  by  malice  (pp.  6-8). 

Among  the  factors  that  are  necessary  for  the  progress  of  a  so- 
ciety, or  a  city,  Botero  particularly  stresses  the  importance  of  agri- 
culture. 

Agriculture  is  the  foundation  for  the  growth  of  population.  By  agri- 
culture we  mean  every  industry  dealing  with  the  soil  or  prevailed  over 
by  it  in  whatever  form.  ...  It  was  the  principal  care  of  the  great  and 
most  diligent  first  kings  of  Rome.  .  .  .  Dionysius,  the  king  of  Portu- 
gal, called  the  cultivators  the  nerves  of  the  state;  Isabel,  the  queen  of 
Castile,  often  said  that  in  order  for  Spain  to  have  an  abundance  of 
everything  it  would  be  advisable  to  follow  the  example  of  the  Fathers 
of  St.  Benedict  because  they  miraculously  cured  their  land  (p.  178) . 

Following  this,  Botero  gives  many  cases  to  illustrate  the  primary 
importance,  from  many  standpoints,  of  agriculture  and  the  agri- 
cultural population:  it  is  the  foundation  of  all  other  industries;  it 
is  the  basis  of  the  economic  prosperity  of  a  country;  it  is  miracu- 
lously healthful;  and  so  on  (pp.  178-181). 

Other  generalizations  of  Botero  worthy  to  be  mentioned  are: 
that  the  fertility  of  the  people  is  higher  in  the  country  and  their 
mortality  is  lower  than  in  the  city  (pp.  186  ff.,  328-333) ;  that  city 
people  are  more  inclined  to  disorders  than  are  country  people 
(p.  326) ;  that  the  principal  factors  in  the  growth  of  the  city  popu- 
lation is  not  solely,  nor  so  much,  a  natural  increase  as  it  is  an  in- 
flux of  people  who  have  been  attracted  to  the  city  from  other 
parts  of  the  country  and  from  other  countries  (pp.  268  S .) ;  that 
principal  factors  in  the  growth  and  aggrandizement  of  a  city  are: 
a  favorable  location,  fertility  of  its  lands,  the  conveniency  of  the 
traffic  ways  to  and  from  the  city,  security  in  the  city,  rights  and 
privileges  for  the  people  in  the  city,  presence  and  abundance  of 


78      SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  means  of  recreation,  prestige  as  a  religious  center,  the  presence 
of  institutions  for  arts  and  sciences,  the  efficient  organization  of 
justice,  the  development  of  industry  and  commerce,  immunity 
for  its  citizens,  location  of  the  central  government  in  it,  and  the 
dwelling  of  the  nobility  in  the  city.  The  city  itself  is  defined  by 
Botero  as  follows: 

A  city  is  an  aggregation  of  men  brought  together  in  order  to  live 
happily.  The  grandeur  of  the  city  is  manifest  not  in  the  extension  of 
its  abode,  nor  of  the  girth  of  its  wall,  but  in  the  multitude  of  its  inhabi- 
tants and  their  power.  Men  are  brought  together  here  either  by  the 
command  of  the  authority,  by  force,  by  pleasure,  or  by  the  utility  which 
comes  from  it  (p.  268). 

Finally,  discussing  the  problem  of  why  all  cities  have  a  limit 
to  their  growth  beyond  which  they  cannot  go,  Botero  indicates 
that  it  is  neither  due  to  a  decrease  of  the  potential  fertility  of  the 
city  population,  to  the  will  of  Providence,  nor  to  other  causes,  but 
is  principally  due  to  the  increasing  difficulty  in  maintaining  social 
order  and  proper  mores  in  an  ever  increasing  population.  Particu- 
larly is  it  due  to  the  progressive  increase  of  the  difficulties  in  pro- 
curing supplies  for  an  enormous  urban  population.  The  greater 
the  city,  the  greater  becomes  the  distance  that  supplies  must  be 
transported.  With  the  increase  of  distance  between  the  city  and 
the  areas  from  which  its  supplies  are  brought,  the  security,  regu- 
larity, and  ease  of  importation  from  such  places  rapidly  decreases. 
The  difficulty  increases;  the  chances  for  failure  caused  by  a  storm, 
the  destruction  of  the  roads,  brigands,  an  enemy,  and  so  on,  rap- 
idly increase.  Sooner  or  later  there  appears  a  discrepancy  between 
the  amount  of  supplies  necessary  for  the  population  of  the  city 
and  the  amount  that  can  be  brought  in.  The  result  is  shortage  and 
famine;  disease  and  epidemics  increase;  disorders  appear  which 
still  more  aggravate  the  situation.  It  is  only  relieved  by  an  enor- 
mous emigration  from  the  city  to  other,  more  fortunate  places. 
These  considerations  are  sufficient  to  explain  why  any  city,  ac- 
cording to  Botero,  has  a  limit  to  its  growth  (pp.  328-334)  .15 

15  Though  little  attention  was  given  to  rural  life  and  people  by  the  prominent  thinkers 
of  the  fifteenth  and  the  sixteenth  centuries  there  was  produced  a  series  of  works  which 
are  devoted  especially  to  agriculture.  Though  these  works  deal  mainly  with  the  technical 
side  of  agriculture  and  farm  management,  they  contain  some  general  views  concerning 
the  importance  of  agriculture  from  economic,  political,  moral,  and  social  standpoints. 
The  opinions  are  somewhat  similar  to  those  of  ancient — predominantly  Roman — writers, 
like  Varro  and  Cato.  A  sample  of  such  works  is  given  by  the  Czech  treatise  Hospodar 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        79 

VII.  HUGO  GROTIUS 

In  the  famous  treatise  by  Hugo  Grotius  (1583-1645),  husband- 
men are  mentioned  only  in  connection  with  war  and  its  laws. 
Grotius  indicates  that  all  of  the  authorities  instruct  the  belligerent 
parties  to  spare  children,  women,  clergy,  merchants,  and  hus- 
bandman "whom  also  the  Canons  include." 
Diodorus,  praising  the  Indians,  says  that  in  their  wars,  the  warriors 
fight,  but  they  leave  the  cultivators  unmolested,  as  the  common  bene- 
factors of  both  sides.  So  Plutarch,  of  the  old  Corynthians  and  Megar- 

eans.  So  Cyrus  proposed  to  the  king  of  Assyria.  So  Belisarius  acted 

It  is  best  that  agriculture  should  be  secured  even  in  the  contested  re- 
gions. .  .  .  Not  only  that  cultivators  should  be  out  of  danger  of  war, 
but  animals  for  the  plough,  and  the  seed  for  sowing.  .  .  .  There  should 
be  peace  with  the  cultivator,  war  with  the  soldiers.  .  .  .  The  divine 
law  forbids  the  cutting  down  of  fruit-trees  for  warlike  uses  .  .  .  and 
adds  the  reason  that  "the  tree  of  the  field  is  man's  life"  and  they  cannot 
war  against  men,  as  man  can.16 

VIII.  THOMAS  HOBBES 

In  his  discussion  "Of  those  things  that  weaken  a  common- 
wealth" Thomas  Hobbes  (1588-1679)  also  touches  incidentally  on 
the  rural-urban  problem.  Among  the  factors  which  cause  the  dis- 
solution of  a  commonwealth  he  stresses  the  excessive  growth  of 
the  cities  and  their  satellites. 

Another  infirmity  of  a  commonwealth  is  the  immoderate  greatness  of 
a  Town.  ...  As  also  the  great  number  of  Corporations  .  .  .  the  lib- 
erty of  disputing  against  absolute  Power,  by  the  pretenders  to  Political 
Prudence.  ...  As  also  the  Lethargy  of  Ease,  and  Consumption  of 
Riot  and  Vain  Expense.  ...  As  also  the  reading  of  the  books  of  Pol- 
icy.17 

IX.  J.  B.  VICO 

In  The  First  New  Science  and  The  Second  New  Science  by 
J.  B.  Vico  (1668-1744)  there  are  several  good  typological  charac- 
terizations of  the  natures  of  men,  language,  mores,  laws,  ethics, 
psychology,  religion,  authority,  and  the  government  of  the  hu- 
man society  at  "the  Divine,  the  Heroic,  and  the  Human"  stages. 

(Farmer}  printed  in  1587  by  Veleslavin,  in  Prague.  The  first  eighteen  pages  of  this 
work  contain  the  above  general  "philosophy  of  agriculture.'*  Similar  works  were  pub- 
lished in  England,  Germany,  and  other  European  countries. 

16  Hugonts  Grotii  de  jure  belli  et  pads  libri  tres,  accompanied  by  a  translation  of 
W.  Whewell,  Cambridge  University  Press,  Bk.  Ill,  chap,  xi,  p.  11;  chap,  xii,  pp.  2-4. 

"Thomas  Hobbes,  Leviathan,  Everyman's  Library,  1924,  Part  II,  chap,  xxix,  pp.  174, 
177. 


80  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

However,  Vico  does  not  definitely  correlate  any  of  these  stages 
with  the  rural  or  the  urban  stages,  nor  with  rural  or  urban  condi- 
tions. For  this  reason  it  would  be  somewhat  incorrect  to  ascribe 
the  characteristics  of  one  of  these  stages  to  the  rural  or  to  the 
urban  people.  One  thing,  however,  it  seems  possible  to  say  justi- 
fiably: that  Vico's  "divine  stage"  and,  in  part,  his  "heroic  stage" 
of  each  society  correspond  to  the  pre-urban  or  slightly  urban  con- 
ditions, while  his  "human  stage"  presupposes  a  developed  urban 
life.18 

In  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  interpret  Vico's  characterization  of 
each  of  these  stages  as  a  transition  from  a  pre-urban  and  predomi- 
nantly agricultural  stage  to  a  stage  of  greater  urbanization,  the 
principal  contrasts  between  the  less  and  the  more  urbanized 
stages  of  a  society  may  be  summed  up  as  follows.  As  we  pass  from 
the  former  (the  divine  and  the  heroic  stages)  to  the  latter  (the 
human  stage),  we  have  the  following  changes  in  the  specified 
fields  of  social  organization,  social  processes,  and  the  cultural, 
psychological,  and  vital  characteristics  of  the  people  living  in  each 
stage. 

1.  In  the  field  of  the  nature  of  men:  there  is  a  gradual  transi- 
tion during  these  changes  in  stages  from  men  who  are  strong, 
virile,  stern,  somewhat  ferocious  and  impulsive,  men  weak  in  ab- 
stract thinking,  but  strong  in  imagination  and  capable  of  creative 
poetical  thinking,  men  whose  violent  emotions  and  proclivities 
are  checked  by  a  profound  fear  of  the  gods  and  by  unquestioned 
belief — from  such  men  there  is  a  change  to  men  less  virile,  less 
stern  and  much  more  human,  men  less  imaginative,  less  poetical, 
and  less  impulsive,  but  more  capable  of  abstract  thinking,  men 
whose  behavior  is  controlled  in  a  much  less  degree  by  the  fear 
of  gods,  religion,  and  belief  in  supernatural  powers,  but  whose 
behavior  is  guided  more  by  human  reason  and  considerations 
of  utility  and  by  the  recognition  of  social  duties  of  a  purely 
social  and  utilitarian  character.  The  supreme  wisdom  of  the  men 
of  the  pre-urban  stages  is  incorporated  in  poetry,  symbols,  and 
images,  while  among  the  men  of  the  urban  stage  it  is  in  abstract 
thinking,  philosophy,  and  science. 

2.  In  the  field  of  mores:  a  transition  from  the  mores  of  piety, 

18  J.  B.  Vico,  Principes  de  la  philosophic  de  I'histoire,  tr adults  de  la  Scienza  nuova 
by  J.  Michelet  (French  translation  of  the  Seconda  scienza  nuova} ,  Bruxelles,  1835,  pp. 
77-81  ff. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        81 

religion,  and  honor  to  those  motivated  and  controlled  by  purely 
human  social  duties  required  in  the  name  of  social  welfare. 

3.  In  the  field  of  natural  laws:  from  the  natural  laws  regarded 
as  the  absolute  and  mysterious  commands  of  gods,  manifested  by 
the  priesthood  or  by  the  strongest  leader-heroes,  to  the  natural 
laws  dictated  purely  by  human  reason  and  free  from  any  reli- 
gious or  mysterious  sanction. 

4.  In  the  field  of  the  types  of  government:  a  transition  from 
theocratic  government  incarnated  in  the  sages,  oracles,  and  poets 
(priesthood)  or  in  the  strongest  and  ablest  heroes  whose  authori- 
ty is  based  on  the  will  of  the  gods  and  supported  by  wisdom, 
heroic  actions,  and  force,  to  government — monarchial  or  republi- 
can— democratic  in  its  nature  and  based  on  the  principles  of 
equality,  will  of  the  majority,  identical  laws  for  all,  and  the  gen- 
eral standardization  of  the  opportunities  for  promotion  to  the 
governmental  positions. 

5.  In  the  field  of  the  family:  The  less  urban  stages  are  marked 
by  patriarchal  familism  and  in  them  the  paterfamilias  is  the  head 
of  the  family,  the  priest,  the  legislator,  the  hero,  the  ruler,  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  gods,  and  the  dispenser  of  supernatural  and 
natural  wisdom;  and  vice  versa,  the  ruler,  the  legislator,  or  the 
king  is  but  a  paterfamilias.  As  a  consequence  the  family  is  a 
sacred  and  indissoluble  social  unit.  As  we  pass  to  the  more  urban- 
ized human  stage,  familism  weakens;  the  paterfamilias  loses 
more  and  more  of  his  absolute  power  and  authority.  He  is  no 
longer  accepted  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  gods,  as  a  hero,  as  a 
ruler,  or  as  the  incarnation  of  wisdom  and  heroism.  And  the 
family  itself,  stripped  of  its  religious,'  sacred,  and  mystical  foun- 
dations becomes  less  integrated,  less  stable,  and  less  indissoluble; 
it  tends  to  become  a  mere  human  institution  whose  destinies  are 
decided  by  considerations  of  a  purely  utilitarian  character. 

6.  In  the  field  of  language:  a  transition  from  the  mute  lan- 
guage of  the  sacred  and  symbolical  gestures  and  ceremonies  and 
signs  which  are  regarded  as  having  a  mystical  significance,  to  the 
articulated,  oral  or  written  (hieroglyphics  and  coats  of  arms)  vul- 
gar language  known  and  interpreted  by  everyone.  This  is  a  great 
contrast  to  the  previous  stages  where  the  mute  language  of  signs 
and  gestures  could  be  interpreted  only  by  the  sages  and  heroes. 


82  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

And  these  symbolical  signs  and  gestures  were  regarded  as  the 
manifestation  of  the  will  of  the  gods  and  supernatural  powers. 

7.  In  the  fields  of  law,  social  authority,  mind,  and  culture: 
a  transition  took  place  from  a  culture  in  which  any  law,  any  au- 
thority, any  decision  of  the  court,  any  institution  (particularly  the 
institution  of  private  property),  any  art,  any  belief,  any  custom 
was  based  upon  divine  authority,  had  a  sacred  foundation,  and 
was  carried  on  by  the  oracles,  the  sages,  or  the  heroes — men  who 
were  supposed  to  be  the  mouthpieces  of  the  divine  power  and 
will — to  a  culture  where  everything  was  stripped  of  this  divine, 
mysterious,  and  supernatural  foundation,  where  everything  tended 
to  be  motivated  by  purely  positive  human  reason — limited  and 
weak — and  by  the  very  relative  considerations  of  human  comfort 
and  convenience. 

This  more  urbanized  "human"  stage  is  regarded  by  Vico  as  the 
beginning  of  the  decay  of  a  society,  as  the  precursor  of  coming 
disorganization,  degeneration,  and  anarchy.  In  the  process  of  this 
unavoidable  anarchy  such  a  society  is  doomed  to  disintegrate  and 
to  fall  into  the  most  primitive  bestial  conditions  and  here  either 
to  perish  or  to  evolve  again  from  it  into  the  stage  of  the  "gods" 
with  all  the  typical  traits  of  this  divine  stage;  after  that  such  a 
society  passes  again  to  the  stage  of  heroes  and  finally  to  that  of 
men,  and  the  cycle  is  repeated  again.  Such  are  the  principal  gen- 
eralizations of  this  great  thinker.19 

D.  THE  PHYSIOCRATS 

The  Physiocratic  School  is  characterized  by  a  harmonious  and 
inwardly  coherent  system  of  social  and  economic  philosophy. 
Among  the  principles  of  the  school,  the  following  directly  con- 
cern our  problem:  first,  that  the  only  source  of  real  wealth  is  the 
earth  and  its  creative  forces;  second,  that  only  the  agricultural 
class  is  a  productive  class  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word  (all  the 
other  classes  are  unproductive,  although  useful  to  a  society); 
third,  that  the  excessive  growth  of  cities,  manufacturing,  and  com- 

19  Vico,  op.  cit.,  pp.  21  Iff.,  317-334,  375  £E.;  Vico,  Principi  di  una  scienzct  nnovat 
secondo  la  terza  impression?  del  MDCCX,  Milano,  1854,  pp.  39  ff.,  464  E,  and  Bk.  V. 
The  usual  interpretation  of  Vice's  theory  as  a  theory  of  a  spiral  progress  is  wrong. 
His  Seconda  scienza  nuova  does  not  give  the  slightest  basis  for  the  assumption  that  Vico 
believed  in  a  theory  of  spiral  progress  nor  any  progress,  generally;  his  ricorsi  were 
regarded  by  him  as  eternal,  varying  only  in  their  secondary  concrete  details.  See  par- 
ticularly Bk.  V  of  the  Seconda  scienza  nuova. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        83 

merce,  with  luxury  and  other  accompaniments,  is  rather  danger- 
ous and,  at  any  rate,  is  less  enriching  and  profitable  than  the  de- 
velopment of  agriculture.  Side  by  side  with  these  principles  they 
stressed  many  other  rural-urban  uniformities  such  as :  rural-urban 
health  and  vitality,  soundness  of  mores  and  morals,  cosmopolitan- 
ism and  nationalism,  the  character  of  rural-urban  migration  and 
relationships,  and  many  others.  All  in  all,  the  Physiocratic  School 
has  been,  possibly,  the  most  pro-rural  current  of  thought  known, 
not  alone  in  its  doctrines  but  in  its  practices.  The  subsequent 
fragments  taken  from  the  works  of  the  founder  of  the  school, 
F.  Quesnay  (1694-1774) ;  from  the  work  of  Mercier  de  la  Riviere 
(1720-1793  or  1794),  justly  regarded  as  the  most  systematic  formu- 
lation of  the  Physiocratic  social  and  economic  philosophy;  and 
from  the  Rural  Philosophy  of  Mirabeau  the  elder  (I' ami  des 
hommes),  father  of  the  famous  Mirabeau,  the  leader  of  the  great 
French  Revolution,  substantiate  the  above  principles  of  the  Phy- 
siocratic School.  In  addition,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  many  of  these 
opinions  were  shared  by  other  economists  and  social  thinkers  of 
that  time,  even  though  they  did  not  properly  belong  to  the  Physi- 
ocratic School.  An  example  of  this  is  given  by  Condillac's  "Le 
commerce  et  le  gouvernment"  (1776).  In  it  he  praises  agriculture 
as  the  first  and  the  most  important  art,  the  simple,  but  sound, 
virtuous,  and  happy  life  of  the  simple  agricultural  societies.  He 
indicates  the  increase  of  corruption,  unhappiness,  and  disorders 
with  the  complication  of  societies,  growth  of  cities,  and  develop- 
ment of  commerce  and  luxury.20  This  attitude,  common  to  many 
of  the  thinkers  of  that  time  (for  instance  to  Morelli,  the  author 
of  the  famous  communistic  Code  de  la  nature  (1775),  and  to  the 
Abbot  Mably,  the  author  of  De  la  legislation  (1776),  and  others, 
found  its  most  conspicuous  expression  in  J.  J.  Rousseau,  whose 
theories  are  given  later. 

15.  QUESNAY:  CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  SOCIAL  CLASSES* 

The  nation  may  be  divided  into  three  classes  of  citizens:  the  produc- 
tive class,  the  class  of  proprietors,  and  the  sterile  class. 
The  productive  class  is  the  one  which  reproduces  annually  the  wealth 

20  See  Condillac,  "Le  commerce  et  le  gouvernment,"  chaps,  xxvi-xxvii,  in  the  Collec- 
tion des  principaux  economists*,  Paris,  1847,  XIV,  347,  353-354. 

*  F.  Quesnay,  "Analyse  du  tableau  e"conomique,"  in  Collection  des  principattx  econo- 
mistes,  Paris,  1846,  II,  Part  I,  p.  58, 


84  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  nation  by  cultivating  the  land,  which  pays  in  advance  for  th< 
expense  involved  in  the  work  of  agriculture,  and  which  pays  annualb 
the  revenues  of  the  proprietors.  There  is  included  in  the  dependena 
of  this  class  all  the  work  and  all  the  expense  entailed  by  it  up  to  th< 
first  sale  of  the  products:  it  is  by  this  sale  that  the  value  of  the  annua 
reproduction  of  the  wealth  of  the  nation  is  determined.1 

The  class  of  proprietors  comprises  the  sovereign,  the  land  owners 
and  the  tithe-owners.  This  class  subsists  by  the  revenue  or  net  produce 
of  cultivation,  which  is  paid  to  it  annually  by  the  productive  class,  aftei 
the  latter  has  deducted  for  its  annual  reproduction  the  necessary 
amount  of  wealth  to  reimburse  itself  for  its  annual  advances  and  foi 
maintaining  its  wealth  by  improvement. 

The  sterile  class  is  formed  of  all  the  citizens  occupied  in  work  othei 
than  that  of  agriculture;  and  whose  expenses  are  paid  by  the  produc 
tive  class  and  by  the  proprietor  class,  who  in  turn  take  their  revenue; 
from  the  productive  class. 

16.  QUESNAY:  REAL  AND  FICTITIOUS  PRODUCTION  OF  WEALTH* 

M.  N.  The  idea  of  production,  or  regeneration,  which  forms  here 
the  basis  for  the  distinction  between  general  classes  of  citizens,  is  con- 
fined within  physical  limits  reduced  so  rigorously  in  reality,  that  they 
are  no  longer  conformable  to  the  vague  expressions  used  in  ordinary 
language.  But  it  is  not  for  the  natural  order  to  conform  itself  to  a 
language  which  expresses  only  confused  and  equivocal  ideas;  it  is  for 
the  expressions  to  conform  themselves  to  the  exact  understanding  of 
the  natural  order,  in  the  rigorous  distinctions  subjected  to  reality. 

I  perceive  that  the  distinctions  of  productive  class  and  sterile  class 
seem  to  you  not  to  permit  us  to  put  any  other  class  between  them; 
for  it  seems  that  there  is  no  middle  ground  between  the  affirmative 
and  the  negative,  between  a  productive  class  and  a  nonproductive 
class.  This  is  true  in  the  cases  which  exclude  all  other  relations,  but 
it  is  easy  to  perceive:  (1)  that  the  proprietors,  who  do  not  advance 
expense  money  and  do  not  do  the  work  of  cultivation,  which  does  not 

1  [Footnote  of  the  editor  of  Quesnay's  work.]  We  see  that,  in  this  system,  the  term 
quoted  is  given  only  to  the  raw  products  of  nature  in  the  three  kingdoms,  animal,  vege- 
table, and  mineral.  Consequently,  Quesnay,  conceiving  work  under  three  distinct  aspects, 
according  to  how  it  produces,  distributes,  or  conserves  wealth,  called  productive  labor 
that  o£  agriculture  in  all  its  branches,  such  as  the  exploitation  of  fisheries,  mines,  and 
quarries;  distributive  labor  that  which  procures  occasional  and  temporary  services,  useful 
or  pleasant,  or  which  has  to  do  with  the  manufacture  of  ahmental  commodities,  the 
consumption  of  which  is  to  take  place  instantaneously;  conservative  labor  that  which  has 
as  its  object  keeping  provisions  from  spoiling  and  satisfying  the  needs  for  clothing, 
housing,  defending,  educating,  and  amusing  man,  by  the  creation  of  materials,  houses, 
furniture,  arms,  machines,  books,  jewelry,  pictures,  statues,  etc. 

*  F,  Quesnay,  "Dialogue  sur  les  travaux  des  artisans,"  op.  at.,  II,  Part  I,  186-191. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        85 

permit  of  ranking  them  in  the  productive  class,  have  begun  neverthe- 
less by  making  the  original  advances  for  putting  the  land  in  a  state 
ready  for  cultivation,  and  remain  still  charged  with  the  upkeep  of 
their  patrimony,  which  no  longer  permits  us  to  confuse  them  with  the 
sterile  class;  (2)  that  there  is  a  communication  continually  maintained 
between  the  two  extreme  classes,  by  the  receipts  and  expenditures  of 
an  intermediary  class.  The  order  of  society  supposes  essentially,  then, 
this  third  class  of  citizens,  preparers  and  guardians  of  cultivation,  and 
proprietary  dispensers  of  the  net  proceeds.  It  is  under  this  last  aspect 
that  we  must  consider  in  particular  this  mixed  class,  with  reference  to 
the  two  others:  their  communication  between  each  other  is  an  outcome 
of  the  communication  that  the  class  itself  has  with  these  classes.  The 
distinction  of  the  class  of  proprietors  is,  then,  from  the  first  inevitable, 
to  follow  clearly  and  without  interruption  the  progress  of  communica- 
tions between  the  different  parts  of  the  order  of  society. 

M.  H.  That  could  be,  if  I  were,  like  you,  limiting  production  to  only 
the  wealth  that  comes  from  the  soil;  but  I  cannot  conceal  from  you 
that  I  see  always  a  real  production  in  the  work  of  the  artisans,  in  spite 
of  all  the  dissertations  that  have  been  published  for  some  time,  with 
the  object  of  making  this  production  disappear. 

M.  N.  We  have  not  undertaken  to  make  the  production  of  work 
made  by  the  labor  of  artisans  disappear,  for  it  is  the  production  of  this 
same  work  that  you  see.  But  you  ought  to  have  perceived  in  the  disser- 
tations of  which  you  speak,  that  it  is  not  a  question  of  such  a  produc- 
tion; but  of  a  production  of  real  worth:  I  say  real,  because  I  do  not 
wish  to  deny  that  there  may  be  a  certain  value  to  the  raw  material  of 
the  work  made  by  the  artisans,  since  work  increases  the  value  of  the 
raw  material  of  their  work. 

M.  H.  I  confess  to  you,  however,  that  I  do  not  see  where  this  devel- 
opment can  lead  you.  .  .  . 

M.  N,  Well,  would  you  not  tell  me  that  a  shoemaker  who  has  made 
a  pair  of  shoes  has  produced  an  increase  in  wealth,  since  the  mercenary 
value  of  this  pair  of  shoes  surpasses  by  a  great  deal  that  of  the  leather 
that  the  shoemaker  has  used?  Now,  it  is  the  mercenary  value  which 
gives  to  productions  the  quality  of  wealth;  and  you  think  you  can  de- 
rive from  that  an  impregnable  argument  in  favor  of  the  production 
from  the  work  of  the  shoemaker,  in  favor,  I  say,  of  the  reality  of  a  true 
production  of  wealth? 

M.  H.  According  to  your  very  principles,  would  not  such  an  argu- 
ment be  decisive? 

M.  N.  We  must  distinguish  an  addition  of  collected  wealth  from  a 
production  of  wealth;  that  is,  an  increase  through  the  assembling  of 
raw  materials,  and  of  expenses  in  consumption  of  things  which  existed 


86  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

before  this  sort  of  increase,  from  a  generation  or  creation  of  wealth, 
forming  a  renewal  and  real  increase  of  wealth. 

Those  who  do  not  distinguish  this  true  and  that  false  increase  oi 
wealth  fall  without  realizing  it  into  continual  contradictions  when 
they  reason  on  the  so-called  production  of  wealth  resulting  from  the 
work  of  artisans.  They  admit  that  the  more  one  can,  without  prejudice, 
save  expense  or  costly  labor  in  the  manufacturing  of  the  work  of  arti- 
sans, the  more  this  economy  is  profitable  by  the  diminution  of  the 
price  of  this  work.  At  the  same  time,  they  believe  that  the  production 
of  wealth  resulting  from  the  work  of  artisans  consists  in  the  increase 
of  the  mercenary  value  of  their  work:  these  contradictory  ideas  exist 
in  the  same  head  and  thwart  each  other  continually  without  the  dis- 
sensions being  perceived. 

The  cosdy  labor  of  the  lace-maker  adds  an  increase  in  mercenary 
value  to  the  thread  which  is  the  raw  material  of  lace.  Then,  we  con- 
clude, the  making  of  the  lace  has  produced  an  increase  of  wealth.  We 
may  think  the  same  of  the  labor  of  painters  who  make  pictures  for 
large  prices;  for,  the  more  dearly  the  work  of  artists  and  artisans  is 
paid  for,  the  more  it  seems  f reductive. 

This  drinking  glass  only  costs  a  sou,  the  raw  material  that  is  used 
in  making  it  is  worth  a  Hard :  the  work  of  the  glass  maker  quadrupled 
the  value  of  this  material.  It  is  then  a  production  of  wealth  which  has 
procured  a  threefold  increase:  it  would  be,  then,  very  advantageous 
according  to  you,  to  find  a  way  of  making  a  similar  glass  which  would 
employ  two  workers  for  a  year,  or  even  better  four  workers  for  two 
years;  consequently  you  would  tell  us  also  that  it  would  be  very  disad- 
vantageous to  invent  a  machine  which  would  make  without  cost,  or 
with  little  expense,  beautiful  laces  and  fine  pictures.  In  fact,  the  inven- 
tion of  printing  brought  forth  some  very  serious  arguments  on  the 
diminution  of  the  work  of  writers;  nevertheless,  as  we  know,  printing 
was  fully  adopted.  Thus,  my  dear  fellow,  bring  your  ideas  into  har- 
mony, if  you  can,  with  all  these  contradictions;  if  not,  the  object  of  the 
so-called  production  of  wealth  by  the  work  of  artisans  appears  no 
longer  of  any  moment,  .  .  . 

It  is  evident  that  there  is  only  a  circulation  without  increase  of 
wealth,  a  circulation  regulated  by  the  extent  of  the  annual  expenditures 
of  the  nation,  an  amount  which  is  equal  to  that  of  the  wealth  being 
annually  reproduced  from  the  land.  The  work  of  artists  and  artisans, 
then,  cannot  be  extended  beyond  the  portion  of  expense  that  the  nation 
can  use  there,  by  reason  o£  the  total  amount  of  wealth  that  it  can  spend 
annually. 

This  work  cannot,  then,  increase  the  wealth  that  the  nation  spends 
annually,  since  it  is  itself  limited  in  proportion  to  this  wealth,  which 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        87 

cannot  increase  except  by  the  work  of  agriculture,  and  not  by  expendi- 
tures for  the  work  of  artisans.  Thus  the  origin,  the  source  of  all  expen- 
diture and  all  wealth,  is  the  fertility  of  the  land,  the  products  of  which 
we  can  multiply  only  by  its  own  products.  It  is  that  which  furnishes  the 
advances  to  the  cultivator  who  fertilizes  it  to  make  it  produce  more. 
The  artisan  can  contribute  to  it  only  by  making  instruments  necessary 
for  digging  up  the  soil  and  which,  if  there  were  no  artisan,  the  culti- 
vator would  make  himself.  What  does  it  matter  who  may  be  the 
worker,  the  earth  must  have  produced  in  advance  what  he  has  con- 
sumed for  his  subsistence:  it  is  not  then  his  work  which  has  produced 
this  subsistence.  The  consumption  of  subsistence  has  not  produced  any- 
thing either,  since  this  consumption  is  only  a  destruction  of  wealth 
produced  in  advance  by  the  soil.  In  vain  the  worker  would  strive  to 
augment  his  work,  to  increase  his  salary  or  his  consumption,  for  he 
cannot  extend  them  beyond  the  productions  which  actually  exist  for 
his  consumption  and  for  that  of  all  the  other  men  who  compose  the 
nation. 

You  must,  then,  notice  that  it  is  not  the  demands  of  the  artisans, 
who  would  know  only  how  to  pay  with  the  salary  that  they  have  re- 
ceived, which  regulate  the  price  of  production;  but  it  is  the  needs  and 
the  quantity  of  production  itself  which  decide  mercenary  values. 

17.  QUESNAY:  FARMERS  AND  THE  CITY* 

The  farmers  are  those  who  farm  and  improve  the  country  and  who 
procure  the  most  essential  wealth  and  resources  for  supporting  the 
state;  thus  the  occupation  of  the  farmer  is  a  very  important  object  in 
the  kingdom  and  merits  great  attention  on  the  part  of  the  government. 
...  In  the  provinces  where  cultivation  is  done  with  oxen,  the  agricul- 
turist is  poor;  cultivation  alone  cannot  keep  the  peasant  busy.  Their 
food,  which  scarcely  sustains  life,  ruins  the  body,  makes  a  part  of  the 
men  perish  in  infancy;  those  who  resist  such  nourishment,  who  keep 
their  health  and  strength,  and  who  have  intelligence,  free  themselves 
from  this  unhappy  state  by  taking  refuge  in  the  cities.  The  most  debili- 
tated and  most  inept  remain  in  the  country,  where  they  are  as  useless 
to  the  state  as  they  are  burdensome  to  themselves. 

In  the  rich  provinces  where  agriculture  is  maintained,  the  peasants 
have  many  resources.  They  sow  some  acres  of  land  in  wheat  and  other 
grains;  it  is  the  farmers  for  whom  they  work  and  do  the  ploughing, 
and  it  is  the  wife  and  children  who  receive  the  products  of  it.  The  little 

*F.  Quesnay,  "Fermiers,"  op.  at.,  II,  Part  I,  219,  245-251, 

EDITORS'  NOTE. — The  term  "farmer,"  as  distinguished  from  that  of  "peasant,"  is  used 
here  in  the  sense  of  a  relatively  large-scale  entrepreneur  and  manager  of  land  either 
belonging  to  him  or  rented  from  the  nobility. 


88  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

crops  which  give  them  a  part  of  their  nourishment  produce  for  them 
provender  and  fertilizer.  They  cultivate  flax,  hemp,  potherbs,  and 
vegetables  of  all  kinds;  they  have  cattle  and  poultry,  which  furnish 
good  food  for  them  and  on  which  they  make  some  profit;  they  procure 
for  themselves  by  their  work  grains  for  the  remainder  of  the  year; 
they  are  always  busy  with  field  work;  they  live  without  constraint  and 
without  restlessness;  they  scorn  the  servitude  of  domestics,  valets — 
slaves  of  other  men;  they  do  not  envy  the  fate  of  the  people  of  the 
lower  classes  who  live  in  the  cities,  who  dwell  at  the  tops  of  houses, 
and  who  are  limited  by  earnings  scarcely  sufficient  for  their  needs  of 
the  moment,  and  who,  being  obliged  to  live  without  any  forethought 
of  the  needs  to  come,  are  continually  exposed  to  languishing  in  indi- 
gence. 

The  peasants  do  not  fall  into  misery  and  do  not  abandon  the  prov- 
ince except  when  they  are  too  disturbed  by  the  vexations  to  which  they 
are  exposed,  or  when  there  are  no  farmers  procuring  work  for  them, 
or  when  the  country  is  cultivated  by  the  poor  small  farmers  limited 
to  a  small  cultivation  that  they  execute  very  imperfectly  themselves. 
The  portion  that  the  small  farmers  derive  from  their  little  harvest, 
which  is  divided  with  the  proprietor,  suffices  only  for  their  own  needs; 
they  cannot  repair  or  improve  the  property. 

These  poor  cultivators,  so  useless  to  the  state,  do  not  represent  the 
true  husbandman — the  rich  farmer  who  governs,  cultivates  on  a  large 
scale,  commands,  and  multiplies  expenses  in  order  to  increase  the  prof- 
its; who,  not  neglecting  any  means,  any  particular  advantage,  does 
general  good;  who  employs  usefully  the  people  living  in  the  country; 
who  can  choose  and  wait  for  favorable  times  for  the  sale  of  his  grain 
and  for  the  purchase  and  sale  of  his  cattle.  It  is  the  rich  farmers  who 
fertilize  the  land,  who  multiply  cattle,  who  attract,  who  settle  the 
country  with  people,  and  who  make  the  strength  and  prosperity  of  the 
nation. 

Manufacturing  and  commerce,  maintained  by  the  disorders  of  lux- 
ury, accumulate  men  and  wealth  in  the  great  cities,  oppose  the  im- 
provement of  property,  devastate  the  country,  inspire  disrespect  for 
agriculture,  augment  the  expenses  of  individuals,  hinder  the  main- 
tenance of  families,  oppose  the  propagation  of  man,  and  weaken  the 
state. 

The  decadence  of  empires  has  often  closely  followed  a  flourishing 
commerce.  When  a  nation  spends  on  luxury  what  it  earns  by  com- 
merce, there  results  only  a  movement  of  money  without  real  increase 
of  wealth:  it  is  the  sale  of  the  surplus  produce  of  agriculture  that  en- 
riches the  subjects  and  the  sovereign.  The  productions  of  our  lands 
must  be  the  raw  materials  for  manufacturing  and  the  object  of  com- 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        89 

merce;  any  commerce  which  is  not  established  on  these  foundations  is 
not  secure.  The  more  it  shines  out  in  a  kingdom,  the  more  it  excites 
the  emulation  of  neighboring  nations,  and  the  more  it  becomes  divided. 
A  kingdom  rich  in  fertile  lands  cannot  be  imitated  in  agriculture  by 
another  which  has  not  the  same  advantage.  But  in  order  to  profit  from 
it  we  must  remove  the  causes  which  make  people  abandon  the  coun- 
try, which  make  them  gather  together  and  retain  wealth  in  the  cities. 
All  the  lords,  all  the  rich  people,  all  those  who  have  rents  or  sufficient 
pensions  to  live  comfortably,  fix  their  residence  in  Paris  or  in  some 
other  large  city,  where  they  spend  almost  all  the  revenues  of  the  funds 
of  the  kingdom.  These  expenditures  attract  a  multitude  of  merchants, 
artisans,  domestics,  and  laborers.  This  bad  distribution  of  men  and 
wealth  is  inevitable,  but  it  extends  much  too  far;  we  perhaps  contrib- 
uted a  great  deal  to  it  at  first  by  protecting  the  urbanites  more  than  the 
people  in  the  country.  Men  are  attracted  to  the  cities  by  interest  and 
by  tranquility.  Were  we  to  procure  these  advantages  for  the  country, 
it  would  not  be  less  peopled  in  proportion  than  the  cities.  All  the  in- 
habitants of  the  cities  are  not  rich,  or  in  easy  circumstances.  The  coun- 
try has  its  wealth  and  its  charms;  we  do  not  abandon  it  except  to  evade 
the  vexations  to  which  we  are  exposed;  but  the  government  can  rem- 
edy these  inconveniences.  Commerce  appears  flourishing  in  the  cities 
because  they  are  filled  with  rich  merchants.  But  what  does  it  result  in 
if  not  that  almost  all  the  money  of  the  kingdom  is  used  in  a  commerce 
which  does  not  increase  the  wealth  of  the  nation?  Locke  compares  it 
with  the  game  where,  after  the  gain  and  loss  of  the  players,  the 
sum  of  money  remains  the  same  as  it  was  before.  Interior  com- 
merce is  necessary  for  procuring  needs,  for  maintaining  luxury,  and 
for  facilitating  consumption;  but  it  contributes  little  to  the  strength 
and  prosperity  of  the  state.  If  a  part  of  the  immense  wealth  which  it 
retains,  and  whose  use  produces  so  little  for  the  kingdom,  were  dis- 
tributed to  agriculture  it  would  procure  revenues  much  more  real  and 
much  more  considerable.  Agriculture  is  the  patrimony  o£  the  sover- 
eign; all  its  productions  are  visible;  we  can  subject  them  to  taxes;  pe- 
cuniary wealth  escapes  taxation  and  the  government  can  take  it  there 
only  by  means  expensive  to  the  state. 

Meanwhile,  the  just  imposition  of  taxes  on  the  husbandman  also 
presents  great  difficulties.  The  arbitrary  taxes  are  too  frightful  and  too 
unjust  not  to  be  always  powerfully  opposed  to  the  revival  of  agricul- 
ture. 

If  the  people  in  the  country  were  freed  from  the  arbitrary  imposition 
of  the  tax,  they  could  live  in  the  same  security  as  those  in  the  large 
cities;  many  proprietors  would  themselves  go  to  improve  their  proper- 
ties; no  longer  would  the  country  be  abandoned;  wealth  and  popu- 


90  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

lation  would  be  reestablished  there.  Thus  in  removing  all  the  other 
causes  detrimental  to  the  progress  of  agriculture,  the  strength  of  the 
kingdom  would  gradually  be  repaired  by  the  augmentation  of  men 
and  the  increase  of  the  revenues  of  the  state. 

18.  M.  DE  LA  RIVIERE:  COSMOPOLITANISM  OF  THE  COMMERCIAL  AND 
AGRICULTURAL  CLASSES* 

That  which  has  been  called  a  state  is  a  political  body  composed  of 
different  parties  united  by  a  common  interest  which  does  not  permit 
them  to  detach  themselves  without  suffering.  This  definition  shows  us 
that  the  state  resides  essentially  only  in  the  sovereign  who  is  its  head, 
in  the  owners  of  the  land  and  agricultural  property,  and  in  the  agricul- 
tural entrepreneurs.  Their  profession  is  local  and  they  cannot  decide 
to  go  to  another  country  because  each  country  can  sustain  only  a  cer- 
tain number  of  cultivators,  who  are  already  in  possession  of  the  land. 
In  addition,  their  movable  goods  are  not  as  easily  transported  as  money, 
and  they  cannot  convert  them  into  money  without  losing  something 
thereby. 

This  is  not  the  case  with  a  business  man  considered  as  such  without 
regard  to  the  real  property  which  he  may  possess.  In  each  commercial 
nation  in  which  he  wishes  to  locate,  he  will  find  a  place  for  himself 
and  for  his  business.  His  emigration  is  made  easier  because  he  is  not 
a  stranger  in  any  of  the  places  where  his  commercial  interests  are 
found,  and  frequently  his  fortune  is  greater  outside  than  within  his 
country. 

The  merchant  in  his  quality  of  a  subject  to  trade,  a  man  devoted  to 
the  service  of  business,  does  not  belong  exclusively  to  any  particular 
country.  He  is  necessarily  a  cosmopolitan  because  it  is  impossible  for 
one  in  his  occupation  to  be  otherwise.  .  .  . 

When  a  merchant  buys  or  sells  he  does  not  ask  from  what  country 
the  men  come  who  sell  to  him  and  buy  from  him.  He  is  and  ought  to 
be  concerned  with  only  two  objects,  the  prices  at  which  he  buys,  ex- 
penses included,  and  the  prices  at  which  he  resells  his  goods.  All  the 
buyers  and  sellers  are  and  ought  to  be  equal  in  his  eyes,  from  what- 
ever nation  they  come;  they  are  and  should  be  treated  in  the  same 
manner  by  the  business  profession.  Thus,  none  of  them  is,  in  relation 
to  him  as  a  merchant,  either  more  or  less  of  a  stranger  than  others.  As 
a  merchant  he  is  thus  a  cosmopolitan,  a  man  to  whom  no  nation  is 
strange  and  who  is  a  stranger  to  no  nation.  .  .  . 

We  have  previously  seen  that  the  net  produce  from  land  is  the  sole 

*Mercier  de  la  Riviere,  "L'ordre  naturel  et  essentiel  des  societes  politiques,"  op.  cit,, 
II,  Part  II,  561-568. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        91 

accumulated  wealth  in  a  nation;  it  is  to  the  common  interest  of  the 
sovereign  and  the  nation  to  have  as  great  an  accumulation  as  possihle. 
They  can  obtain  this  surplus  only  by  deriving  the  greatest  possible 
profit  from  their  production.  The  merchant,  on  the  contrary,  although 
he  is  a  citizen  of  the  country,  has  entirely  opposite  interests,  for  he 
makes  a  profit  by  reduction  of  this  price,  and  thus  a  reduction  of  the 
surplus  which  forms  the  unique  wealth  of  the  ruler  and  of  the  nation. 

The  merchant  when  considered  in  relation  to  the  nature  of  his 
wealth  is  thus  a  cosmopolitan  by  virtue  of  his  profession.  This  term 
"cosmopolitan"  should  not  be  regarded  as  an  insult;  I  speak  here  of 
things  and  not  of  persons,  of  the  business  profession  and  not  of  those 
who  practice  it.  Among  these  merchants  are  often  found  excellent  pa- 
triots, of  whom  this  country  has  some  examples,  as  I  have  sometimes 
witnessed,  while  among  the  men  attached  to  the  soil  by  direct  or  indi- 
rect property  rights  or  by  occupation  alone  are  often  found  those  of 
an  opposite  nature.  The  medley  of  sentiments,  of  purely  moral  affec- 
tions, ought  not  to  be  of  any  consideration.  We  are  part  of  the  physical 
order,  and  we  view  men  only  in  respect  to  the  physical  relations  be- 
tween them,  because  these  relations  are  the  only  ones  which  are  evi- 
dent, are  invariable,  and  the  only  ones  that  can  be  calculated  with 
certainty. 

The  title  of  cosmopolitan  which  I  here  give  to  the  merchants  ought 
to  apply  equally  to  a  soldier  considered  only  as  a  soldier,  to  a  scientist 
regarded  as  scientist,  to  any  man  whose  profession  can  be  exercised 
everywhere.  The  occupation  of  merchants  differs  from  the  others  only 
in  the  fact  that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  serve  one  nation  without 
serving  another  at  the  same  time  and  that  their  operations  are  natu- 
rally and  necessarily  established  in  foreign  as  well  as  in  their  own  na- 
tions. 

Let  no  one  then  impute  to  me  any  desire  to  disparage  the  merchants; 
not  only  do  I  believe  all  professions  useful  but  I  even  honor  theirs  in 
particular.  It  is  perhaps  the  only  one  in  which  one  can  find  transac- 
tions based  on  trust  and  good  faith;  a  dependence  which  is  seldom  be- 
trayed, a  confidence  so  respectable  that  it  makes  the  word  alone  a  con- 
tract, takes  the  place  of  a  bond  or  security,  and  which,  by  the  facility 
it  conveys  to  negotiations,  increases  our  pleasures.  .  .  . 

Such  is  the  idea  that  we  must  form  of  true  merchants,  but  at  the 
same  time  that  I  render  that  profession  the  homage  which  is  due  them, 
I  must  perform  a  duty  to  that  profession  of  not  misconstruing  its  inter- 
ests, of  not  forcing  them  out  of  the  position  where  that  immutable 
order  which  is  essential  to  societies  has  placed  them.  To  do  this  would 
be  to  render  them  ill  service;  in  place  o£  being  the  friends  and  the 
associates  of  other  men,  they  would  become  their  enemies.  Thus  I  say 


92  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

that,  despite  their  utility,  in  the  general  society  they  form  only  a  class 
of  men  who  are  salaried  by  the  rest  of  society  and  serve  all  nations  and 
all  cultivators  and  proprietors  of  land  impartially.  In  that  position  it 
is  evident  that  the  particular  interests  of  the  merchants  of  the  nation 
are  not  the  major  interest  of  commerce.  The  latter  consists  principally 
of  the  common  interest  of  these  proprietors  of  land,  the  only  ones  in 
the  nation  who  form  essentially  the  body  politic  of  the  state,  because 
all  the  advantages  of  their  social  existence  are  related  to  the  conserva- 
tion of  the  state  and  of  the  bonds  which  bind  them  to  the  state.  .  .  . 

Let  no  one  longer  say  to  the  landed  powers  in  the  agricultural  and 
productive  nations:  See  such  and  such  a  people;  see  how  they  become 
wealthy  by  trade;  let  us  learn  from  their  example  that  the  interest  of 
commerce  is  in  the  interest  of  merchants.  We  can  in  the  future  reply 
to  them  as  follows:  It  is  natural  that  among  a  people  which  is  com- 
posed only  of  merchants  the  interest  of  commerce  will  be  seen  only  in 
the  special  interests  of  these  same  merchants.  Since  these  people  have  as 
other  sources  of  income  only  the  salaries  that  are  paid  them  by  the 
nations  whom  they  serve  commercially,  all  their  politics  and  all  their 
views  ought  to  turn  toward  the  increase  of  these  salaries.  But  among 
the  agricultural  and  producing  nations  the  interest  of  commerce  is  the 
interest  of  agricultural  production,  for  it  is  for  production  and  by 
means  of  production  that  commerce  is  begun.  It  is  from  this  same 
source  that  are  taken  the  salaries  or  incomes  of  the  merchants;  reduc- 
tion of  these  salaries  is  what  should  be  proposed  because  that  decrease 
serves  to  increase  the  wealth  of  the  producing  classes. 

The  mercantile  peoples  differ  from  the  landed  powers  in  that  they 
do  not  form  a  true  political  body,  whereas  these  landed  nations  have 
a  physical  bond,  the  foundations  of  which  nothing  can  shake.  In  fact, 
among  these  peoples  a  merchant  is  held  to  the  state  by  no  tie  that  he 
cannot  easily  break.  He  can  be  a  merchant  equally  well  anywhere,  en- 
gage in  the  same  operations  and  reap  the  same  profits.  This  is  not  true 
of  men  who  are  truly  national;  their  interests  hold  them  securely  to  the 
soil,  so  that  they  would  suffer  if  they  expatriated  themselves.  Besides, 
a  nation  of  merchants  can  exist  only  by  trade  in  products  of  foreign 
nations;  and  this  trade  may  be  taken  away  tomorrow  by  some  other 
nation.  Its  political  existence  depends  on  certain  privileges  which  it 
may  lose  at  any  moment;  thus  the  characteristic  of  a  nation  of  this  type 
is  the  liability  of  being  destroyed  without  resistence  and  not  unjustly. 

Thus  it  is  only  the  agricultural  and  productive  nations  which,  by 
virtue  of  their  territory,  can  establish  a  great  power,  a  stable  nation. 
In  such  a  nation  the  wealth  of  each  part  is  not  a  profit  made  at  the 
expense  of  some  other  part  of  the  same  nation  or  of  a  foreign  nation. 
Such  a  country  grows  only  by  virtue  of  a  great  abundance  of  produc- 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        93 

tion  or  by  a  greater  financial  value  of  its  products.  .  .  .  The  commer- 
cial interest  for  such  a  nation  is  that  of  cultivation;  it  is  the  sole  and 
real  object  that  it  should  propose  in  its  foreign  trade  if  it  wishes  to 
make  the  latter  serve  the  growth  of  wealth  and  of  population. 

19.  MIRABEAU:  ESTIMATE  OF  AGRICULTURE* 

Population  is  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  important  values  of  so- 
ciety; therefore,  we  must  inquire  what  is  its  source.  In  proportion  as 
we  cultivate  the  land,  and  as  we  use  it  to  produce  the  essential  food  of 
man,  the  species  increases  in  number;  in  proportion  as  we  let  it  lie 
fallow  or  as  we  use  it  in  inutilities,  the  species  diminishes.  Whence  it 
follows  that  consumption  of  superfluities  is  a  crime  against  society  and 
facilitates  murder  and  homicide. 

Men  multiply  like  rats  in  a  barn,  if  they  have  the  means  of  subsist- 
ence. In  this  sense,  the  expression  of  the  Prince  a  Senef,  "one  night  of 
Paris  will  replace  that,"  might  be  a  wise  axiom  well  reasoned  out.  In 
fact,  unless  there  arises  some  new  augmentation  of  subsistence  in  the 
State,  it  could  not  raise  one  plant  more,  unless  another  make  a  place 
for  it. 

"The  measure  of  subsistence  is  that  of  population"  is  an  adequate 
principle.  Augmentation  of  subsistence  leads  to  increase  of  population. 
Agriculture,  which  alone  can  multiply  the  means  of  subsistence,  is  for 
that  very  reason  the  first  of  the  arts,  because  of  the  beauty  of  its  inven- 
tion, since  it  discovers,  overtakes,  and  imitates  the  secret  of  nature,  the 
secret  of  Providence  itself,  and  the  most  wonderful  and  surprising 
effects  by  which  it  deigns  to  manifest  itself  to  our  eyes.  The  more  you 
make  the  earth  yield,  the  more  you  people  it. 

Agriculture,  however,  this  art  par  excellence,  which  can  surpass  all 
others,  while  none  of  them  can  exist  without  it,  is  still  in  its  infancy; 
and  if  authority  would  try  to  protect  and  to  promote  it,  it  would  find 
quite  a  new  prospect  for  its  development.  Of  all  the  arts,  agriculture  is 
not  only  the  most  wonderful  and  most  necessary  in  the  primitive  state 
of  society;  it  is,  moreover,  in  the  most  complicated  form  that  this  same 
society  can  receive,  the  most  profitable  and  the  most  productive.  It  is  of 
all  forms  the  most  social,  and  the  most  innocent. 

Dangers  of  prosperity  and  pernicious  effects  of  urbanization^ — 
Prosperity  is  to  states  what  ripeness  is  to  the  fruits  of  the  earth;  it  fore- 
tells, it  almost  necessitates  putrefaction.  The  more  a  society  extends 
itself,  the  more  tranquil  it  is  within,  the  more  it  is  stimulated  by  sev- 
eral kinds  of  industry,  the  more  the  game  of  chance  has  liberty  there, 

*V.  de  R.  Mirabeau,  L'ami  des  homines,  Avignon,  1756,  III,  460-464. 
tMirabeau,  op.  cit.,  Ill,  468-481. 


94  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

From  that  time  great  fortunes  become  giants,  and  large  patrimonies 
absorb  the  little  ones.  There  is  an  enormous  difference  between  the 
fertility  of  a  little  field  which  feeds  the  master  who  cultivates  it  and 
that  of  a  vast  domain  given  over  to  the  agents  of  a  great  proprietor. 

The  increase  of  the  needs  of  the  treasury  is  still  one  of  the  results  of 
prosperity.  These  charges  subdivided  among  a  number  of  little  proprie- 
tors accustomed  to  living  on  next  to  nothing,  although  more  burden- 
some to  the  people,  are  less  so  to  the  soil,  but  joined  under  the  manage- 
ment of  a  great  proprietor  already  devoured  by  all  the  subordinates  of 
luxury  and  idleness,  they  carry  off  all  that  remains  to  him  of  the  pro- 
duction, and  from  then  on,  he  is  more  prompted  to  neglect  a  property 
which  gives  him  only  trouble. 

False  urbanity  and  the  taste  for  the  specious  arts,  the  fruits  and 
abuses  of  prosperity,  make  the  country  and  the  country  people  dis- 
dained. On  the  other  hand,  the  administration  of  a  great  state  inclines 
naturally  toward  vices  of  constitution  which  desolate  the  laborer.  Of 
this  kind  would  be,  for  example,  arbitrary  impositions  in  his  assess- 
ment and  constraint  in  the  sale  of  his  commodities.  The  prosperity  of 
a  state,  rendering  it  opulent  and  making  the  necessities  of  life  circulate 
more  easily,  facilitates  a  displacement  of  proprietors  and  attracts  the 
most  important  of  them  to  the  capitol,  already  too  surcharged,  and 
through  the  abandonment  of  the  provinces  their  oppression  is  born. 
The  prosperity  of  a  state  establishes  in  its  heart  an  infinity  of  indus- 
trial branches  and  different  kinds  of  properties  which  all  seem  at  first 
glance  more  commodious  and  more  disposable  than  is  the  possession 
of  land.  It  is  generally  believed  that  a  man  is  poor,  however  rich  he 
may  be  in  land,  if  he  has  only  this  kind  of  property. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  land  is  the  only  stable  property;  its  possession 
gives  a  kind  of  jurisdiction  over  the  agriculturists.  If  the  landed  prop- 
erty is  regarded  negatively,  this  is  due  to  the  city's  pernicious  influences 
and  urban  absentee  owners.  The  living  at  the  capitol  with  its  pleasures 
and  prejudices  tends  wholly  to  establish  softness  and  distaste  for  work. 
City  people  disdain  the  dwellings  of  their  fathers,  where  the  pursuit  of 
luxury  has  not  penetrated.  They  give  remote  land  over  to  dishonest  and 
knavish  agents.  They  devastate  the  fertile  domains  of  those  in  their 
vicinity  by  projects  of  pure  decoration;  they  consume  the  rest  of  their 
production  by  maintenance  of  inutilities.  The  peasants  no  longer  know 
their  absentee  lord,  and  they  naturally  do  not  respect  a  new  lord 
who  often  "consoles"  them  by  burdensome  taxes  that  they  used  to  pay 
without  a  murmur  to  their  former  lords.  All  this  makes  the  possession 
of  land  for  such  an  absentee  lord  distasteful  and  troublesome.  The 
high  rate  of  interest  on  money  is  another  reason  for  the  discredit  of 
land.  Further,  the  prosperity  of  a  state  hinders  agriculture,  by  establish- 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        95 

ing  a  perverse  order  of  mores,  a  kind  of  magnificence  and  of  embel- 
lishment which  pushes  agriculture  back  into  the  distance,  exiles  it,  we 
might  say.  As  a  result  of  this  we  have  a  great  amount  of  uncultivated 
land  and  a  great  many  persons  taken  away  from  productive  labor 
without  any  real  profit  to  the  state.  The  taste  for  gardens  of  pure  deco- 
ration, terraces,  parks,  avenues,  etc.,  which,  since  the  last  reign,  has 
been  so  much  increased,  devastates  by  this  fashion  a  part  of  the  en- 
virons of  the  capitol  and  those  of  the  principal  cities. 

The  enormous  width  of  the  ever  increasing  number  of  roads,  which 
all  the  administrators  of  the  provinces  today  make  their  principal  care 
without  considering  the  proportions  relative  to  the  frequency  and  im- 
portance of  communications,  uses  up  a  part  of  the  territory  of  the  state, 
and  the  lines  often  lay  waste  the  most  fertile  lands,  leaving,  beside  the 
fallow  fields,  many  more  suitable  for  the  public  way.  From  all  these 
things  and  a  thousand  others  is  born  the  discredit  of  land  and  the 
absolute  decadence  of  agriculture.  Let  us  pass  to  the  means  of  encour- 
aging it.  ... 

We  have  said  that  the  prosperity  of  a  state  established  great  fortunes, 
which  soon  spread  over  all  the  territory.  What  may  remedy  that? 
"Love  the  Great,  support  the  Mediocre,  honor  the  Little."  But  what  we 
must  especially  honor  is  agriculture  and  those  who  practice  and  en- 
courage it.  The  most  skillful  agriculturist  and  the  most  enlightened 
protector  of  agriculture  are,  all  other  things  being  equal,  the  two  first 
men  of  society. 

A  stream  flowing  in  an  elevated  land  waters  and  fecundates  its 
environs  as  far  as  its  waters  can  spread  themselves.  A  stream,  how- 
ever, which  rises  in  a  hollow,  makes  only  a  swamp.  I  compare  the 
proprietor  of  land  to  this  stream.  If  he  is  at  the  head  of  production, 
of  which  he  must  naturally  be  the  soul  and  in  which  no  one  has  more 
interest  than  he,  he  animates  and  stimulates  the  whole  district.  If,  on 
the  contrary,  he  resides  in  the  center  of  consumption  (in  a  city)  he  be- 
comes the  low  and  swampy  stream,  and  contributes  to  the  putting 
under  water  of  a  land  already  too  spongy. 

Let  us  constantly  keep  in  mind  that  the  people  in  whom  the  appear- 
ances of  a  deceitful  prosperity  have  awakened  would  naturally  shift 
from  the  country  to  the  city.  We  pass  from  villages  to  boroughs,  from 
boroughs  to  cities,  from  cities  to  the  capitol,  and  that  is  the  tendency 
of  a  nation  if  the  government  is  not  attentive  to  giving  it  a  contrary 
propensity.  This  operation  is  not  so  difficult  as  one  may  believe.  All 
men  have  a  natural  inclination  toward  liberty  and  the  occupations  of 
the  country.  Let  the  habitants  be  tranquil  and  protected,  let  them  be 
animated  and  awakened  by  innocent  diversions,  of  which  the  ancients 
have  given  us  the  example  and  which  great  princes  have  not  disdained 


96  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  establish  among  them,  and  they  will  soon  see  with  fear  the  con- 
straint and  slavery  of  the  cities.  Even  if  the  protection  of  agriculture 
were  to  ask  of  the  government  a  continual  and  encumbering  care, 
what  other  object  in  the  entire  society  can  seem  more  worthy  of  its 
attention?  Why  should  we  be  alarmed  at  giving  so  much  care  to  the 
protection  of  agriculture,  to  the  education  of  the  agriculturists,  to 
aiding  them,  to  defending  their  liberties  and  immunities,  when  we 
protect  the  arts  and  professions  which  have  so  much  harassed  the  gov- 
ernment and  have  charged  the  police  with  nuisances,  formalities,  and 
ordinances,  the  most  part  of  which  impede  and  stifle  industry  instead 
of  strengthening  it?  It  is  appreciation  of  agriculture  and  persuasion  of 
its  necessity  on  the  part  of  the  government,  which  alone  can  give  it  the 
degree  of  attention  necessary  to  assure  and  maintain  its  development 
and  vivification.  It  is  especially  necessary  to  cast  back  on  the  country 
a  kind  of  relative  abundance,  which  is  the  mother  of  noble  and  ele- 
vated industry— agriculture.  The  greatest  art  has  need,  more  than  any 
other,  to  be  urged  to  a  certain  degree  of  perfection  of  two  pivots  neces- 
sary to  all  arts,  knowledge  and  experience,  theory  and  practice.  Why 
would  our  princes  not  furnish  it  with  this  aid?  We  have  great  kings 
in  every  genre  whom  it  would  be  difficult  to  surpass.  I  know,  how- 
ever, no  better  title  to  illustrate  our  future  masters  than  King  Shepherd. 
The  number  of  habitants  in  a  state  depends  on  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence, the  means  of  subsistence  depends  on  the  use  that  is  made  of 
the  land,  and  the  use  of  the  latter  is  determined  by  manners  and  cus- 
toms. 

E.  THE  POLITICAL  ARITHMETICIANS  AND  THE  GAMER- 

ALISTS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND 

EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

We  have  seen  that  almost  all  of  the  preceding  writers  claim 
that  city  life  is  less  healthful  than  country  life  and  that  the  mor- 
tality of  the  city  population  is  greater  than  that  of  country  people. 
These  assertions,  however,  are  not  followed  by  statistical  data  to 
prove  their  validity.  Such  statistical  evidences  were  supplied  by 
the  so-called  Political  Arithmeticians  and  the  Cameralists  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  The  most  prominent  among 
them  were:  in  England,  John  Graunt,  William  Petty,  Gregory 
King,  Edmund  Halley,  Richard  Price,  Arthur  Young,  and  Jonas 
Hanway;  in  Germany,  Johann  Peter  Sussmilch;  in  Austria,  Jo- 
hann  Heinrich  Gottlib  von  Justi;  in  France,  Antoine  Deparcieux. 
These  investigators  threw  a  new  light  on  the  vital  processes  of  the 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        97 

urban  and  rural  populations.,  on  the  processes  of  the  growth  of 
the  city,  rural-urban  migration,  and  rural-urban  conditions  from 
the  standpoint  of  health,  hygiene,  indulgences,  vice,  etc.  Although 
differing  in  several  points,  all  of  them  agreed  that  the  cities  were 
less  healthful  than  the  country;  that  the  city  population  was  poor- 
er from  the  standpoint  of  vitality  than  the  country  population; 
and  that  the  mortality  rate  of  the  city  population  was  higher  and 
the  birth  rate  lower  than  that  of  the  rural  people — some  excep- 
tions to  this  rule,  stressed  by  Justi,  Halley,  and  Deparcieux  were, 
in  their  own  opinions,  not  real  exceptions,  but  mere  results  of 
migrational  factors  and  differences  in  the  age  composition  of  the 
city  and  the  country  population.  They  all  stressed  that,  without 
migration  from  the  rural  districts,  the  cities  would  be  unable  to 
grow  and  would  be  doomed  to  decrease  in  population  and  eventu- 
ally disappear,  because  of  the  excess  of  deaths  over  births.  In  con- 
nection with  this,  some  of  them  discussed  the  age,  sex,  and  other 
characteristics  of  the  cityward  migrants  and  the  "export"  of  the 
babies  from  the  city.  Explaining  these  results,  they  gave  several 
generalizations  relating  to  the  moral  and  other  aspects  of  city  and 
country  life  and  people.  The  subsequent  fragments  from  the 
works  of  these  investigators  and  pioneers  in  statistics  in  general, 
and  in  vital  statistics  in  particular,  give  the  essentials  of  their  con- 
clusions. 

I.  JOHN  GRAUNT 

20.  GRAUNT:  RURAL-URBAN  VITAL  PROCESSES* 

Urban-rural  mortality  and  its  factors. — Little  more  than  one  in  fifty 
[inhabitants]  dies  in  the  Country,  whereas  in  London  it  seems  mani- 
fest that  about  one  in  thirty-two  dies,  over  and  above  what  dies  of  the 
plague.  ...  It  follows,  therefore  from  hence,  what  I  more  faintly  as- 
serted in  the  former  chapter,  that  the  Country  is  more  healthful  than 
the  City;  that  is  to  say,  although  men  die  more  regularly  and  less  per 
saltum  in  London,  than  in  the  Country,  yet,  upon  the  whole  matter, 
there  die  fewer  per  rata;  so  as  the  Fumes,  Steams,  and  Stenches  above 
mentioned,  although  they  make  the  Air  of  London  more  equal,  yet 
not  more  Healthful.  .  .  .  When  I  consider  that  in  the  Country  seventy 
are  Born  for  every  fifty-eight  Buried  [while  in  London  from  1603  to 

*  Excerpts  from  John  Graunt's  (1620-1674)  Natural  and  Political  Observations  upon 
the  Bills  of  Mortality  (First  edition,  1662),  Quoted  from  its  fifth  edition,  reprinted  in 
The  Economic  Writings  of  Sir  William  Petty,  edited  by  Charles  H.  Hull,  Cambridge, 
1899,  Vol.  II. 


98  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

1644  there  were  363,935  burials  and  only  330,747  christenings,  that  is, 
the  number  of  the  births  was  less  than  the  number  of  the  deaths] 
and  that  before  the  year  1600,  the  like  happened  in  London,  I  con- 
sidered, whether  a  City,  as  it  becomes  more  populous,  doth  not,  for 
that  very  cause,  become  more  unhealthful,  and  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  London  now  is  more  unhealthful  than  heretofore;  partly  for  that 
it  is  more  populous,  but  chiefly  because  I  have  heard,  that  sixty  years 
ago  few  Sea-Coals  were  burnt  in  London,  which  are  now  universally 
used.  .  .  .  Many  people  cannot  at  all  endure  the  smoak  of  London,  not 
only  for  its  unpleasantness,  but  for  the  suffocation  it  causes  (chap,  xii, 
pp.  393-394). 

Urban-rural  births  and  their  factors. — In  the  Country  the  Christen- 
ings exceed  the  Burials,  yet  in  London  they  do  not.  The  general  reason 
of  this  must  be  that  in  London  the  proportion  of  those  subject  to  die, 
to  those  capable  of  breeding,  is  greater  than  in  the  country.  That  is,  let 
there  be  an  hundred  Persons  in  London,  and  as  many  in  the  Country; 
we  say,  that,  if  there  be  sixty  of  them  Breeders  in  London,  there  are 
more  than  sixty  in  the  Country,  or  else  we  must  say,  that  London  is 
more  unhealthful,  or  that  it  inclines  Men  and  Women  more  to  Bar- 
renness than  the  Country.  .  .  .  Now  that  the  Breeders  in  London  are 
proportionately  fewer  than  those  in  the  Country,  arises  from  these  rea- 
sons: viz.,  (1)  All  that  have  business  to  the  Court  of  the  King  or  to 
the  Court  of  Justice,  and  all  Countrymen  coming  up  to  ...  the  City 
do  for  the  most  part  leave  their  Wives  in  the  Country.  (2)  Persons 
coming  to  live  in  London  out  of  curiosity  and  pleasure,  as  also  such  as 
would  retire  and  live  privately,  do  the  same  if  they  have  any.  (3)  Such 
as  come  to  be  cured  of  Diseases  do  scarce  use  their  Wives  pro  tempore. 
(4)  That  many  Apprentices  of  London,  who  are  bound  seven  or  nine 
years  from  Marriage,  do  often  stay  longer  voluntarily.  (5)  That  many 
Seamen  of  London  leave  their  Wives  behind  them.  ...  (6)  As  for 
unhealthiness,  it  may  well  be  supposed  that  although  seasoned  Bodies 
may,  and  do  live  near  as  long  in  London  as  elsewhere,  yet  newcomers 
and  Children  do  not,  for  the  Smoaks,  Stinks,  and  close  Air  are  less 
healthful  than  that  of  the  Country;  otherwise  why  do  sickly  Persons 
remove  into  the  Country- Air?  And  why  are  there  more  old  men  in 
Countries  than  in  London,  per  rata  ?  .  .  .  (7)  As  to  the  causes  of  Bar- 
renness in  London,  I  say,  that  although  there  should  be  none  extraor- 
dinary in  the  native  Air  of  the  place,  yet  the  intemperance  in  feeding, 
and  especially  the  Adulteries  and  Fornications,  supposed  more  frequent 
in  London  than  elsewhere,  do  certainly  hinder  Breeding.  For  a 
Woman,  admitting  ten  Men,  is  so  far  from  having  ten  times  as  many 
Children,  that  she  hath  none  at  all.  (8)  Add  to  this,  that  the  minds  of 
men  of  London  are  more  thoughtful  and  full  of  business  than  in  the 
Country  where  their  work  is  corporal  Labor  and  Exercises;  All  which 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES        99 

promote  Breeding,  whereas  Anxieties  of  the  mind  hinder  it  (chap,  vii, 
pp.  372-374). 

Rural  migration  is  the  source  of  the  growth  of  London  population. — 
Since  the  number  of  the  Burials  in  London  was  higher  than  that  of 
Christenings  it  will  follow  that  London  should  have  decreased  in  its 
People,  the  contrary  whereof  we  see  by  its  daily  increase  of  Buildings 
upon  new  Foundations,  and  by  the  turning  of  great  Palacious  Houses 
into  small  Tenements.  It  is  therefore  certain  that  London  is  supplied 
with  People  from  out  of  the  Country,  whereby  not  only  to  supply  the 
over-plus  differences  of  Burials  above  mentioned,  but  likewise  to  in- 
crease its  inhabitants  according  to  the  said  increase  of  housing  (chap, 
vii,  p.  370). 

Of  other  statements  by  John  Graunt  we  may  mention  his  claim 
that  the  amplitude  of  fluctuation  of  the  mortality  in  the  country 
is  greater  than  in  the  city,  a  claim  that  was  based,  however,  on 
examination  of  a  relatively  small  number  of  cases;  and  that  a 
greater  number  of  male  births  and  deaths  occurred  in  the  city, 
which,  however,  did  not  mean  that  the  city  population  differed 
in  this  respect  from  the  country  population. 
II.  WILLIAM  PETTY 

The  conclusions  of  William  Petty  (1623-1685)  in  regard  to  the 
city-country  vital  processes  were  similar  to  those  of  John  Graunt. 
He  accepted  Graunt's  figures  and  conclusions.21  In  addition,  he 
gave  other  data  for  the  cities  of  London  and  Dublin.  In  London 
the  number  of  the  births  "is  about  Five  eights  parts  of  the  Burials; 
[which]  shews,  that  London  would  in  time  decrease  quite  away, 
were  it  not  supplied  out  of  the  Country,  where  are  about  Five 
Births  for  Four  Burials,  the  proportion  of  Breeders  in  the  Country 
being  greater  than  in  the  City.  .  .  ."  In  Dublin  "the  proportion 
between  Burials  and  Births  are  alike"  to  that  of  London  (II,  482). 
Correspondingly,  he  indicates  that  the  growth  of  London  was  due 
to  the  migration  of  the  people  from  the  rural  parts;  in  the  period 
from  1642  to  1682  the  specific  causes  of  migration  to  London  of 
some  groups  were  as  follows:  "From  1642  to  1650  Men  came  out 
of  the  Country  to  London,  to  shelter  themselves  from  the  Out- 
rages of  the  Civil  War;  from  1650  to  1660,  the  Royal  Party  came 
to  London  for  their  more  private  and  inexpensive  Living;  from 
1660  to  1670,  the  King's  Friends  and  Party  came  to  receive  his 
Favours  after  his  Happy  Restoration;  from  1670  to  1680,  the  frc- 

31  See  Petty's  "Several  Essays  in  Political  Arithmetic/'  in  The  Economic  Writings  of 
Sir  William  Petty,  II,  460  £E. 


100  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

quency  of  Plots  and  Parliaments  might  bring  extraordinary  Num- 
bers to  the  City."  Besides  these  extraordinary  causes  of  the  migra- 
tion there  were  natural  and  permanent  causes  like  "some  Natural 
and  Spontaneous  Benefits  and  Advantages  that  Men  find  by  liv- 
ing in  great  more  than  in  small  Societies." 

Among  other  points  in  Petty's  theories,  his  hypothetical  estima- 
tion of  the  pluses  and  minuses  of  overurbanization  is  interesting. 
He  forms  hypothetical  conjectures  of  cases,  one  in  which  Lon- 
don's population  would  be  4,690,000,  while  the  population  of  the 
rest  of  England  would  be  2,710,000;  and  another  in  which  the 
population  of  London  would  be  only  96,000,  while  the  population 
of  the  rest  of  England  would  be  7,304,000.  He  asks  which  of  these 
two  situations  in  England  would  be  the  more  profitable  for  the 
entire  country  from  the  following  standpoints:  the  defense  of  the 
kingdom  against  foreign  powers;  the  prevention  of  intestine  com- 
motions of  parties  and  factions;  peace  and  uniformity  of  religion; 
administration  of  justice;  taxation;  gain  by  foreign  commerce; 
husbandry,  manufactures,  arts,  and  science;  prevention  of  crime; 
increase  of  population;  and  the  prevention  of  plagues  and  con- 
tagions, His  answer  is  that  in  all  these  respects,  with  the  exception 
of  the  last  two,  the  more  highly  urbanized  England  would  be  in 
a  position  not  worse,  but  rather  better,  than  the  less  urbanized 
England.  But  such  an  over  urbanized  England  would  be  doomed 
to  decrease  in  population  and  so  to  disappear;  for  this  simple 
and  convincing  reason  all  the  other  benefits  of  the  overurbaniza- 
tion could  not  be  realized.  "If  in  the  City  of  London  there  should 
be  two  Millions  of  People,  then  the  Plague  (killing  one-fifth  of 
them,  namely,  400,000  once  in  twenty  years)  will  destroy  as  many 
in  one  Year,  as  the  whole  Nation  can  re-furnish  in  twenty.  And 
consequently  the  People  of  the  Nation  shall  never  increase.  But 
if  the  People  of  London  shall  be  above  4  Millions  then  the  People 
of  the  whole  Nation  shall  lessen  above  20,000  per  Annum.  So  as 
if  People  be  worth  70  pounds  per  Head  [such  is  Petty's  estimate  of 
the  economic  value  of  an  individual]  then  the  said  greatness  of  the 
City  will  be  a  damage  to  itself  and  the  whole  Nation  of  14  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds  per  Annum,  and  so  pro  rata,  for  a  greater 
or  lesser  Number"  (II,  470-476).  Finally,  it  is  necessary  to  mention 
that,  according  to  Petty,  there  are  but  two  primary  sources  of 
wealth:  "Labor  is  the  Father  and  active  principle  of  Wealth,  as 
Lands  are  the  Mother"  (1, 68). 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       101 

III.  GREGORY  KING 

The  conclusions  of  John  Graunt  and  William  Petty  were  cor- 
roborated by  the  findings  of  Gregory  King  (16484712),  published 
in  1696.  Only  in  one  respect,  namely,  in  regard  to  the  proportion 
of  persons  married  in  London  and  in  the  rural  parts,  did  his  con- 
clusion differ  from  those  of  Graunt  and  Petty.  While  they  thought 
that  the  proportion  was  higher  in  the  country  than  in  London, 
King  showed  that  it  was  higher  in  London  than  in  the  country. 
In  spite  of  this,  the  fertility  per  marriage  in  London  was  lower 
than  in  the  country;  therefore  King's  conclusion  about  the  bar- 
renness of  the  city  corroborated  the  conclusions  of  his  predeces- 
sors. The  subsequent  fragments  give  the  essentials  of  King's 
findings.22 

Taking  20,000  as  the  annual  number  of  births  in  England  and 
about  11,000  as  the  annual  number  of  losses  through  mortality 
and  emigration,  he  obtains  about  9,000  as  the  net  annual  increase 
of  the  population. 

That  of  the  20,000  souls,  which  would  be  the  annual  increase  of  the 
kingdom  by  procreation,  were  it  not  for  the  forementioned  abatements: 

The  country  increases  annually  by  procreation       20,000 

The  cities  and  towns  (exclusive  of  London)    ,        2,000 

But  London  and  the  Bills  ol  Mortality  decrease  annually 2,000 

So  that  London  requires  a  supply  of  2,000  annually  to  keep  it  from 
decreasing,  besides  a  further  supply  of  about  3,000  per  annum  for  its 
increase  at  this  time:  in  all  5,000,  or  a  moiety  of  the  kingdom's  net 
increase  (pp.  418  ff.).  It  appears  that  the  proportion  of  marriages, 
births,  and  burials,  is,  according  to  the  following  scheme: 

MARRIAGES  "  BIRTHS  BURIALS 


PLACE        POPULATION  ' PER     

Per  Annum  Total   MAR-    Per  Annum    Total   Per  Annum    Total 

RIAGE 

London  530,000  1  m  106  5,000  4.00  1  in  26.50  20,000  lin  14.10  22,000 

Cities  and 

market 

towns  870,000  1  in  128  6,800  4.50  lin 28.50  30,600  lin 30.40  28,600 
Villages  and 

hamlets    4,110,000     1  in  141  29,200     4.80     1  in  29.40  139,400     1  in  3 4.40  119,400 

Total  or 

average    5,500,000     1  in  134  41,000    4.64     1  in  28.85  190,000     1  in  32.35  170,000 

22  Gregory  King,  Natural  and  Political  Observations  and  Conclusions  upon  the  State 
and  Conditions  of  England,  1696.  Reprinted  in  George  Chalmers,  An  Estimate  of  the 
Comparative  Strength  of  Great  Britain,  London,  1802. 


102  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Whereby  we  may  observe,  that  in  1,000  coexisting  persons  there  are 
71  or  72  marriages  in  the  country,  producing  343  children;  78  marriages 
in,  the  towns,  producing  352  children;  94  marriages  in  London,  pro- 
ducing 376  children,  Whereby  it  follows:  (1)  that  though  each  mar- 
riage in  London  produceth  fewer  people  than  in  the  country,  yet 
London,  in  general,  having  a  greater  proportion  of  breeders,  is  more 
prolific  than  the  other  great  towns;  and  the  great  towns  are  more  pro- 
lific than  the  country;  (2)  that  if  the  people  of  London,  of  all  ages, 
were  as  long-lived  as  those  in  the  country,  London  would  increase 
in  people  much  faster,  pro  rata,  than  the  country;  (3)  that  the  reason 
why  each  marriage  in  London  produces  fewer  children  than  the  coun- 
try marriages,  seems  to  be:  (a)  from  the  more  frequent  fornications 
and  adulteries;  (b)  from  a  greater  luxury  and  intemperance;  (c)  from 
a  greater  intenseness  to  business;  (d)  from  the  unhealthfulness  of  the 
coal  smoke;  (e)  from  a  greater  inequality  of  age  between  the  husbands 
and  wives. 

He  further  indicates  a  predominance  of  males  in  the  country  (100 
males  to  99  females)  and  the  reverse  situation  in  London  (100 
males  to  130  females)  and  other  cities  (80  males  to  90  females). 
IV.  EDMUND  HALLEY 

The  astronomer  Edmund  Halley  (1656-1742),  in  his  An  Esti- 
mate of  the  Degrees  of  the  Mortality  of  Mankind,  Drawn  from 
Curious  Tables  of  the  Births  and  Funerals  at  the  City  of  Breslaw 
(1693),23  indicated  that  the  cities  of  London  and  Dublin  studied 
by  Graunt  and  Petty  were  unrepresentative  because  "of  the  great 
and  casual  accession  of  strangers  who  die  therein."  To  be  repre- 
sentative a  city  must  be  such  "that  the  people  we  treat  of  should 
not  at  all  be  changed,  but  die  where  they  were  born,  without  any 
adventitious  increase  from  abroad,  or  decay  by  migration  else- 
where." Taking  the  city  of  Breslau  as  such  a  standard  city,  he 
tried  to  show  that  the  births  were  not  more  numerous  than  the 
deaths  and  that  there  were  no  conspicuous  differences  between 
the  city  of  Breslau  and  the  surrounding  country  in  regard  to  vital 
processes. 

By  subsequent  studies,  however,  this  contention  of  Halley  was 
given  a  meaning  corroborating  in  essence  the  conclusion  of  his 
predecessors,  in  this  sense:  that  the  infusion  of  the  immigrants 
to  the  city  from  rural  parts  was  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  factor 

28  Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society,  Vol.  XVII,  for  the  year  1693,  No. 
196,  pp.  596-610. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       103 

which  increased  the  mortality  rate  of  the  city  but  which  decreased 
it.  The  data  supplied  by  Richard  Price,  }.  Stissmilch,  Deparcieux, 
and  partly  by  Justi  established  this  point. 

V.  CHARLES  DAVENANT 

Charles  Davenant  ( 1656-1714) ,  in  a  series  of  works,24  also  dis- 
cussed many  of  the  problems  of  rural-urban  vital  statistics  and  the 
importance  of  agriculture  and  the  agricultural  class  for  the  wel- 
fare of  a  society.  His  conclusions  and  analyses,  however,  failed  to 
add  anything  essentially  new  to  the  problems  and  for  this  reason 
need  not  be  extensively  quoted.  In  contrast  to  some  of  these  Polit- 
ical Arithmeticians,  he  regarded  favorably  not  only  agriculture 
but  commerce,  manufacturing,  and  other  industries,  and  he  did 
not  deplore  the  cities  and  urban  populations.  Similar  were  the 
conclusions  of  Sir  James  Steuart  (Denham).25 

VI.  RICHARD  PRICE 

Omitting  the  actual  figures  and  life-expectation  tables  with 
which  two  volumes  of  Richard  Price's  Observations  on  Reversion- 
ary Payments  (1st  ed.,  1769)  are  packed,  we  give  only  his  general 
conclusions  concerning  comparative  vitality  and  some  other  com- 
parisons between  the  city  and  the  country  and  their  populations: 

21.  PRICE:  RURAL-URBAN  DEMOGRAPHY  AND  MIGRATION* 

"In  London  at  least  one  in  20%  of  the  inhabitants  die  annually.  In 
Northampton,  one  in  261/z  die  annually.  .  .  ."  (In  various  country 
parts  the  corresponding  figures  are  from  1  in  31  to  1  in  50  of  the  inhabi- 
tants who  die  annually.  Similarly,  the  infant  mortality  is  much  higher 
in  tHe  city  than  in  the  country.)  Having  given  these  and  many  similar 
data  Price  continues:  "In  general,  there  seems  reason  to  think  that  in 
towns  the  excess  of  the  burials  above  the  births,  and  the  proportion  of 
inhabitants  dying  annually  are  more  or  less  as  the  towns  are  greater 
or  smaller.  In  London  itself,  about  160  years  ago,  when  it  was  scarcely 

Zi  See  his  Discourses  on  the  Publicf{  "Revenues  and  on  the  Trade  of  England,  2  vols., 
esp.  Discourse  I,  "Of  Political  Arithmetic!*:,"  in  Vol.  I,  London,  1698;  An  Essay  upon 
the  Probable  Methods  of  Making  a  People  Gainers  in  the  Balance  of  Trade,  London, 
1699,  Sec  I-III;  and  Essays  upon  Peace  at  Home  and  War  Abroad,  London,  1704. 

25  See  his  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Principles  of  Political  Economy"  (1st  ed.,  1767),  in 
The  Wor^s  of  the  Late  Sir  James  Steuart  of  Coltness,  Bart.  (Denham),  collected  by  Sir 
James  Steuart,  his  son,  London,  1805,  I,  69  E,  98  flf.,  125  ff.  and  passim. 

*  Richard  Price,  Observations,  6th  ed.,  London,  1803,  Vol.  II.  In  this  selection  quota- 
tion marks  are  used  to  set  off  the  exact  words  of  the  author  from  editorial  interpo- 
lation. 


104  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

a  fourth  of  its  present  bulk,  the  births  were  much  nearer  to  the  burials 
than  they  are  now.  But  in  country  parishes  and  villages,  the  births 
almost  always  exceed  the  burials."  He  indicates  further  that  neither  a 
high  proportion  of  the  people  of  old  age  in  the  cities  nor  migration 
from  the  country  to  the  city  can  be  used  as  an  argument  which  would 
make  this  greater  mortality  of  the  cities  fictitious.  On  the  contrary, 
without  migration,  the  situation  in  the  cities  would  be  still  worse.  "The 
facts  I  have  now  taken  notice  of  are  so  important  that  I  think  they 
deserve  more  attention  than  has  hitherto  been  bestowed  upon  them. 
Everyone  knows  that  the  strength  of  a  state  consists  in  the  number 
of  people.  The  encouragement  of  population,  therefore,  ought  to  be 
one  of  the  first  objects  of  policy  in  every  state,  and  some  of  the  worst 
enemies  of  population  are  the  luxury,  the  licentiousness,  and  the  debil- 
ity produced  and  propagated  by  great  towns.  I  have  observed  that  Lon- 
don is  now  increasing.  But  it  appears,  that,  in  truth,  this  is  an  event 
more  to  be  dreaded  than  desired.  The  more  London  increases,  the 
more  the  rest  of  the  kingdom  must  be  deserted;  the  fewer  hands  must 
be  left  for  agriculture;  and  consequently,  the  less  must  be  the  plenty, 
and  the  higher  the  price  of  all  the  means  of  subsistence.  Moderate 
towns  being  seats  of  refinement,  emulation,  and  arts,  may  be  public 
advantages.  But  great  towns,  long  before  they  grow  to  half  the  bulk 
of  London,  become  checks  on  population  of  too  hurtful  a  nature,  nurs- 
eries of  debauchery  and  voluptuousness;  and  in  many  respects,  greater 
evils  than  can  be  compensated  by  any  advantages"  (II,  40,  47-49, 
219  E). 

"From  this  comparison  of  the  expectation  of  life  in  the  city  and  the 
country  it  appears  with  how  much  truth  great  cities  have  been  called 
the  graves  of  mankind.  It  must  also  convince  all  who  will  consider  it 
(the  table  given)  that  it  is  by  no  means  strictly  proper  to  consider  our 
diseases  as  the  original  intention  of  nature.  They  are  ...  our  own 
creation.  Were  there  a  country  where  the  inhabitants  led  lives  entirely 
natural  and  virtuous,  few  of  them  would  die  without  measuring  out 
the  whole  period  of  the  present  existence  allotted  to  them;  pain  and 
distempers  would  be  unknown  among  them;  and  death  would  come 
upon  them  like  a  sleep,  in  consequence  of  no  other  cause  than  a  grad- 
ual and  unavoidable  decay.  .  .  .  The  reasons  of  the  baleful  influence 
of  great  towns,  are  plainly,  first,  the  irregular  modes  of  life,  the  luxu- 
ries, debaucheries,  and  pernicious  customs,  which  prevail  more  in 
towns  than  in  the  country.  Secondly,  the  fullness  of  the  air  in  towns, 
occasioned  by  uncleanliness,  the  smoke,  the  perspiration  and  breath 
of  the  inhabitants,  and  putrid  steams  from  drains,  churchyards,  ken- 
nels, and  common  sewers"  (II,  220-221,  129-130). 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      105 

"In  consequence  of  the  easy  communication,  lately  created,  between 
the  different  parts  of  the  kingdom,  the  London  fashions  and  manners 
and  pleasures,  have  been  propagated  everywhere;  and  almost  every  dis- 
tant town  and  village  now  vies  with  the  capital  in  all  kinds  of  expen- 
sive dissipation  and  amusement.  This  enervates  and  debilitates,  and, 
together  with  our  taxes,  raises  everywhere  the  price  of  means  of  sub- 
sistence, checks  marriage,  and  brings  poverty,  dependence,  and  venali- 
ty" (II,  137  f.). 

Price's  general  estimation  of  the  agricultural  and  urban  civilizations 
and  the  essentials  of  his  politico-economical  creed  are  expressed  in  the 
following  quotation:  "The  first  or  the  simple  stages  of  civilization  are 
those  which  favour  most  the  increase  and  the  happiness  of  mankind: 
for  in  these  states,  agriculture  supplies  plenty  of  the  means  of  subsist- 
ence; the  blessings  of  a  natural  and  simple  life  are  enjoyed;  property  is 
equally  divided;  the  wants  of  men  are  few,  and  soon  satisfied;  and 
families  are  easily  provided  for.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  refined  states 
of  civilization  property  is  engrossed,  and  the  natural  equality  of  men 
subverted;  artificial  necessaries  without  number  are  created;  great 
towns  propagate  contagion  and  licentiousness;  luxury  and  vice  prevail; 
and,  together  with  them,  disease,  poverty,  venality,  and  oppression. 
And  there  is  a  limit  at  which,  when  the  corruptions  of  civil  society 
arrive,  all  liberty,  virtue,  and  happiness  must  be  lost,  and  complete  ruin 
follow.  Our  American  colonies  are  at  present,  for  the  most  part,  in  the 
first  and  the  happiest  of  the  states  I  have  described;  and  they  afford  a 
very  striking  proof  of  the  effects  of  the  different  stages  of  civilization 
on  population.  ..."  *  Further  Price  especially  stresses  the  necessity  of 
preventing  the  concentration  of  the  land  in  few  hands  and  the  benefi- 
cial results  of  a  multitude  of  small  proprietors  for  the  promotion  of 
the  population  and  the  general  welfare  of  a  society  (II,  143  ff.) . 

Concerning  the  role  of  the  cityward  migration  from  the  country  in 
the  vital  differences  of  the  city  and  the  country,  Price  says:  "If  migra- 
tions lessen  the  number  of  deaths  (in  the  country,  as  it  was  contended 
by  Halley  and  some  others),  they  also  lessen  the  number  of  inhabitants 
of  the  country;  and  it  depends  entirely  on  the  ages  at  which  the 
inhabitants  remove  from  a  place,  whether  the  effect  of  their  removal 
shall  be  lowering  or  raising  the  proportion  of  the  annual  deaths  to  the 
Dumber  of  inhabitants.  In  the  present  case  the  truth  appears  to  be  that 
the  most  common  age  of  migration  from  the  country  is  such  as  raises 

*EDITORS'  NOTE.— This  extraordinarily  high  estimation  of  the  happy,  prosperous, 
moral,  healthy,  and  good  situation  of  the  American  colonies  Is  common  in  the  writings 
of  the  seventeenth,  eighteenth,  and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  centuries.  Malthus, 
Adam  Smith,  ^  Edmund  Burke,  and  many  others  are  unanimous  in  their  enthusiasm  for 
the  situation  in  the  American  colonies. 


106  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

this  proportion  in  the  country.  The  period  of  life  in  which  persons 
remove  from  the  country  to  settle  in  towns  is  chiefly  the  beginning  of 
mature  life,  or  from  the  age  of  10  or  15  to  25  or  30.  Towns,  therefore, 
will  be  inhabited  more  by  people  in  the  firmest  parts  of  life;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  country  will  be  inhabited  more  by  people  in  the 
weakest  parts  of  life;  and  the  consequence  of  this  is,  that  in  the  coun- 
try, the  inhabitants  must  die  faster  in  proportion  to  their  number  than 
they  otherwise  would,  and  that  in  towns  they  must  die  more  slowly. 
In  particular  the  number  of  the  children  (whose  mortality  is  greater 
than  that  of  other  ages)  is  always  much  greater  in  the  country  than  in 
towns.  .  .  .  This  (and  migration)  ought  to  raise  the  proportion  of 
annual  deaths  to  inhabitants  of  the  country,  much  above  the  same  pro- 
portion in  the  town;  but,  instead  of  this,  it  is  near  one-half  lower." 
From  this  and  similar  facts  Price  concludes  that  migration  is  not 
a  factor  heightening  the  mortality  rate  of  the  city  and  lowering  the 
mortality  rate  of  the  country,  but  it  is  a  factor  which  has  quite  the 
opposite  effects.  If  there  were  no  migration  from  the  country  to  the 
city,  the  mortality  rate  of  the  city  would  be  still  higher  and  its  birth 
rate  still  lower,  while  the  country  rates  would  be  still  more  favorable. 
For  these  reasons  he  claims  that  the  vital  indices  of  the  city  are  indeed 
poorer  than  those  of  the  country  (II,  221  ff.). 

VII.  ARTHUR  YOUNG 

In  his  The  Farmer's  Letters  to  the  People  of  England  (London, 
1768),  Arthur  Young,  like  the  preceding  authors,  maintains  that 
"agriculture  is  the  greatest  of  all  manufactures"  (p.  4) ;  that  it  is 
more  profitable  to  the  state  than  any  manufacture;  that  "popular 
riots,  insurrections,  and  complaints  are  infinitely  more  common 
among  the  people  engaged  in  manufactures  than  among  those 
engaged  in  agriculture";  that  "those  employed  in  agriculture  will 
find  a  more  sure  and  regular  dependence  on  their  business  than 
any  manufacturer  can"  (p.  21);  that  the  urban  laborers  are  in- 
clined to  extravagance:  to  "spending  in  one  day  the  wages  of 
three,"  while  "the  people  employed  in  agriculture  are  equal  in 
their  earnings:  their  pay  is  small,  but  then  it  is  constant"  (p.  22). 
In  the  same  work  he  analyzes  carefully  the  comparative  advan- 
tages and  disadvantages  of  large  and  small  farms  (pp.  90-156) 
and  comes  to  the  following  conclusions:  "first,  that  small  farms 
are  detrimental  to  the  occupier  and  to  the  public  in  the  smallness 
of  their  produce;  secondly,  that  middling  farms  yield  a  superior 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       107 

produce  to  the  small  ones,  maintain  more  people,  and  have  a 
more  public  value;  thirdly,  that  large  farms,  in  respect  of  produce, 
are  more  beneficial  than  any  to  population;  fourthly,  that  very 
large  farms  do  not  in  general  produce  equal  to  the  last  class,  nor 
maintain  an  equality  of  hands  either  in  number  or  value ;  fifthly, 
that  grass-farms  are  .  .  .  infinitely  less  advantageous  to  popula- 
tion, in  point  of  number  of  people,  (than  arable  ones)  but  equal  in 
respect  of  their  value"  (pp.  153-154).  Furthermore,  he  extensively 
discusses  the  health,  mortality,  births,  and  moral  status  of  the 
urban  and  rural  populations.  On  the  basis  of  the  statistical  data 
he  shows  that  "infants  die  at  the  rate  of  only  fourteen  or  sixteen 
in  the  hundred,  in  villages;  but  in  London  they  die  sixty  or  sev- 
enty in  a  hundred"  (p.  335).  Similarly  "the  inhabitants  of  great 
cities  are  by  no  means  so  prolific  (as  those  of  the  country)  and 
the  debauched,  unhealthy  lives  that  are  generally  led  in  them, 
are  terrible  scourges  to  the  human  species"  (p.  263).  Accord- 
ingly he  deplores  a  rapid  growth  of  the  cities,  an  increasing  mi- 
gration from  the  country  to  the  city— the  sole  source  of  the  growth 
of  the  city  population — and  sharply  criticizes  the  pro-urban  state- 
ments of  many  writers  (pp.  334-520). 

VIII.  DfiPARCIEUX 

The  conclusions  in  the  field  of  rural-urban  vital  processes 
reached  by  the  English  Political  Arithmeticians  were  corroborated 
in  their  essentials  by  the  vital  statisticians  of  other  countries.  Ex- 
amples of  this,  to  mention  only  the  most  prominent  names,  are 
given  in  the  investigations  of  Deparcieux  (1703-1768)  in  France 
and  Siissmilch  in  Germany.  Deparcieux's  data  for  Paris  and  some 
other  French  cities  show  that,  in  contrast  to  London,  deaths  in 
Paris  did  not  exceed  births  in  Paris  and  that  the  crude  mortality 
rates  in  the  large  cities  were  even  lower  than  in  the  country.  How- 
ever, this  did  not  mean  that  the  cities'  vital  processes  were  better 
or  as  good  as  the  vital  processes  of  the  country;  it  expressed  only, 
according  to  the  interpretation  of  Deparcieux,  a  result  of  a  series 
of  migrations  and  other  phenomena  which  he  indicated  in  his 
analysis.  When  the  birth  rates  and  death  rates  of  the  city  and  the 
country  were  standardized,  the  results  were  similar  to  the  results 
obtained  by  the  above  English  statisticians.  The  subsequent  quo- 
tations clarify  the  situation. 


108  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

22.  DEPARCIEUX:  RURAL-URBAN  MORTALITY* 

In  large  cities,  like  Paris,  Lyon,  Rouen,  Bordeaux,  and  other  com- 
mercial centers,  where  there  always  is  a  great  concurrence  of  the  people 
of  various  countries  and  places,  a  smaller  proportion  of  the  population 
die;  while  in  the  small  cities  about  one  thirty-fifth  part  of  the  popula- 
tion dies.  In  large  cities  only  about  a  fortieth  part  of  the  population 
dies.  This  is  due  to  the  two  following  reasons: 

(1)  Ini  the  large  cities  there  always  is  a  considerable  number  of  the 
traveling  persons,  who  remain  there  only  for  a  certain  period  of  time 
— some  longer,  some  shorter — and  afterwards  return  to  their  homes  or 
go  elsewhere.  It  is  true  that  during  their  sojourn  in  the  city  death  may 
come  to  them  as  well  as  to  the  native  inhabitants  of  it;  but  we  must 
bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  those  who  travel  do  their  traveling  usually 
at  the  ages  when  the  mortality  is  the  lowest:  people  usually  do  not 
travel  at  ages  younger  than  fifteen  or  eighteen  years  and  older  than 
forty  or  fifty  years;  this  means  that  the  travelers  or  migrants  go  to  the 
cities  after  they  have  passed  the  high  mortality  of  childhood  and 
before  they  reach  the  high  mortality  of  old  age;  besides  the  migrants 
and  travelers  are  usually  people  in  good  health. 

(2)  The  highest  mortality  rate  falling  at  the  age  of  infancy,  in  the 
large  French  cities  we  have  the  infant  mortality  much  lower  than  that 
which  is  to  be  expected.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  babies  born  in 
the  cities  are  usually  sent  for  nursing  to  the  rural  parts — at  a  distance 
of  four,  six,  or  ten  lieues  from  the  city,  whence  they  are  taken  back  to 
the  city  only  at  the  ages  of  two  or  three  or  even  four  years;  that  is, 
when  more  than  half  of  the  babies  sent  are  already  dead.  .  .  .  This 
number  is  replaced  by  approximately  the  same  number  of  persons  of 
both  sexes  who  leave  the  country  for  the  city,  there  to  become  laborers 
or  domestics.  They  usually  come  to  the  city  at  the  age  of  fifteen  or 
eighteen  years,  that  is,  after  they  escaped  in  the  country  the  mortality 
of  childhood.  This  explains  why  the  city  population  usually  shows  a 
lower  proportion  of  the  persons  at  the  ages  from  birth  to  fifteen  or 
eighteen  years  and  a  corresponding  excess  of  other  age  groups.  .  .  . 
[When,  further,  we  compare  the  mortality  of  the  babies  born  in  the 
city  and  in  the  country  we  find  that]  the  city-born  babies  have  a  great- 
er mortality  than  the  babies  born  in  rural  parts  or  small  cities.  This  is 
due  partly  to  the  fact  that  many  of  the  city-born  babies  are  artificially 
fed  while  the  rural-born  babies  have  natural  breast-feeding;  partly  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  women  who  do  not  feed  their  babies  by  breast  be- 
come pregnant  more  often  than  the  mothers  who  do  it;  this  more  fre- 

*A.  Deparcieux,  Essat  sur  les  probabilites  de  la  duree  de  la  vie  humaine;  d'ou  I'on 
dedtiit  la  maniere  de  determiner  les  rentes  viageres,  tant  simples  qu'en  tontines,  Paris, 
1746,  pp.  94,  40.  See  also  pp.  70  ff.,  37  ff.,  92  f. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       109 

quent  pregnancy  does  not  leave  them  the  necessary  time  to  recover 
from  the  fatigue  of  pregnancy  and  childbearing  and  this  unfavorably 
affects  the  health  of  their  babies;  and  the  more  of  this,  the  quicker 
they  become  pregnant  again;  it  is  further  due  to  the  fact  that  the  hired 
wet-nurses  do  not  give  the  babies  the  same  care  that  they  give  their 
own  babies.  A  part  of  the  city-born  babies  who  escape  mortality  in 
spite  of  the  infirmity  of  their  mothers  and  the  carelessness  of  the  wet- 
nurses  often  receive  a  poor  digestion,  deformation  of  their  body,  or 
other  infirmity.  Reaching  the  age  of  maturity  they  nevertheless  marry, 
and  their  children,  placed  in  the  same  conditions,  reproduce  their  poor 
constitutions.  ...  It  is  true  that  in  London  the  greater  part  of  the 
mothers,  even  the  princesses,  feed  their  babies  by  breast.  But  in  Lon- 
don, similar  to  Paris,  the  air  is  also  less  pure  and  healthy  (than  in  rural 
parts).  Fathers  and  mothers  in  the  cities  are  less  healthy  than  in  the 
country  (pp.  94,  40;  see  also  pp.  70  fL,  37  ff.,  92-93). 

IX.  JOHANN  PETER  SOSSMILCH 

The  conclusions  reached  by  the  German  statistician,  Sussmilch 
(1707-1767),  in  his  famous  work,  Die  gottliche  Ordnung  in  den 
V crdnderungen  des  menschlichen  Geschlechts,  aus  der  Geburt, 
dem  Tode  und  der  Fortpflanzung  desselben  erwiesen,  etc.  (1st 
ed.,  1741),  were  similar  to  the  above.  They  were  based  on  the 
statistical  data  of  Berlin  and  other  cities  and  rural  parts  of  Ger- 
many. The  following  brief  quotations  from  his  work  give  the 
essentials  of  Siissmilch's  generalizations.20 

The  mortality  of  the  middle-sized  cities  is  greater  than  in  the  coun- 
try. In  proportion  as  the  size  of  the  cities  and  their  population  in- 
creases the  mortality  seems  to  increase  also.  In  large  and  populous 
cities,  the  mortality  is  the  highest,  or,  what  is  the  same,  the  vital  forces 
and  their  duration  are  the  lowest.  .  .  .  The  highest  and  most  extraordi- 
nary mortality  of  the  rural  population  hardly  reaches  the  lowest  and 
normal  mortality  of  the  cities. 

The  causes  of  this  higher  urban  mortality  are:  first,  the  greater 
weakness  of  the  city  children,  due  to  the  greater  feebleness  of 
their  parents,  the  greater  practice  of  employing  wet-nurses,  and 
the  greater  proportion  of  disorderly  and  careless  parents;  second, 
the  corrupted  mores  and  sexual  immorality  which  predominate  in 
the  cities;  third,  the  indulgence  of  overeating;  fourth,  greater  pas- 
sions, worries,  and  anxieties  in  the  city;  fifth,  greater  consumption 
of  liquor  and  alcoholic  beverages;  sixth,  poor  and  contaminated 

26  Quotations  are  taken  from  the  second  revised  edition,  Berlin,  1761. 


110  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

air;  seventh,  a  more  successful  spread  of  the  contagious  diseases 
due  to  crowding  and  the  unhealthful  conditions  in  the  city; 
eighth,  lack  of  care  and  of  welfare  measures  among  the  poor 
classes  in  the  city;  ninth,  an  influx  of  foreigners  to  the  city  hospi- 
tals, asylums,  and  similar  institutions.  From  this  Siissmilch  con- 
cludes that  "the  large  cities  are  not  profitable  to  mankind  or  a 
state."  2T 

In  so  far  as  the  relationship  of  the  births  to  the  deaths  in  the 
city  and  the  country  is  concerned,  the  conclusions  of  Siissmilch 
are  as  follows: 

In  the  cities,  especially  in  the  large  cities,  the  number  of  deaths  gen- 
erally exceeds  the  number  of  births.  Only  in  an  extraordinarily  favor- 
able year  does  the  number  of  births  occasionally  exceed  that  of  deaths; 
but  when  one  makes  a  balance  of  the  deaths  and  the  births  for  a  series 
of  years  this  excess  of  births  disappears.  .  .  .  The  causes  of  this  are: 
(1)  the  above  greater  mortality  of  the  city  population;  this  is,  however, 
insufficient  and  we  must  take  into  consideration,  (2)  the  lowered  fer- 
tility (that  is,  the  proportion  of  the  births  to  the  total  population).  It  is 
proved  that  the  increased  number  of  wants  of  men,  higher  standard 
of  living,  luxury,  consumption,  and  the  higher  prices  of  the  means  of 
subsistence  in  the  cities  somewhat  hinder  men  from  being  married. 
These  are  the  reasons  why  in  the  cities  the  proportion  of  the  married 
in  relation  to  the  population  is  somewhat  low;  why  the  annual  num- 
ber of  marriages  is  small,  and,  as  a  result,  the  number  of  children  born 
per  the  population  is  not  so  great  as  might  be  expected.  For  these 
reasons,  (3)  the  larger,  richer,  and  more  luxurious  the  city  is,  the 
greater  is  its  commerce  ...  the  greater  also  is  the  number  of  unmar- 
ried servants,  soldiers,  girls,  and  other  persons  in  service.  (4)  Many 
large  and  small  schools  in  the  cities  also  increase  the  number  of  un- 
married persons.  Finally,  (5)  the  fact  that  Roman  Catholic  cities  have 
a  large  number  of  monks  and  clergy  tends  to  the  same  result.  All  these 
groups,  hindered  from  marriage  through  commerce,  luxury,  or  prohi- 
bition, contribute  their  share  to  the  death  list  while  they  do  not  con- 
tribute their  share  to  the  birth  list.28 

Such  is  the  explanation  of  Siissmilch  of  this  relationship.  It  is 
to  be  noted  that  he  differs  from  Gregory  King  and  some  others 
in  regard  to  the  number  of  children  born  per  marriage  in  the  city 
and  the  country.  According  to  Siissmilch,  this  number  is  about 

27  Johann  Peter  Siissmilch,  Die  gotthche  Ordnung  in  den  Verandemngen  des  mensch- 
lichen  Geschlechts,  etc.,  I,  79-114. 

28  Ibid.,  I,  256  tf. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       111 

the  same  in  urban  and  rural  families.  But  as  the  marriage  rate  in 
the  country  (per  the  population)  is  higher  and  the  proportion  of 
unmarried  people  is  lower  than  in  the  city,  this  results  in  a  higher 
birth  rate  and  a  lower  mortality  rate  (per  the  population)  in  the 
rural  parts  than  in  the  city.29 

Other  generalizations  of  Siissmilch  worthy  to  be  mentioned 
are  the  following:  in  the  cities  the  proportion  of  the  females  in 
the  population  is  conspicuously  higher  than  in  the  country,  where 
males  predominate.  The  causes  of  this  are  that  among  the  rural 
migrants  to  the  cities  females  predominate  because  they  are  less 
needed  in  agriculture  than  men  and  they  can  easily  find  work 
as  servants  in  the  cities;  on  the  other  hand,  the  city  trades  and 
handicrafts  are  filled  principally  by  the  children  of  the  city  popu- 
lation.30 

Further,  Siissmilch  indicated  that  the  growth  of  cities  is  due  not 
to  the  natural  increase  of  the  city  population  but  to  the  migration 
of  people  from  the  country.  Among  other  factors  attracting  the 
migrants  to  the  cities  is  the  fact  that  "though  the  agriculture  is 
the  most  important  and  honorable,  it  is  also  the  hardest  industry; 
for  this  reason  a  country  man  easily  may  be  induced  to  shift  to 
the  lighter  work  in  the  city  factories,"  and  for  the  same  reason 
to  stay  in  it.31 

Naturally  Siissmilch  regarded  unfavorably  an  excessive  growth 
of  the  cities,  and  very  favorably  an  expansion  of  agriculture  with 
small  farms  cultivated  by  free  farmers.  "Only  revive  the  laws  of 
Licinius,  forbidding  the  holding  of  more  than  seven  jugera  of 
land;  or  that  of  Romulus,  which  limited  every  Roman  to  two 
jugera,  and  you  will  soon  convert  a  barren  desert  into  a  busy  and 
crowded  hive."  In  this  respect  his  conclusion  is  sustained  by  Rich- 
ard Price  and  several  other  writers  of  this  group. 

The  above  fragments  from  the  Political  Arithmeticians  give  all 
the  essential  conclusions  in  the  field  of  the  rural-urban  vital  proc- 
esses and  of  moral  and  social  conditions.  It  is  understood  that,  in 
addition  to  the  writers  quoted,  there  were  several  other  writers.32 

20  Ibid.,  I,  130  ff.,  ^  172  ff.          30  Ibid.,  II,  278  ff.  *  Ibid.,  II,  54  rl,  280  ft 

32  Among  these  writers  and  their  works  are  to  be  mentioned:  Johann  Heinrich  Gotlib 
von  Justi,  "Anmerkungen  iiber  das  Verhaltniss  der  jahrlich  Sterbenden  gegen  die  Leben- 
den,"  in  Gottinger  Polizeyamtsnachrichten,  1756,  No.  92;  Etnkitung  zur  Staatswlrt- 
schajtswissenschajt,  1760;  Grundsatze  der  Polizfytvisscnschaft,  3d  ed.,  1762;  Rev.  Wil- 
liam Derham,  Physico-theology,  1713.  Many  works  (of  de  Moivre,  Wales,  Brakenridge, 
Maitland,  Webster,  Short,  Hewlett,  Hanway,  Davenant,  Gorsuch,  Styles,  Heberdens, 


112  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Their  conclusions,  however,  were  similar  to  the  above  generaliza- 
tions and,  for  this  reason,  need  not  be  quoted  here. 

F.  PROMINENT  ENGLISH  THINKERS  OF  THE  SEVEN- 
TEENTH AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

I.  JAMES  HARRINGTON 

James  Harrington  (1611-1677)  touched  several  problems  in  our 
field.  The  fundamental  principle  of  his  political  and  sociological 
theories  is  that  political  power  is  based  on  property:  "such  as  is 
the  proportion  or  balance  of  dominion  or  property  in  land,  such 
is  the  nature  of  the  empire.  If  one  man  be  sole  landlord  of  a  ter- 
ritory," we  shall  have  monarchy;  if  the  land  is  in  few  hands,  the 
political  regime  will  be  an  aristocracy;  "and  if  the  whole  people 
be  landlords,  the  empire  is  a  commonwealth." 33  When  there  is  a 
discrepancy  between  the  distribution  of  land  in  the  country  and 
that  of  power,  the  result  is  tyranny,  oligarchy,  and  anarchy.  In 
accordance  with  this  principle,  Harrington  naturally  attached 
the  greatest  importance  to  agrarian  laws  which  would  regulate 
the  distribution  of  land  in  the  country.  Being  a  partisan  of  com- 
monwealth and  democracy,  he  regarded  an  even  distribution 
of  land  among  the  population  and  prevention  of  the  concen- 
tration of  it  in  few  hands  as  the  most  important  and  indispen- 
sable condition  for  a  realization  of  a  good  commonwealth  and 
democracy.  In  his  Utopian  commonwealth,  "Oceana,"  he  intro- 
duced a  fundamental  law  ("the  thirteenth  Order")  according  to 

Messance,  Simpson,  Aiken,  Percival,  and  others)  cited  in  the  quoted  work  o£  Richard 
Price;  Kent,  Hints  to  Gentlemen  of  Landed  Property;  Styles,  A  Discourse  on  Christian 
Union;  Short,  Comparative  History,  Boston,  1761;  Messance,  Recherches  stir  la  popu- 
lation des  generalizes  d'Auvergne,  de  Lyon,  de  Rotten,  Pans,  1766;  Aiken,  Thoughts 
on  Hospitals;  Maitland,  History  of  London;  Wales,  An  Inquiry  into  the  Present  State  of 
the  Population  of  England  and  Wales;  Sir  William  Temple,  Works,  2  vols.;  Hanway, 
Letters  on  the  Importance  of  the  Rising  Generation,  Vols.  I,  II;  Wargenten's  memoir  in 
the  Collection  Academique,  Paris,  1772,  Vol.  XV;  Muret's  memoir  on  the  "State  of  the 
Population"  in  the  Pays  de  Vaud,  Bern,  1766;  Wallace,  Dissertation  on  the  Numbers  of 
Mankind;  Anonymous,  Political  Essays  concerning  the  Present  State  of  the  British  Em- 
pire, 1772;  G.  Gh.  d'Arco,  Dell'armoma  pohtico-economica  tra  la  citta  e  il  suo  tcrritorio 
1771;  Cesare  Beccaria,  Element!  di  economia  pttblica,  1775;  G.  Palmieri,  Riflessioni  sulla 
publica  felicia;  Mernoires  de  la  Societe  de  Berne,  1763-1765,  Vols,  I  and  II,  containing 
several  important  memoirs,  like  that  of  Benjamin  Carrard,  "Memoire  sur  Tesprit  de  legis- 
lation," and  others;  Harte's  Essays  on  Husbandry;  Boulainvilliers  and  others,  Des  in- 
terests de  la  France  mal  entendus,  3  vols.;  Richesse  de  I'etat  a  les  pieces  qui  ont  paru 
pour  et  centre,  1764;  D'Angueille  and  others,  Remarques  sur  les  vantages  et  les 
desavantages  de  la  France  et  de  la  Grand  Bretagne.  See  references  to  other  works  in 
these  volumes. 

^The  Oceana  and  Other  Wor^s  of  James  Harrington,  London,  1771,  p.  37.  There 
are  several  modern  editions  also. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       113 

which  no  one  would  have  the  right  to  own  land  beyond  a  definite 
limit,  and  a  series  of  other  measures  whose  objectives  were  to  pre- 
vent the  concentration  of  land  in  few  hands.34  This  condition 
given,  Harrington  believed  that  prosperity,  order,  progress,  and 
democracy — in  brief,  the  essentials  of  the  welfare  of  a  society — 
would  be  secured.  Correspondingly,  he  regarded  agriculture  and 
a  free  farm  population  the  most  favorably  and  believed  that  under 
these  conditions  the  relationships  between  the  city  and  the  country 
would  be  mutually  beneficial.  The  subsequent  excerpts  give  some 
of  his  ideas  about  these  points. 

23.  HARRINGTON:  RURAL-URBAN  RELATIONSHIPS* 

Praises  of  agriculture  and  of  the  free  tillers  of  soil. — Agriculture  is 
the  bread  of  the  nation;  we  are  hung  upon  it  by  the  teeth;  it  is  a 
mighty  nursery  of  strength,  the  best  army,  and  the  most  assur'd  knap- 
sac;  it  is  manag'd  with  the  least  turbulent  or  ambitious,  and  the  most 
innocent  hands  of  all  other  arts.  Wherefore  I  am  of  Aristotle's  opinion, 
that  a  commonwealth  of  husbandmen  must  be  the  best  of  all  others 
...  (p.  165).  The  tillage  bringing  up  a  good  soldiery,  brings  up  a 
good  commonwealth;  for  where  the  owner  of  the  plow  comes  to  have 
the  sword i too,  he  will  use  it  in  defence  of  his  own;  whence  it  has  hap- 
pen'd  that  the  people  of  Oceana  in  proportion  to  their  property  have 
bin  always  free.  And  the  genius  of  this  nation  has  ever  had  some  re- 
semblance with  that  of  antient  Italy,  which  was  wholly  addicted  to 
commonwealths,  and  where  Rome  came  to  make  the  greatest  account 
of  her  rustic  tribes,  and  to  call  her  consuls  from  the  plow  .  .  .  and 
husbandry,  or  the  country  way  of  life,  tho  of  a  grosser  spinning  (than 
the  city  life)  was  the  most  obstinate  assertress  of  her  liberty,  and  the 
least  subject  to  innovation  or  turbulency.  Wherefore  the  foundations 
were  removed,  this  people  was  observ'd  to  be  the  least  subject  to  shak- 
ings and  turbulency  of  any;  whereas  commonwealths,  upon  which  the 
city  life  has  had  the  stronger  influence,  as  Athens,  have  seldom  or  nev- 
er been  quiet;  but  at  the  best  are  found  to  have  injur'd  their  own  busi- 
ness by  overdoing  it.  Whence  the  urban  tribes  of  Rome,  consisting  of 
the  Turba  jorensis,  and  Liberttns  that  had  received  their  freedom  by 
manumission,  were  of  no  reputation  in  comparison  of  the  rustics.  It  is 
true,  that  with  Venice  it  may  seem  to  be  otherwise,  in  regard  the  gen- 
tlemen (for  so  are  all  such  call'd  as  have  a  right  to  that  government) 
are  wholly  addicted  to  the  city  life:  but  then  the  Turba  jorensis,  the 
secretaries  Cittadini}  with  the  rest  of  the  populace,  are  wholly  excluded. 

MAs  to  his  "agrarian,"  see  ibid*,  pp.  94-95,  99,  103  and  passim, 
*  Harrington,  op.  cit. 


114  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Otherwise  a  commonwealth,  consisting  of  but  one  city,  would  doubt- 
less be  stormy,  in  regard  that  ambition  would  be  every  man's  trade: 
but  where  it  consists  of  a  country,  the  plow  in  the  hands  of  the  owner 
finds  him  a  better  calling,  and  produces  the  most  innocent  and  steady 
genius  of  commonwealth  (pp.  32-33) . 

Relationships  between  the  city  and  the  country  (where  the 
above  agrarian  law  is  realized). — Answering  the  criticism  directed 
against  his  principles,  particularly  against  the  point  that  his  agra- 
rian law  would  not  prevent  the  overgrowth  of  the  city,  the  great 
contrast  of  the  riches  and  poverty  in  it,  nor  subsequent  danger  for 
the  commonwealth,  Harrington  indicated  that  the  growth  of  the 
city,  if  accompanied  by  the  above  conditions  of  the  agrarian  law, 
would  be  of  no  danger  but  only  beneficial  to  the  country.  A  popu- 
lous country  usually  leads  to  a  populous  city,  and  vice  versa.  When 
a  populous  city  comes  to  make  a  populous  country  this  happens 
through  "sucking";  when  a  populous  country  comes  to  make  a 
populous  city  this  happens  in  the  way  of  "weaning." 

For  proof  of  the  former:  the  more  mouths  there  be  in  a  city,  the 
more  meat  of  necessity  must  be  vented  by  the  country,  and  so  there 
will  be  more  corn,  more  cattle,  and  better  markets;  which  breeding 
more  laborers,  more  husbandmen,  and  richer  farmers,  brings  the 
country  so  far  from  a  commonwealth  of  cottagers,  and  the  farmer,  his 
trade  thus  uninterrupted,  in  that  his  markets  are  certain,  goes  on  with 
increase  of  children,  of  servants,  of  corn,  and  of  cattle.  .  .  .  The  coun- 
try then  growing  more  populous,  and  better  flock'd  with  cattle,  which 
also  increases  manure  for  the  land  must  proportionably  increase  in 
fruitfulness.  .  .  .  Thus  a  populous  city  makes  a  country  milch,  or  pop- 
ulous by  sucking,  .  .  .  But  a  populous  country  makes  a  populous  city 
by  weaning;  for  when  the  people  increase  so  much,  that  the  dug  of 
earth  can  do  no  more,  the  overplus  must  seek  some  other  way  of  liveli- 
hood: which  is  either  arms,  such  were  those  of  the  Goths  and  Vandals; 
or  merchandise  and  manufacture,  for  which  ends  it  being  necessary 
that  they  lay  their  heads  and  their  stock  together,  this  makes  populous 
cities.  Thus  Holland  being  a  small  territory,  and  suck'd  dry,  has  upon 
the  matter  wean'd  the  whole  people,  and  is  thereby  become  as  it  were 
one  city  that  sucks  all  the  world.  .  .  ,  And  Amsterdam  contributes 
and  has  contributed  more  to  the  defence  of  the  commonwealth,  or 
united  provinces,  than  all  the  rest  of  the  league,  and  had  in  those  late 
actions  .  .  .  resisted  not  the  interest  of  liberty,  but  of  a  lord/*5 

SG<The  Prerogative  of  Popular  Government,"  ibid.,  pp.  278-280, 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       115 

Harrington  also  asserts  that  in  such  a  society  there  would  be  no 
civil  war,  disorder,  or  anarchy  (pp.  246  ff.). 
II.  DAVID  HUME 

The  attitude  of  Hume  (171 1-1776) ,  so  far  as  it  is  shown  by  his 
casual  remarks  made  in  his  various  essays,  is  somewhat  indefinite. 
On  the  one  hand  we  read  in  his  essay  "Of  the  Populousness  of 
Ancient  Nations"  that  "enormous  cities  are  destructive  to  society, 
beget  vice  and  disorder  of  all  kinds,  starve  the  remoter  provinces, 
and  even  starve  themselves,  by  the  prices  to  which  they  raise  all 
provisions."  3G  Through  their  accumulation  of  great  wealth  in  a 
few  hands  and  their  insecurity,  they  further  check  marriage  and 
fertility  because  "their  possession  of  wealth  being  precarious,  they 
[the  people  in  the  cities]  have  not  the  same  encouragement  to 
marry,  as  if  each  had  a  small  fortune,  secure  and  independent. . .  . 
Where  each  man  had  his  little  house  and  field  to  himself;  what  a 
happy  situation  of  mankind !  How  favorable  to  industry  and  agri- 
culture; to  marriage  and  propagation!" 

On  the  other  hand,  in  a  series  of  other  essays,  Hume  regards 
rather  favorably  the  development  of  manufacture,  industry,  arts, 
commerce,  cities,  and  even  luxury,  when  it  is  not  vicious.  Divid- 
ing "the  bulk  of  every  state  into  husbandmen  and  manufactur- 
ers," he  finds  each  of  these  classes  useful  and  necessary;  the  soci- 
eties in  which  various  arts,  manufacture,  trade,  and  commerce  are 
developed  are  rather  better,  more  virtuous,  more  sociable,  more 
powerful,  more  prosperous  and  free,  and  have  greater  happiness 
than  primitive  societies,  which  are  without  such  a  development  of 
commerce,  the  arts,  sciences,  trades,  and  cities.  Even  agriculturists 
are  more  industrious,  intelligent,  inventive,  and  comfortable  in 
the  societies  of  the  first  type  than  in  those  of  the  second.37 

When  manufactures  and  mechanic  arts  are  not  cultivated,  the  bulk 
of  the  people  must  apply  themselves  to  agriculture.  They  have  no  temp- 
tation, therefore,  to  increase  their  skill  and  industry;  since  they  cannot 
exchange  their  superfluity  for  any  commodity,  which  may  serve  either 
to  their  pleasure  or  vanity.  A  habit  of  indolence  naturally  prevails.  The 
greater  part  of  the  land  lies  uncultivated.  What  is  cultivated,  yields  not 
its  utmost  for  want  of  skill  and  assiduity  of  farmers.  .  .  . 

3(5  David  Hume,  Essays,  Moral,  Political,  and  Literary,  London,  1870,  p.  235. 
37  "Of  Commerce,"  ibid.,  pp.  153  £f.  See  also  "Of  Refinement  in  the  Arts,"  ibid., 
pp.  159  fi. 


116  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

In  rude  unpolished  nations,  where  the  arts  are  neglected,  all  labor 
is  bestowed  on  the  cultivation  of  the  ground;  and  the  whole  society  is 
divided  into  two  classes,  proprietors  of  land,  and  their  vassals  or  ten- 
ants. The  latter  are  necessarily  dependent,  and  fitted  for  slavery  and 
subjection.  .  .  .  The  former  naturally  erect  themselves  into  petty  ty- 
rants; and  must  either  submit  to  an  absolute  master,  for  the  sake  of 
peace  and  order;  or  if  they  will  preserve  their  independence,  like  the 
ancient  barons,  they  must  fall  into  feuds  and  contests  among  them- 
selves, and  throw  the  whole  society  into  such  confusion,  as  is  perhaps 
worse  than  the  most  despotic  government.  But  where  luxury  nour- 
ishes commerce  and  industry,  the  peasants,  by  a  proper  cultivation  of 
the  land,  become  rich  and  independent:  while  the  tradesmen  and  mer- 
chants acquire  a  share  of  property,  and  draw  authority  and  considera- 
tion to  that  middling  rank  of  men,  who  are  the  best  and  firmest  basis 
of  public  liberty.  These  submit  not  to  slavery.  .  .  .  They  covet  equal 
laws,  which  may  secure  their  property,  and  preserve  them  from  mo- 
narchial,  as  well  as  aristocratic  tyranny.  .  .  .  The  lower  house  is  the 
support  of  our  popular  government;  and  all  the  world  acknowledges 
that  it  owed  its  chief  influence  and  consideration  to  the  increase  of 
commerce.  .  .  .  How  inconsistent,  then,  to  blame  so  violently  a  refine- 
ment in  the  arts,  and  to  represent  it  as  the  bane  of  liberty  and  public 
spirit.  [However,]  wherever  luxury  ceases  to  be  innocent,  it  also  ceases 
to  be  beneficial;  and  when  carried  a  degree  further,  begins  to  be  a  qual- 
ity pernicious,  though,  perhaps,  not  the  most  pernicious,  to  political 
society,38 

In  that  case  it  leads  to  demoralization,  and  other  disastrous  ef- 
fects. To  sum  up :  Hume  did  not  belong  to  the  type  of  either  urban 
or  rural  extremists  and  did  not  regard  as  exclusively  virtuous  and 
socially  useful  either  the  farmers  or  the  urban  people.  Under 
some  conditions  either  of  them  might  be  good  or  bad,  sociable  or 
unsociable,  virtuous  or  not,  might  constitute  a  good  and  prosper- 
ous and  happy  society  or  its  opposite. 
III.  SIR  JAMES  STEUART 

The  opinions  of  Sir  James  Steuart  (Denham)  (1712-1780)  are 
very  similar  to  Hume's  attitude.  "Population  and  agriculture  must 
be  the  basis  of  the  whole  (society)  in  all  ages  of  the  world." 39 
But  like  Hume,  he  does  not  think  that  a  society  in  which  all  are 
farmers  is  better  than  that  in  which  a  part  of  the  people  are  en- 

38  "Of  Refinement  in  the  Arts,"  ibid.,  pp.  164-167, 
Wor^s  of  the  Late  Sir  James  Steuart,  I,  201. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       117 

gaged  in  industry,  commerce,  and  so  on.  The  best  society  is  that 
in  which  the  population  is  evenly  distributed  between  agricultural 
and  nonagricultural  pursuits.  "That  number  of  husbandmen  is 
the  best  which  can  provide  food  for  all  the  state,  the  remaining 
surplus  of  the  population  being  engaged  in  other  pursuits.  In 
spite  of  many  harms  and  defects  of  the  cities  they  are  useful  for 
a  nation  and  for  farmers  themselves." 40  The  general  advantages 
of  the  cities  are:  first,  the  removal  of  the  unnecessary  load  upon 
the  land—those  idle  people  who  eat  up  a  part  of  the  produce  of 
labor  without  contributing  to  it;  second,  the  opportunity  of  levy- 
ing taxes  and  of  making  these  affect  the  rich;  third,  rise  of  the 
lands  in  value;  fourth,  promotion  of  good  roads,  which  are  bene- 
ficial to  the  husbandmen  (pp.  71  ff.).  Though  he  agrees  with  the 
conclusions  of  the  above  Political  Arithmeticians  as  to  the  harm- 
fulness  of  the  city  life  to  the  health  of  the  people,  the  high  urban 
death  rate,  the  low  marriage  rate,  and  the  prevalence  of  vice  and 
debauchery,  nevertheless  he  does  not  think  these  dangers  are 
great  or  are  not  diminished  by  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  cities 
(pp.69ff.). 

IV.  POLITICAL  ESSAYS  CONCERNING  THE  PRESENT  STATE 
OF  THE  BRITISH  EMPIRE 

These  conclusions  of  Sir  James  Steuart  brought  forth  vigorous 
criticism  from  the  anonymous  author  of  a  large  volume,  Political 
Essays  concerning  the  Present  State  of  the  British  Empire  (Lon- 
don, 1772),  who  starts  his  essay  on  agriculture  with  the  most 
enthusiastic  introduction:  "If  there  is  any  profession  or  employ- 
ment among  mankind,  which  from  its  antiquity,  usefulness  and 
innocence,  ought  to  be  held  foremost  in  esteem,  it  is  undoubtedly 
that  of  husbandry.  All  others  depend  on  this  alone;  no  invention 
can  supply  its  place:  The  wisest  nations  and  individuals  have  con- 
curred not  only  in  protecting  it  but  regarding  its  professors  as  the 
most  valuable  people  in  the  state;  many  great  and  potent  sover- 
eigns have  even  practiced  this  art."  He  further  remarks:  "Com- 
pare the  amusements  of  modern  kings,  with  such  as  agriculture 
would  furnish  them.  What  a  contrast!  No  monarch  should  be 
without  his  experimental  farm."  Continuing  this  enthusiastic 
eulogy  of  agriculture  he  proceeds  further  to  prove  that  "a  nation 

10  IKd.  f  p.  117. 


118  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

that  does  not  raise  corn  enough  to  feed  itself,  must,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  be  dependent  for  bread  and  life  on  others"  (though 
temporarily,  like  Holland,  it  may  procure  its  food  from  other 
nations).  "National  independency  can  therefore  result  alone  from 
agriculture,"  41  He  agrees  further  with  Mr.  Wallace,  the  author 
of  the  Dissertation  on  the  Number  of  Mankind,  that  "the  more 
persons  employ  themselves  in  agriculture  and  fishing,  and  the 
arts  which  are  necessary  for  managing  them  to  the  greatest  advan- 
tage, the  world  in  general  will  be  more  populous;  and  as  fewer 
hands  are  employed  in  this  manner,  there  will  be  fewer  people." 
Correspondingly  he  finds  the  conclusions  of  Sir  James  Steuart 
fallacious  and  extensively  criticizes  them.42  He  finds  also  that 
Steuart's  opinion  "that  great  inequality  of  property  is  favorable 
to  the  multiplication  of  the  lower  classes"  is  wrong;  much  better 
for  this  multiplication  is  the  system  of  more  equal  distribution  of 
land  among  the  farmer-owners  and  the  country  gentry,  "who  are 
the  main  support  of  every  kingdom." 43  Further,  he  indicates  that 
the  greater  the  amount  of  food  raised  the  greater  the  increase 
of  the  population  and  vice  versa,  revealing,  as  did  many  of  his 
contemporaries,  that  the  ideas  of  Malthus  were  in  the  air  before 
Malthus.  Proceeding  in  this  way  he  indicates  step  by  step  other 
beneficial  social,  economic,  and  political  effects  of  agriculture 
and  pleads  for  its  development  in  England.44  The  whole  work 
contains  many  interesting  observations  and  rural-urban  socio- 
logical conclusions. 
V.  ADAM  SMITH 

As  contrasted  with  the  Physiocrats  but  similar  to  Hume,  Adam 
Smith  (1723-1790)  did  not  regard  the  class  of  cultivators  as  the 
only  productive  class.  The  classes  of  manufacturers,  artisans,  mer- 
chants, artificers,  and  professionals  were  also  considered  by  him 
productive  classes.45  He  regarded  the  origin  and  growth  of  the 
cities  as  a  natural  outcome  of  the  development  of  rural  produc- 
tion; the  relationship  between  the  towns  and  the  country  as 

41  Political  Essays,  pp.  74-77. 
"Mid.,  pp.  84 ff. 
4S  Ibid.,  p.  91. 

44  Ibid.,  pp.  93  fif.  Steuart's  theories  are  also  criticized  sharply  by  Arthur  Young  in  his 
The  Farmer's  Letters  to  the  People  of  England,  pp.  334-352. 

45  See  Adam  Smith,  An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and  Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations, 
ed.  by  Edwin  Cannan,  London,  1920,  Vol.  II,  Bk.  IV,  chap,  ix;  Vol.  I,  Bk,  II,  chap,  iii. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      119 

mutually  beneficial;  and  the  towns  as  benefactors  of  the  country.46 
Side  by  side  with  these  statements,  he  gave  several  generalizations 
concerning  many  specific  aspects  of  country  and  city  life,  of  their 
population,  and  of  their  occupational  classes.  Such  are  his  theory 
of  the  peculiar  character  of  the  farmer's  income;  his  theory  of  the 
natural  preference  of  man  for  agriculture  and  the  natural  courses 
of  things,  in  which  agriculture  is  the  first,  manufactures  are  the 
second,  and  commerce  is  the  third  from  the  standpoint  of  desir- 
ability; his  claim  that  the  agricultural  occupation  is  very  complex 
and  for  this  reason  is  more  beneficial  for  mental  development 
than  the  majority  of  the  manufacturing  industries,  industries 
which  through  their  division  of  labor  lead  to  mental  stupor  in  the 
people  employed  in  them.  Furthermore,  he  indicated  that  when 
there  is  an  abundance  of  free  land  and  a  free  farming  popula- 
tion, these  lead  to  a  more  rapid  improvement  of  agriculture  and 
production  and  to  a  more  rapid  increase  of  population  and  of 
prosperity,  than  do  the  purely  industrial  activities.  He  also  stressed 
that  the  agricultural  population  gives  good  and  valiant  soldiers; 
that  it  is  less  mobile,  more  attached  to  the  place,  and  more  nation- 
alistic than  the  commercial  population.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
showed  that  the  city  population,  all  in  all,  is  more  progressive 
than  an  unfree  rural  population;  that  in  Europe,  after  the  fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  the  cities  led  in  the  establishment  of  social 
order,  freedom,  constitutional  governments,  improvements  of 
production  and  standard  of  living;  that  they  also  pioneered  an 
increase  in  the  efficiency  of  labor;  in  brief,  that  the  role  of  the 
cities  was  positive  and  beneficial,  and  as  such  could  in  no  way  be 
regarded  negatively.  In  short,  as  contrasted  with  the  extreme  par- 
tisans of  either  the  city  or  the  country,  Adam  Smith  occupied  a 
middle  and  well-balanced  position  according  to  which  each  of 
the  large  occupational  classes  has  its  own  positive  and  negative 
characteristics;  and  the  best  situation  is  one  of  mutual  cooperation 
between  the  city  and  the  country,  and  not  the  one-sided  develop- 
ment of  either  of  them  at  the  expense  of  the  other.  This  shows 
that  this  great  Scotch  economist,  sociologist,  and  moral  philoso- 
pher formulated  several  important  generalizations  in  this  field. 
The  subsequent  paragraphs  depict  more  substantially  what  has 
been  given  very  briefly  in  the  above  characterization. 

*Ibid.,  Bk.  Ill,  passim. 


120  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

24.  ADAM  SMITH  :  AGRICULTURE  AMONG  THE  OTHER  OCCUPATIONS* 

The  natural  preference  of  man  for  agriculture  and  the  reasons  for  it. 
— Upon  equal,  or  nearly  equal  profits,  most  men  will  choose  to  employ 
their  capitals  rather  in  the  improvement  and  cultivation  of  land,  than 
either  in  manufactures  or  in  foreign  trade.  The  man  who  employs  his 
capital  in  land,  has  it  more  under  his  view  and  command,  and  his  for- 
tune is  much  less  liable  to  accidents,  than  that  of  the  trader,  who  is 
obliged  frequently  to  commit  it,  not  only  to  the  winds  and  the  waves, 
but  to  the  more  uncertain  elements  of  human  folly  and  injustice,  by 
giving  great  credits  in  distant  countries  to  men  with  whose  character 
and  situation  he  has  seldom  been  thoroughly  acquainted.  The  capital 
of  the  landlord,  on  the  contrary,  which  is  fixed  in  the  improvement  of 
his  land,  seems  to  be  as  well  secured  as  the  nature  of  human  affairs 
can  admit  of.  The  beauty  of  the  country  besides,  the  pleasures  of  a 
country  life,  the  tranquility  of  mind  which  it  promises,  and  wherever 
the  injustice  of  human  laws  does  not  disturb  it,  the  independency 
which  it  really  affords,  have  charms  that  more  or  less  attract  every- 
body; and  as  to  cultivate  the  ground  was  the  original  destination  of 
man,  so  in  every  stage  of  his  existence  he  seems  to  retain  a  predilection 
for  this  primitive  employment.  ...  A  planter  (for  instance  in  Amer- 
ica) who  cultivates  his  own  land,  and  derives  his  necessary  subsistence 
from  the  labor  of  his  own  family,  is  really  a  master,  and  independent 
of  all  the  world.  .  .  . 

According  to  the  natural  course  of  things,  the  greater  part  of  the 
capital  of  every  growing  society  is,  first,  directed  to  agriculture,  'after- 
wards to  manufactures,  and  last  of  all  to  foreign  countries.  .  .  .  But 
though  this  natural  order  of  things  must  have  taken  place  in  some 
degree  in  every  such  society,  it  has,  in  all  the  modern  states  of  Europe, 
been,  in  many  respects,  entirely  inverted.  The  foreign  commerce  of 
some  of  their  cities  has  introduced  all  their  finer  manufactures,  or  such 
as  were  fit  for  distant  sale;  and  manufactures  and  foreign  commerce 
together,  have  given  birth  to  the  principal  improvements  of  agriculture. 
The  manners  and  customs  which  the  nature  of  their  original  govern- 
ment introduced,  and  which  remained  after  that  government  was 
greatly  altered,  necessarily  forced  them  into  this  unnatural  and  retro- 
grade order  (I,  357-359). 

The  city-country  relationship  and  the  beneficial  role  of  the  cities  in 
regard  to  the  country. — The  great  commerce  of  every  civilized  society, 
is  that  carried  on  between  the  inhabitants  of  the  town  and  those  of  the 
country.  It  consists  in  the  exchange  of  rude  for  manufactured  produce, 
either  immediately,  or  by  the  intervention  of  money,  or  of  some  sort 

*  Adam  Smith,  An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and  Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       121 

of  paper  which  represents  money.  The  country  supplies  the  town  with 
the  means  of  subsistence,  and  the  materials  of  manufacture.  The  town 
repays  this  supply  by  sending  back  a  part  of  the  manufactured  produce 
to  the  inhabitants  of  the  country.  .  .  . 

The  gains  of  both  are  mutual  and  reciprocal,  and  the  division  of 
labor  is  in  this,  as  in  all  other  cases,  advantageous  to  all  the  different 
persons  employed  in  the  various  occupations  into  which  it  is  subdi- 
vided. The  inhabitants  of  the  country  purchase  of  the  town  a  greater 
quantity  of  manufactured  goods,  with  the  produce  of  a  much  smaller 
quantity  of  their  own  labor,  than  they  must  have  employed  had  they 
attempted  to  prepare  them  themselves.  The  town  affords  a  market  for 
the  surplus  produce  of  the  country,  or  what  is  over  and  above  the 
maintenance  of  the  cultivators,  and  it  is  there  that  the  inhabitants  of 
the  country  exchange  it  for  something  else  which  is  in  demand  among 
them.  .  .  . 

(On  the  other  hand)  as  subsistence  is,  prior  to  conveniency  and  lux- 
ury, so  the  industry  which  procures  the  former  (agriculture),  must 
necessarily  be  prior  to  that  which  ministers  to  the  latter.  The  cultiva- 
tion and  improvement  of  the  country,  therefore,  which  affords  sub- 
sistence must,  necessarily,  be  prior  to  the  increase  of  the  town,  which 
furnishes  only  the  means  of  conveniency  and  luxury.  It  is  the  surplus 
produce  of  the  country  only,  or  what  is  over  and  above  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  cultivators,  that  constitutes  the  subsistence  of  the  town, 
which  can  therefore  increase  only  with  the  increase  of  this  surplus 
produce.  The  town,  indeed,  may  not  always  derive  its  whole  subsist- 
ence from  the  country  in  its  neighborhood,  or  even  from  the  territory 
to  which  it  belongs,  but  from  very  distant  countries;  and  this,  though 
it  forms  no  exception  to  the  general  rule,  has  occasioned  considerable 
variations  in  the  progress  of  opulence  in  different  ages  and  nations 
(I,  355-356). 

Of  the  discouragement  of  agriculture  and  the  disfranchisement  of 
farmers.— [In  spite  of  the  above  mutually  beneficial  relationship  be- 
tween the  city  and  the  country  the  actual  policies,  in  the  majority  of 
the  European  countries,  were  unfavorable  to  the  cultivators,  be  they 
slaves  or  serfs,  free  tenants  or  farmers.  A  series  of  limitations  disfran- 
chised them,  checked  their  energy,  efficiency,  and  inventiveness,  and, 
as  a  result,  held  them  behind  the  cities.]  Under  all  these  discourage- 
ments, little  improvement  could  be  expected  from  the, occupiers  of 
land.  That  order  of  people,  with  all  liberty  and  security  which  law  can 
give,  must  always  improve  under  great  disadvantages.  .  .  .  The  an- 
cient policy  of  Europe  was,  above  all  this,  unfavorable  to  the  improve- 
ment and  cultivation  of  land,  whether  carried  on  by  the  proprietor  or 
by  the  farmer  (Bk.  Ill,  chap,  ii,  pp.  369-370). 


122  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Such  a  discouragement  was  one  of  the  causes  why  the  cities  made 
a  more  rapid  progress  and  through  it  also  improved  the  country.  But 
when  agriculture  is  not  discouraged,  the  progress  of  the  country  may 
be  more  rapid.  [After  surveying  the  history  of  cities  and  their  progress 
in  regard  to  commerce,  manufactures,  forms  of  government,  social 
conditions,  the  privileges  of  freedom,  abolition  of  serfdom,  and  so  on, 
Adam  Smith  concludes:]  The  increase  and  riches  of  commercial  and 
manufacturing  towns  contributed  to  the  improvement  and  cultivation 
of  the  countries  to  which  they  belonged  in  three  different  ways 
[through  affording  markets  for  the  country  produce,  through  buying 
and  improving  land,  and  through  introduction  of  good  government] . 
.  .  .  Through  the  greater  part  of  Europe  the  commerce  and  manufac- 
tures of  cities,  instead  of  being  the  effect,  have  been  the  cause  and  occa- 
sion of  the  improvement  and  cultivation  of  the  country.  .  .  .  This 
order,  however,  being  contrary  to  the  natural  course  of  things,  (see 
above)  is  necessarily  both  slow  and  uncertain.  Compare  the  slow  prog- 
ress of  those  European  countries  of  which  the  wealth  depends  very 
much  upon  their  commerce  and  manufactures,  with  the  rapid  advances 
of  our  North  American  colonies,  of  which  the  wealth  is  founded  alto- 
gether in  agriculture.  Through  the  greater  part  of  Europe,  the  number 
of  inhabitants  is  not  supposed  to  double  in  less  than  five  hundred  years. 
In  several  of  our  North  American  colonies,  it  is  found  to  double  in 
twenty  and  five  and  twenty  years.  [Every  improvement  of  the  condi- 
tions of  the  cultivators  efficiently  affects  the  welfare  of  the  whole  soci- 
ety.] Laws  and  customs  favorable  to  the  yeomanry  (issued  in  Eng- 
land) have  perhaps  contributed  more  to  the  present  grandeur  of  Eng- 
land than  all  their  boasted  regulations  of  commerce  taken  together 
(Bk.  Ill,  chap,  iii,  pp.  382,  390,  367). 

Of  all  cultivator st  a  free  small  proprietor  is  the  most  efficient  and  in- 
dustrious improver  of  agriculture. — A  small  proprietor,  who  knows 
every  part  of  his  little  territory,  who  views  it  all  with  the  affection 
which  property,  especially  small  property,  naturally  inspires,  and  who 
upon  that  account  takes  pleasure  not  only  in  cultivating  but  in  adorn- 
ing it,  is  generally  of  all  improvers  the  most  industrious,  the  most  in- 
telligent, and  the  most  successful  (p.  390). 

Wealth  arising  from  agriculture  is  more  durable  and  safer  than  that 
arising  from  commerce. — The  ordinary  revolutions  of  war  and  govern- 
ment easily  dry  up  the  sources  of  that  wealth  which  arises  from  com- 
merce only.  That  which  arises  from  the  more  solid  improvements  of 
agriculture,  is  much  more  durable,  and  cannot  be  destroyed  but  by 
those  more  violent  convulsions  occasioned  by  the  depredation  of  hos- 
tile and  barbarous  nations  continued  for  a  century  or  two  together 
(I,  394). 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      123 

25.  ADAM  SMITH:  PSYCHO-SOCIAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE 
FARMER  CLASS* 

The  peculiarities  of  the  farming  population  compared  with  other  oc- 
cupational classes.— I.  Farming  requires  more  knowledge,  intelligence, 
experience,  and  skill  than  any  trade  and  occupation,  except  the  pro- 
fessional occupations.  "After  what  are  called  the  fine  arts,  and  the 
liberal  professions,  however,  there  is  perhaps  no  trade  which  requires 
so  great  a  variety  of  knowledge  and  experience.  The  innumerable  vol- 
umes which  have  been  written  upon  it  in  all  languages,  may  satisfy  us 
that  among  the  wisest  and  most  learned  nations,  it  has  never  been  re- 
garded as  a  matter  very  easily  understood.  And  from  all  those  volumes 
we  shall  in  vain  attempt  to  collect  that  knowledge  of  its  various  and 
complicated  operations,  which  is  commonly  possessed  even  by  the 
common  farmer;  how  contemptuously  soever  the  very  contemptible 
authors  of  some  of  them  may  sometimes  affect  to  speak  of  him.  There 
is  scarcely  any  common  mechanic  trade,  on  the  contrary,  of  which  all 
the  operations  may  not  be  as  completely  and  distinctly  explained  in  a 
pamphlet  of  a  very  few  pages.  .  .  . 

"The  direction  of  (agricultural)  operations,  besides,  which  must  be 
varied  with  every  change  of  weather,  as  well  as  with  many  other  acci- 
dents, requires  much  more  judgment  and  discretion,  than  that  of  those 
which  are  always  the  same  or  nearly  the  same.  Not  only  the  art  of  the 
farmer,  the  general  direction  of  the  operations  of  husbandry,  but  many 
inferior  branches  of  country  labor,  require  much  more  skill  and  experi- 
ence than  the  greater  part  of  mechanic  trades.  The  man  who  works 
upon  brass  and  iron,  works  with  instruments  and  upon  materials  of 
which  the  temper  is  always  the  same.  But  the  man  who  ploughs  the 
ground  with  a  team  of  horses  or  oxen,  works  with  instruments  of 
which  the  health,  strength,  and  temper,  are  very  different  upon  differ- 
ent occasions.  The  conditions  of  the  materials  which  he  works  upon, 
too,  is  as  variable  as  that  of  the  instruments  which  he  works  with, 
and  both  require  to  be  managed  with  much  judgment  and  discretion. 
The  common  ploughman,  though  generally  regarded  as  the  pattern  of 
stupidity  and  ignorance,  is  seldom  defective  in  his  judgment  and  dis- 
cretion. He  is  less  accustomed,  indeed,  to  social  intercourse  than  the 
mechanic  who  lives  in  a  town.  His  voice  and  language  are  more  un- 
couth and  more  difficult  to  be  understood  by  those  who  are  not  used 
to  them.  His  understanding,  however,  being  accustomed  to  consider  a 
greater  variety  of  objects,  is  generally  much  superior  to  that  of  the 

*  Adam  Smith,  op.  cit.  In  this  selection,  which  is  a  mixture  of  paraphrase  and  direct 
quotation,  quotation  marks  surround  the  exact  words  of  the  author  quoted. 


124  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

other,  whose  whole  attention  from  morning  till  night  is  commonly  oc- 
cupied in  performing  one  or  two  very  simple  operations.  How  much 
the  lower  ranks  of  people  in  the  country  are  really  superior  to  those 
of  the  town  is  well  known  to  every  man  whom  either  business  or  cu- 
riosity has  led  to  converse  much  with  both"  (Vol.  I,  Bk.  I,  chap,  x, 
pp.  128-129;  see  also  Bk.  V,  chap,  i,  pp.  267  ff.,  where  Smith  states  that 
the  division  of  labor,  which  is  greater  in  the  cities  in  industry  and 
commerce  than  in  agriculture,  destroys  intellectual,  social,  and  martial 
virtues) . 

2.  The  labor  of  farmers  is  more  productive  than  that  of  merchants, 
artificers,  and  manufacturers.  Though  Adam  Smith  rejects  the  claim 
of  the  Physiocrats  that  only  the  cultivator  class  is  productive  and  that 
other  classes  are  unproductive,  none  the  less  he  claims  that  "the  labor 
of  farmers  and  country  laborers  is  certainly  more  productive  than  that 
of  merchants,  artificers,  and  manufacturers.  The  superior  produce  of 
the  one  class,  however,  does  not  render  the  other  barren  or  unproduc- 
tive" (Vol.  II,  Bk.  IV,  chap,  ix,  p.  173). 

3.  The  nature  of  the  farmer's  income,  according  to  its  sources — 
wages,  profit,  and  rent— is  peculiar:  it  represents  a  combination  of  all 
these  kinds  of  revenue  and  in  this  sense  makes  the  position  of  the 
farmer  class  different  from  other  social  classes  (Vol.  I,  Bk.  I,  chap,  vi, 
p. 55). 

4.  Free  farmers  are  more  independent  than  any  other  class  (Vol.  I, 
Bk.  Ill,  chap,  iv,  p.  390;  chap,  ii,  p.  361). 

5.  The  farmer  class  is  less  mobile,  more  attached  to  the  land,  and 
shifts  from  place  to  place  less  than  any  other  class  (Vol.  I,  Bk.  Ill, 
chap,  iv,  p.  389;  VoL  II,  p.  188). 

6.  Old  families,  where  the  estate  has  been  handed  from  generation 
to  generation,  are  more  common  among  the  farmer  class  than  among 
others,  especially  the  commercial  classes.  "Very  old  families,  such  as 
have  possessed  some  considerable  estate  from  father  to  son  for  many 
successive  generations,  are  very  rare  in  commercial  countries.  In  coun- 
tries which  have  little  commerce,  on  the  contrary,  they  are  very  com- 
mon. In  commercial  countries,  riches,  in  spite  of  the  most  violent  regu- 
lations of  law  to  prevent  their  dissipation,  very  seldom  remain  in  the 
same  family"  (Vol.  I,  Bk.  Ill,  chap,  iv,  p.  389). 

7.  The  farmer  class  (free)  is  more  fertile  than  the  city  people  (Vol. 
I,  Bk.  Ill,  chap,  iv,  p.  390). 

8.  The  farmer  class  is  more  nationalistic  and  less  cosmopolitan  than 
the  commercial  class.  "A  merchant  is  not  necessarily  the  citizen  of  any 
particular  country.  It  is  in  a  great  measure  indifferent  for  him  from 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      125 

what  place  he  carries  on  his  trade;  and  a  very  trifling  disgust  will 
make  him  remove  his  capital,  and  together  with  it  all  the  industry 
which  it  supports,  from  one  country  to  another.  No  part  of  it  can  be 
said  to  belong  to  any  particular  country,  till  it  has  been  spread  as  it 
were  over  the  face  of  that  country,  either  in  buildings,  or  in  the  lasting 
improvement  of  lands"  (p.  393). 

9.  The  farmer  class  and  the  agricultural  countries  yield  better  sol- 
diers and  their  populations  are  more  easily  converted  into  soldiers 
(Vol.  II,  Bk.  V,  chap,  i,  pp.  188489,  267-268). 

10.  The  farmer  class  and  agricultural  countries  which  have  less  divi- 
sion of  labor  than  the  cities,  have  a  population  more  vigorous,  persever- 
ing, martial,  active,  healthy,  and  dexterous  than  the  city  population 
and  commercial  and  manufacturing  countries  (Vol.  II,  Bk.  V,  chap,  i, 
pp.  267-268). 

11.  Because  the  farmer  class  is  scattered  over  the  country,  it  is  less 
able  to  organize  into  unions  and  corporations  than  the  city  people, 
although  the  highly  complex  nature  of  the  farmers'  work  and  their 
interests  make  such  an  organization  highly  necessary.  For  the  same 
reason,  the  farmer  class  is  more  virtuous  and  less  guilty  of  the  abuse 
of  such  union  power  at  the  cost  of  the  whole  country,  and  of  the  ex- 
ploitation of  other  social  groups  than  are  the  city's  laboring,  commer- 
cial, and  manufacturing  classes.  "The  inhabitants  of  a  town  being  col- 
lected into  one  place,  can  easily  combine  together.  The  most  insignifi- 
cant trades  carried  in  towns  have  accordingly  been  incorporated.  The 
trades  which  employ  but  a  small  number  of  hands,  run  most  easily 
into  such  combinations.  By  combining  not  to  take  apprentices  they  can 
not  only  engross  the  employment,  but  reduce  the  whole  manufacture 
into  a  sort  of  slavery  to  themselves,  and  raise  the  price  of  their  labor 
much  above  what  is  due  to  the  nature  of  their  work.  .  .  .  The  inhabi- 
tants of  the  country,  dispersed  in  distant  places,  cannot  easily  combine 
together."  Likewise,  "the  country  gentlemen  and  farmers  are,  to  great 
honor,  of  all  people,  the  least  subject  to  the  wretched  spirit  of  monop- 
oly" (Vol.  I,  Bk.  I,  chap,  x,  pp.  127-128;  Vol.  II,  Bk.  IV,  chap,  ii,  pp. 
426-470). 

12.  Correspondingly,  the  farmer  class  is  more  altruistic  and  ready  to 
render  mutual  aid  than  the  commercial  and  manufacturing  class,  and 
besides,  every  improvement  made  by  a  farmer  is  willingly  communi- 
cated for  the  benefit  of  others  while  the  urban  classes  keep  their  inven- 
tions secret  and  exclusively  for  themselves.  "The  undertaker  of  a  great 
manufactory^  sometimes  alarmed  if  another  work  of  the  same  kind 
is  established  within  twenty  miles  of  him.  Farmers  and  country  gen- 
tlemen, on  the  contrary,  are  generally  disposed  rather  to  promote  than 


126  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  obstruct  the  cultivation  and  improvement  of  their  neighbors'  farms 
and  estates.  They  have  no  secrets,  such  as  those  of  the  greater  part  of 
manufacturers,  but  are  generally  rather  fond  of  communicating  to 
their  neighbors,  and  of  extending  as  far  as  possible  any  new  practice 
which  they  have  found  to  be  advantageous"  (Vol.  II,  Bk.  IV,  chap,  ii, 
pp.  426-427). 

These  quotations  exhaust  the  most  important  generalizations 
of  Adam  Smith  in  the  field  in  which  we  are  interested.  We  see 
that,  all  in  all,  his  evaluation  of  the  class  of  free  farmers,  country 
gentlemen,  and  country  laborers  was  very  high  in  all  substantial 
respects:  biological,  intellectual,  moral,  social,  and  economic.  At 
the  same  time,  in  the  above  statements,  he  set  forth  a  series  of 
most  important  generalizations  in  the  field  of  rural-urban  sociol- 
ogy, generalizations  which  are  often  repeated  as  something  new, 
without  any  reference  to  Adam  Smith  or  to  his  predecessors. 
VI.  JOHN  MILLAR 

A  series  of  authors,  like  John  Millar  (1735-1801),  Lord  Kames, 
Karl  Dietrich  Hiillmann,  C.  Meiners,  Linguet,  A.  R.  J.  Turgots,47 
and  others,  touched  indirectly  certain  rural-urban  sociological 
problems  in  the  course  of  discussion  of  the  problem  of  the  origin 
and  development  of  social  inequality.  As  a  sample  of  these  works 
we  shall  take  some  of  the  generalizations  given  by  John  Millar. 
His  book  is  devoted  to  an  analysis  of  the  changes  in  the  social 
position  of  the  women,  children,  paterfamilias,  and  the  chiefs, 
and  in  the  forms  of  government  under  the  conditions  of  primi- 
tive hunting  and  fishing,  the  introduction  of  agriculture,  and 
finally  the  introduction  of  arts,  manufactures,  and  industry.  In 
this  sense  it  is  an  attempt  to  establish  some  functional  or  causal 
relationship  between  the  forms  of  the  technique  of  production  of 
means  of  subsistence  and  the  series  of  societal  phenomena  like  the 
forms  of  the  family,  courtship,  arts,  political  institutions,  and  gov- 
ernment. The  subsequent  quotations  give  samples  of  his  gen- 
eralizations. 

i7See  John  Millar,  The  Origin  of  the  Distinction  of  Kernes,  London,  1771;  Lord 
Kames,  Sketches  of  the  History  of  Man,  4  vols.;  1788;  K.  D.  Hiillmann,  Geschichte  des 
Ursprungs  der  Stance  in  Deutschland,  Frankfurt  a.d.  O.,  1806;  C.  Meiners,  Geschichte 
der  Ungleichheit  der  St'dnde  in  Deutschland,  Hanover,  1792;  Linguet,  Theorie  des  lois 
civiles  ou  principles  fondamentcaux  de  la  sodete,  1767;  A.  R.  J.  Turgots,  Reflexions  sur 
la  formation  et  la  distribution  des  richesses,  1766. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      127 

26.  JOHN  MILLAR:  AGRICULTURE  AND  THE  EVOLUTION  OF 
WOMEN'S  STATUS* 

Agriculture  and  the  position  of  women,  forms  of  courtship,  arts,  and 
culture.— In  contrast  to  the  stage  of  hunting,  fishing,  and  cattle-breed- 
ing, the  introduction  of  the  cultivation  of  land  led  to  an  ennoblement 
of  the  relationship  between  the  sexes  and  to  a  heightening  of  the  posi- 
tion of  women  in  society.  The  reasons  for  that  were  the  establishment 
of  private  property  in  land  and  its  satellite  consequence,  an  incessant 
warfare  between  the  opulent  proprietors  of  land.  Therefore,  "the  high 
notions  of  military  honor,  and  the  romantic  love  and  gallantry  were 
equally  derived  from  those  particular  circumstances.  .  .  .  From  the 
prevailing  spirit  of  the  times,  the  art  of  war  became  the  study  of  every- 
one who  was  desirous  of  maintaining  the  character  of  a  gentleman.  .  ,  . 
The  situation  of  mankind  in  those  periods  had  also  a  manifest  tendency 
to  heighten  and  improve  the  passion  between  the  sexes.  It  was  not  to 
be  expected  that  those  opulent  chiefs,  who  maintained  a  constant  oppo- 
sition to  each  other,  would  allow  any  sort  of  familiarity  to  take  place 
between  the  members  of  their  respective  families.  Retired  in  their  own 
castles,  they  looked  upon  their  neighbours  either  as  inferior  to  them 
in  rank,  or  as  enemies.  .  .  .  The  young  knight,  as  he  marched  to  the 
tournament,  saw  at  a  distance  the  daughter  of  the  chieftain  .  .  .  and 
it  was  even  with  difficulty  that  he  could  obtain  access  to  her,  in  order 
to  declare  the  sentiments  with  which  she  had  inspired  him.  The  lady 
herself  was  taught  to  assume  the  pride  of  her  family,  and  to  think 
that  no  person  was  worthy  of  her  affection  who  did  not  possess  an 
exalted  rank  and  character.  To  have  given  herself  to  a  sudden  inclina- 
tion [as  was  done  in  the  pre-agricultural  stage,  according  to  Millar] 
would  have  disgraced  her  forever  in  the  opinion  of  all  her  kindred." 

Hence  "the  sincere  and  faithful  passion,  which  commonly  occupied 
the  heart  of  every  warrior,  and  which  he  professed  upon  all  occasions, 
was  naturally  productive  of  the  utmost  purity  of  manners,  and  of  great 
respect  and  veneration  for  the  female  sex.  The  delicacy  of  sentiment 
which  prevailed,  had  a  tendency  to  divert  the  attention  from  sensual 
pleasures,  and  created  a  general  abhorrence  of  debauchery.  A  woman 
who  violated  the  laws  of  chastity  was  indeed  deserted  by  everybody, 
and  was  universally  condemned  and  insulted.  The  love  of  God  and  of 
the  ladies  was  one  of  the  first  lessons  inculcated  upon  every  young 
person  who  was  initiated  into  the  military  profession." 

From  this  teaching  came  the  high  romanticism,  chivalry,  and  gal- 
lantry of  this  period.  And  all  this  naturally  was  reflected  in  arts.  "The 

*  John  Millar,  The  Origin  of  the  Distinction  of  Ranks,  4th  ed.,  Edinburgh,  1806,  pp. 
67-108.  Quotation  marks  indicate  exact  words  of  the  author  quoted. 


128  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

sentiments  of  military  honor,  and  the  love  and  gallantry  had  neces- 
sarily a  remarkable  influence  upon  the  genius  and  taste  of  their  literary 
compositions.  Men  were  pleased  with  a  recital  of  what  they  admired  in 
real  life."  Hence  "the  employment  of  the  bards  who  along  with  their 
minstrels  attended  the  festivals  and  entertainments  of  princes  and  sang 
a  variety  of  small  poetical  pieces  of  their  own  composition,  describing 
the  heroic  sentiments,  as  well  as  the  love  and  gallantry  of  the  times. 
.  .  .  They  were  succeeded  by  the  writers  of  romance.  .  .  .  The  epic 
poetry  described  the  same  heroic  and  tender  sentiments."  Examples  of 
such  a  poetry  and  epic  are  furnished  by  the  Orlando  Furioso,  com- 
posed out  of  the  preceding  Morgante  and  Orlando  Innamorato;  by  the 
Gierusalemme  Liberata;  the  legends  of  the  King  Arthur,  and  so  on. 

When,  however,  the  commercial  and  manufacturing  stages  came, 
such  poetry  and  arts  had  to  be  replaced  by  different  ones.  The  devia- 
tion took  place  first  of  all  in  Italy. 

"The  principal  towns  of  Italy  came  thus  to  be  filled  with  tradesmen 
and  merchants,  whose  unwarlike  disposition  were  readily  communi- 
cated to  others."  To  their  influence  there  was  added  the  influence  of 
the  clergy.  The  result  was  that  "the  decay  of  the  military  spirit  among 
the  Italians  was  manifest  (also  in  that)  their  taste  of  writing  was 
varied  according  to  this  alteration  of  their  circumstances;  and  people 
began  to  relish  those  ludicrous  descriptions  of  low  life  and  of  licen- 
tious manners  which  we  meet  in  the  tales  of  Boccace,  and  many  other 
writers,  entirely  repugnant  to  the  gravity  and  decorum  of  former 
times.  ...  In  the  other  countries  of  Europe  the  matters  introduced  by 
chivalry  were  more  firmly  rooted  and  may  still  be  observed  to  have 
a  good  deal  of  influence  upon  the  taste  and  sentiments  even  of  the 
present  age.  The  fashion  of  those  (earlier)  times  has  also  remained 
with  us  in  our  theatrical  compositions;  and  scarce  any  author  seems  to 
have  thought  that  a  tragedy  without  love-plot  could  be  attended  with 
success." 

With 'the  development  of  manufacturing,  commerce,  and  practical 
arts  (urbanization),  the  condition  of  women  has  also  changed.  "The 
advancement  of  a  people  in  manufactures  and  commerce  has  a  tenden- 
cy to  remove  those  circumstances  which  prevented  the  free  intercourse 
of  the  sexes  (in  agricultural  stage)  and  contributed  to  heighten  and 
inflame  their  passions.  .  .  ."  Men  and  women  meeting  freely  now  and 
being  educated  along  similar  lines,  "in  this  situation,  the  women  be- 
come neither  the  slaves  nor  the  idols  of  the  other  sex  but  the  friends 
and  companions.  .  .  .  The  women  now  began  to  be  valued  upon  ac- 
count of  their  useful  talents  and  accomplishments."  In  addition  to  this 
change  there  came  an  increase  of  opulence  and  luxury  of  such  indus- 
trial and  commercial  centers;  "in  refined  and  polished  nations  there  is 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      129 

the  same  free  communication  between  the  sexes  as  in  the  ages  of  rude- 
ness and  barbarism."  However,  "in  a  simple  age,  the  free  intercourse 
of  the  sexes  is  attended  with  no  bad  consequences;  but  in  opulent  and 
luxurious  nations,  it  gives  rise  to  licentious  and  dissolute  manners,  in- 
consistent with  good  order  and  general  interest  of  society.  .  .  .  The 
natural  tendency,  therefore,  of  great  luxury  and  dissipations  is  to  di- 
minish the  rank  and  dignity  of  the  women,  by  preventing  all  refine- 
ment in  their  connection  with  the  other  sex,  and  rendering  them  only 
subservient  to  the  purposes  of  animal  enjoyment.  The  excessive  opulence 
of  Rome,  about  the  end  of  the  Commonwealth,  gave  rise  to  an  exceed- 
ing debauchery;  and  the  common  prostitution  of  the  women  was 
carried  to  a  height  that  must  have  been  extremely  unfavorable  to  the 
multiplication  of  the  species;  while  the  liberty  of  divorce  was  so  much 
extended  and  abused  that  marriage  became  a  very  slight  and  transient 
connection."  He  further  indicates  that  this  was  followed  by  disinte- 
gration of  the  family  ties  not  only  between  husband  and  wife  but  also 
between  parents  and  children,  by  a  change  of  the  law  of  inheritance, 
and  by  many  other  disastrous  effects. 

In  a  similar  way  Millar  indicates  that  the  transition  from  the 
agricultural  to  the  manufacturing  and  commercial  stages  has  been 
followed  by  a  decrease  of  the  paternal  authority  and  an  increase 
of  the  liberty  of  the  children;  and  by  several  changes  in  the  politi- 
cal institutions,  forms  of  government,  and  selection  of  the  lead- 
ers.48 Along  similar  lines,  though  not  always  similar  in  essence, 
were  set  forth  several  generalizations  by  other  writers  in  this  field 
enumerated  above.49 
VII.  THOMAS  R.  MALTHUS 

Thomas  R.  Malthus  (1766-1834),  the  celebrated  author  of  An 
Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population  (1st  ed.,  1798),  developed 
several  theories  concerning  the  problems  we  are  investigating.  In 
many  respects,  his  views  were  similar  to  those  of  Adam  Smith. 
In  agreement  with  Smith  he  regarded  agriculture  and  the  agricul- 
tural classes  as  more  productive,  economically,  than  industry  and 
commerce,  and  the  manufacturing  and  commercial  classes.  He 
claimed  that  whether  we  would  understand  by  wealth  "the  gross 
produce  of  the  land"  or  "the  clear  surplus  produce  of  the  land" 
or  Adam  Smith's  definition  of  wealth, 

48  Millar,  op.  cit.,  chap,  ii-vi. 

48  See  also  Gilbert  Stuart,  A  View  of  Society  in  Europe  in  Its  Progress  from  Rudeness 
to  Refinement,  1st  ed.,  1778,  a  new  edition,  Basil,  1797,  esp.  pp.  126-332,  and  Frederic 
U.  Eden,  The  State  of  the  Poor,  London,  1797. 


130  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

It  must  always  be  true,  that  the  surplus  produce  of  the  cultivators 
measures  and  limits  the  growth  of  that  portion  of  the  society  which 
is  not  employed  upon  the  land.  Throughout  the  whole  world  the  num- 
ber of  manufacturers,  of  proprietors,  and  of  persons  engaged  in  the 
various  civil  and  military  professions,  must  be  exactly  proportioned  to 
this  surplus  produce,  and  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things  increase  be- 
yond it.  If  the  earth  had  been  so  niggardly  of  her  produce,  as  to  oblige 
all  her  inhabitants  to  labor  for  it,  no  manufacturers  or  idle  persons 
could  ever  have  existed.  ...  In  proportion  as  the  labor  and  ingenuity 
of  man  exercised  upon  the  land  have  increased  this  surplus  produce, 
leisure  has  been  given  to  a  greater  number  of  persons  to  employ  them- 
selves in  all  the  inventions  which  embellish  civilized  life.  And  though, 
in  its  turn,  the  desire  to  profit  by  these  inventions,  has  greatly  contrib- 
uted to  stimulate  the  cultivators  to  increase  their  surplus  produce;  yet 
the  order  of  precedence  is  clearly  the  surplus  produce;  because  the 
funds  for  the  subsistence  of  the  manufacturers  must  be  advanced  to 
him,  before  he  can  complete  his  work.  .  .  .  The  skill  to  modify  the 
raw  materials  produced  from  the  land  would  be  absolutely  of  no  value, 
and  the  individuals  possessing  it  would  immediately  perish,  if  these 
raw  materials,  and  the  food  necessary  to  support  those  who  are  work- 
ing them  up,  could  not  be  obtained;  but  if  the  materials  and  the  food 
were  secure,  it  would  be  easy  to  find  the  skill  sufficient  to  render  them 
of  considerable  value.50 

In  accordance  with  this  proposition,  Malthus  regarded  the  sur- 
plus produce  arising  from  agriculture  as  the  foundation  of  wealth, 
power,  and  prosperity,  and  as  the  indispensable  condition  for  the 
very  existence  of  a  vast  body  of  manufacturers,  artisans,  followers 
of  the  liberal  professions,  and  the  vast  body  of  consumers.51  Fur- 
ther, while  disagreeing  with  the  Physiocrats  in  their  designation 
of  all  classes  except  the  agricultural  as  unproductive  classes,  he  at 
the  same  time  stressed  that  these  classes  are  less  productive  than 
the  agricultural  class.52 

The  fine  silks  and  cottons,  the  laces,  and  other  ornamental  luxuries 
of  a  rich  country,  may  contribute  very  considerably  to  augment  the 
exchangeable  value  of  its  annual  produce;  yet  they  contribute  but  in 
a  very  small  degree,  to  augment  the  mass  of  happiness  in  the  society: 
and  it  appears  to  me,  that  it  is  with  some  view  to  the  real  utility  of  the 

50  T.  R.  Malthus,  An  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population,  4th  ed.,  London,  1807,  II, 
132-131 

61  Ibid.,  II,  137-138. 

™lbid.,  pp.  138  £f.  C£.  "First  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population  (1798),  reprinted  by 
the  Royal  Economic  Society  (with  notes  of  James  Bonar),  London,  1926,  chap.  xvii. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       131 

produce,  that  we  ought  to  estimate  the  productiveness,  or  unproduc- 
tiveness of  different  sorts  o£  labor.  The  French  Economists  consider 
all  labor  employed  in  manufactures  as  unproductive,  comparing  it 
with  the  labor  upon  land,  I  should  be  perfectly  disposed  to  agree  with 
them;  but  not  exactly  for  the  reasons  they  give.  [He  further  indi- 
cates that  the  labor  employed  in  manufactures  is  also  productive  to 
some  extent,  but]  in  comparison  with  the  labor  employed  upon  land, 
it  would  be  still  as  unproductive  as  ever.  ...  A  capital  employed  upon 
land,  may  be  unproductive  to  the  individual  that  employs  it,  and  yet 
be  highly  productive  to  the  society.  A  capital  employed  in  trade  on  the 
contrary,  may  be  highly  productive  to  the  individual,  and  yet  be  almost 
totally  unproductive  to  the  society :  and  this  is  the  reason  why  I  should 
call  manufacturing  labor  unproductive,  in  comparison  of  that  which 
is  employed  in  agriculture,  and  not  for  the  reason  given  by  the  French 
Economists.53 

From  these  principles  he  further  deduces:  that  agricultural  in 
terests  in  Europe  have  been  neglected  and  manufacturing  and 
commerce  have  received  undue  encouragement;  that  the  best  eco- 
nomic system  is  that  in  which  the  development  of  agriculture, 
commerce,  and  manufactures  is  well  balanced;  that  the  country 
which  has  such  a  system  is  safer  than  the  country  which  is  not 
self-sufficing  in  agricultural  produce  (especially  in  time  of  war) ; 
and  that  from  a  purely  commercial  standpoint  the  export  of  corn 
is  one  of  the  most  advantageous  for  the  country.54 

Among  other  noneconomic  generalizations  of  Malthus  the  fol- 
lowing ones  may  be  mentioned:  first,  mortality  in  the  cities  is 
greater  than  in  the  country 55;  second,  the  health  of  the  city  popu- 
lation and  the  healthfulness  of  the  cities  is  inferior,  and  will  be 
inferior,  to  that  of  the  country  people  and  rural  conditions 58 ; 
third,  he  quotes  and  agrees  with  Dr.  Aiken  that  the  biological, 
moral,  hygienic,  and  other  conditions  of  laboring  families  in  the 
cities  are  much  poorer  than  in  the  families  of  agricultural  laborers, 

In  (their  families)  we  meet  with  neatness,  cleanliness,  and  comfort; 
in  (the  urban  laboring  families)  with  filth,  rags,  and  poverty,  although 
their  wages  may  be  nearly  double  to  those  of  the  husbandman.  It  must 
be  added  that  the  want  of  early  religious  instruction  and  example,  and 

53  First  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population,  quoted,  pp.  300,  329-333;  see  there  a 
development  of  these  statements.  See  also  the  fourth  edition  of  An  Essay  on  the  Principle 
of  Population,  II,  139  ff.,  145  ff. 

w  An  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population,  4th  ed.,  quoted,  II,  145-160. 

*lbid.t  I,  328,  388. 

*lhd.,  II,  4130. 


132  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  numerous  and  indiscriminate  associations  in  these  (factory)  build- 
ings, are  very  unfavorable  to  their  future  conduct.57 

Finally  in  a  general  and  somewhat  indefinite  way  Malthus  says 
that  "by  encouraging  the  industry  of  towns  more  than  the  indus- 
try of  the  country  (agriculture),  Europe  may  be  said,  perhaps,  to 
have  brought  a  premature  old  age.  A  different  policy  in  this  re- 
spect, would  infuse  fresh  life  and  vigor  into  every  state."  5S 

G.  PROMINENT  FRENCH  THINKERS  OF  THE 

EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 
I.  VOLTAIRE 

The  opinions  of  Voltaire  (1694-1778)  did  not  differ  from  those 
of  other  prominent  thinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Like  them 
he  regarded  agriculture  as  "a  foundation  of  everything  though  not 
what  makes  everything.  It  is  the  mother  of  all  other  arts  and  all 
other  goods."  59  Of  all  occupations  "agriculture  has  the  greatest 
need  for  large  families  and  for  conserving  health  and  energy;  it 
puts  a  man  in  the  easiest  position  to  have  and  maintain  many  chil- 
dren." 60  Furthermore,  he  indicates  that 

religion  itself  was  founded  on  agriculture.  All  the  fetes  and  all  the 
rites  have  been  but  the  emblems  of  this  art — the  primary  of  all  arts — 
which  united  men  together,  supplied  them  with  food,  dwelling,  and 
clothes,  which  represent  the  three  things  satisfying  human  nature.  .  .  . 
It  is  not  on  ridiculous  and  amusing  fables  that  religion  was  established. 
The  first  mysteries  invented  in  the  most  ancient  times  were  but  a  cele- 
bration of  the  field  works  under  the  protection  of  a  supreme  deity. 
Such  were  the  mysteries  of  Isis,  Orpheus,  Ceres.  Of  these,  Ceres,  par- 
ticularly, shows  to  our  eyes  and  mind  how  the  agricultural  works 
pulled  man  out  of  savage  life.  Nothing  could  be  more  useful  and 
saintly.  The  orgies  of  Bacchus  were  for  a  long  time  as  pure  and  as 
sacred  as  the  mysteries  of  Ceres.  The  priestesses  of  Bacchus,  called  the 
venerables,  took  the  vow  of  chastity  and  obedience  to  their  superiors 
up  to  the  time  of  Alexander.  ...  In  brief,  everything  so  sacred,  so  re- 
spected, in  rural  life  now  is  despised  in  our  large  cities.61 

"Through  what  fatality  did  it  happen  that  agriculture  is  hon- 
ored only  in  China!"  Voltaire  exclaims,  and  with  enthusiasm  he 

877&WV  II,  118-120. 

68 'First  Essay,  quoted,  p.  344. 

"Ocuvres  competes  de  Voltaire.  Paris,  1877-1885,  XXIX,  360. 

wlbtd.,  XIII,  151. 

*lbid.t  XXIX,  360. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES      133 

proceeds  to  describe  various  agricultural  festivities  in  China  led 
by  her  emperor  and  other  measures  and  honors  given  to  agricul- 
ture in  that  country,  "What  should  our  sovereigns  of  Europe  do, 
having  learned  about  the  Chinese  veneration  of  agriculture?  Ad- 
mire and  blush,  but  particularly  imitate."  62 

In  many  other  places  Voltaire  expresses  similar  views.  At  the 
same  time,  he  stresses  again  and  again  that  in  spite  of  their  being 
the  foundation  of  society  and  the  primary  factor  of  its  prosperity, 
the  cultivators  have  always  been  exploited,  disfranchised,  en- 
slaved, robbed,  and  abused  in  every  possible  way;  and  that  such  a 
treatment  is  continued  up  to  his  time,  especially  in  the  cities  and 
among  the  parasites  and  drones  of  urban  society.63  Like  the  Physi- 
ocrats he  also  believed  that  a  society  whose  wealth  was  based  on 
agricultural  production  was  superior  and  more  stable  than  the 
predominantly  commercial  society.64  Finally,  he  says  that  cities 
facilitate  a  decrease  in  birth  rate  because  people  do  not  want  to 
have  children  in  the  cities;  they  also  facilitate  depopulation  by 
attracting  people  from  the  country  and  making  them  less  fertile. 
By  attracting  agriculturists  and  laborers  from  the  rural  parts,  they 
are  responsible  for  an  increasing  proportion  of  uncultivated  land 
and  thus  facilitate  the  economic  decay  of  a  country  because  "the 
land  not  being  cultivated,  it  cannot  feed  the  urbanites  and  because 
the  cultivation  of  land  is  the  primary  and  real  wealth."  65 
II.  MONTESQUIEU 

Montesquieu  (1689-1755)  contributes  but  little  to  our  study. 
Some  purely  casual  remarks  scattered  throughout  his  works  may 
be  summed  up  as  follows:  (1)  Agriculture  is  a  basic  industry  and 
ought,  by  all  means,  to  be  facilitated.  He  styles  the  Chinese  cere- 
monies in  veneration  of  agriculture  a  very  good  custom.60  (2)  In 
contrast  to  many  writers  he  does  not,  however,  oppose  agriculture 
to  commerce  and  arts,  and  ruralism  to  urbanism.  On  the  contrary, 
he  states  that  development  of  agriculture  is  necessarily  followed 
by  that  of  arts,  of  commerce,  of  science,  and  of  money  economy.67 
(3)  In  his  estimation  of  the  effects  of  urbanization — arts,  sciences, 

*lbid.t  XVII,  86-88, 

68  Ibid.,  XXIX,  360-370;  IX,  381;  X,  204;  XLVI,  352. 

"lbid.t  XVIII,  5ff.;  X,  380. 

*lbid.,  XLV,  404. 

88  De  I' esprit  des  lots,  Bk,  XIV,  chap,  viii;  Bk.  IV,  chap.  viii. 

6T  Ibid.,  Bk.  XVIII,  chap.  xvi. 


134  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  commerce — he  shows  his  usual  balance  of  mind;  he  recog- 
nizes a  series  of  its  positive  effects,  such  as  a  refinement  of  mores, 
extension  of  peace,  formal  justice,  reinforcement  of  frugality, 
moderation,  labor  efficiency,  orderliness,  sagacity,  and  regularity. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  indicates  that  these  factors  may  lead  to 
a  corruption  of  mores,  increase  of  inequality,  disorder,  physical 
and  moral  enervation,  to  a  justice  which  is  too  formal,  to  depreci- 
ation of  noncommercial  virtues,  to  commercialization  of  vices 
and  moral  values,  and  to  the  weakening  of  hospitality  and  sin- 
cerity.68 (4)  He  stresses  the  attitude  of  indifference  to  the  political 
regime  among  the  peasants  and  farmers:  if  they  have  their  prop- 
erty secure  from  invasion  and  violation  it  matters  not  to  them 
whether  there  is  a  monarchy,  a  republic,  or  any  other  form  of 
government.69  (5)  The  lack  of  a  free  farm  population  and  the 
farmer  proprietorial  class  he  views  as  one  of  the  factors  in  the 
depopulation  of  a  country,  and  the  establishment  of  such  a  landed 
class  whose  conditions  are  satisfactory,  as  the  most  important 
measure  for  the  increase  of  the  fertility  of  the  population.70  Final- 
ly, he  mentions  several  times  that  a  development  of  cities  has 
often,  but  not  always  and  not  necessarily,  led  to  a  growth  of  the 
spirit  of  Epicureanism,  moral  corruption.  In  this  case  it  is  to  be 
considered  as  one  of  the  factors  in  the  decay  of  society.71 
III.  JEAN  JACQUES  ROUSSEAU 

The  negative  attitude  of  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  (1712-1778) 
towards  urbanization  and  his  romantic  idealization  of  rural  and 
of  savage  life  are  well  known.  As  early  as  his  famous  Discourse 
about  Sciences  and  Arts  (1750)  he  expressed  it  quite  clearly,  and 
in  subsequent  works,  such  as  Le  control  social,  fimile,  La  nou- 
vette  Heloise,  Gouvernment  de  Pologne,  and  others,  he  main- 
tained this  attitude  and  developed  it  further.  His  argumentations 
may  be  summed  up  in  a  schematical  way  as  follows:  The  happi- 
est and  most  virtuous  life  is  the  simple  life  of  primitive  people 
where  there  are  no  sciences,  arts,  cities,  and  complex  civilization. 
The  development  of  arts  and  sciences,  which  accompanies  the 
growth  of  cities,  commerce,  industries,  and  complex  civilization, 

58  Ibid.,  Bk.  XX,  chaps,  i-iii;  Bk.  V,  chap,  vi;  Persian  Letters,  Letter  CVII. 
fl8  De  I'esprit  des  loif,  Bk.  XXIII,  chaps,  i,  ii. 
wl&id.,  Bk.  XXIII,  chaps,  xxiv-xxviii. 

"  Montesquieu,  Considerations  on  the  Causes  of  the  Grandeur  and  Declension  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  Glasgow,  1883,  pp.  49-50,  52. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       135 

leads  to  a  development  of  luxury,  corruption,  softening,  effemi- 
nacy, injustice,  and  other  evils.  The  development  of  these  evils,  in 
their  turn,  lead  to  a  decay  of  society  and  the  defilement  of  human 
nature.  The  subsequent  fragments  give  some  idea  of  this  and  of 
several  other  details  concerning  Rousseau's  views  in  this  field. 

27.  ROUSSEAU:  CITIES,  THE  SOURCE  OF  PERDITION* 

"When  a  taste  for  study  and  arts  and  literature  begins  to  develop 
among  any  people  in  the  world,  the  mores  begin  to  degenerate.  .  .  „ 
The  appearance  of  such  an  inclination  always  signifies  the  beginning 
of  corruption.  .  .  .  An  inclination  to  literature,  philosophy,  and  the 
arts  annuls  our  primary  sense  of  duty  and  our  real  glory.  ...  It  softens 
our  body  and  soul.  ...  It  weakens  all  the  ties  of  esteem  and  benevo- 
lence which  attach  a  man  to  society.  .  .  .  Family  and  native  country 
become  for  such  a  man  mere  words,  empty  of  meaning;  for  such  a 
philosopher  there  is  neither  parent,  nor  citizen,  nor  man.  .  .  .  From  it 
there  originate  on  the  one  hand,  a  refinement  of  taste,  politeness,  vile 
and  defiling  flattery,  and  other  insidious,  childish,  and  seductive  pro- 
clivities, which,  in  the  long  run,  dry  up  the  soul  and  corrupt  the  heart; 
on  the  other  hand,  jealousy,  rivalry,  the  hatred  of  artists  so  well  known, 
pernicious  calumny,  treason,  unfaithfulness,  insincerity,  and  everything 
that  is  the  vilest  and  odious  in  vice."  72 

"Other  evils,  still  worse,  follow  the  development  of  arts  and  letters. 
Such  an  evil  is  luxury,  born,  like  these,  from  idleness  and  the  vanity  of 
men.  .  .  .  Our  philosophy  pretends,  against  the  experience  of  all  times, 
that  luxury  contributes  to  the  splendour  of  societies:  but  does  it  dare 
to  deny  that  good  mores  are  essential  to  the  duration  of  an  empire  and 
that  luxury  is  opposed  to  good  mores?  It  is  certain  that  luxury  is  a 
sign  of  wealth  and  prosperity;  but  what  becomes  of  virtue  when  men 
try  to  enrich  themselves  at  whatever  cost?  The  statesmen  of  ancient 
times  stressed  incessantly  good  mores  and  virtue;  our  politicians  talk 
only  about  commerce  and  money.  In  proportion  as  the  commodities 
of  life  multiply,  the  arts  progress,  and  luxury  extends,  real  courage 
weakens,  and  military  virtues  disappear  .  .  .  and  taste  itself  degener- 
ates. ,  .  .  Before  arts  molded  our  manners,  our  mores  had  been  rustic 
and  natural;  now  a  vile  and  deceptive  uniformity  reigns  there,  and  all 
minds  appear  to  have  been  cast  in  the  same  mold :  incessantly  the  rules 
of  etiquette  demand,  and  the  rules  of  decency  prescribe.  None  dares 
any  longer  to  be  what  he  is;  incessantly  they  follow  the  prescribed 
rules  and  never  their  own  genius.  .  .  ."  Rousseau  makes  further  a 

*This  selection  is  drawn  from  a  number  of  sources.  Quotation  marks  indicate  the 
words  of  Rousseau. 

72  2V 'arcisse ,  in  Qeuvres  competes  de  J.  /.  Rousseau,  Paris,  1873,  V,  103-104. 


136  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rough  historical  induction  that  pre-urban  and  pre-literate  peoples,  such 
as  the  ancient  Persians,  Scythians,  and  Germans  were  virtuous,  strong, 
healthy,  victorious,  powerful,  and  social.  While  when  these  same  peo- 
ples and  many  others  became  civilized  and  developed  arts,  sciences, 
cities,  luxuries,  and  commerce,  they  lost  all  these  qualities,  became  cor- 
rupted, effeminate,  enfeebled,  weak,  were  conquered,  and  decayed.73 

In  a  footnote  to  the  Narcisse  Rousseau  adds  that  "among  men  there 
are  thousands  of  sources  of  corruption;  and  though  among  them  sci- 
ences and  arts  are  probably  the  most  abundant  and  efficient,  they  are 
not  the  only  source  of  corruption.  (Among  those)  commerce  and  all 
that  facilitates  communication  and  contact  between  nations  carries  to 
each  of  them  not  the  virtues  of  the  others  but  their  crimes  and  perverts 
their  mores,  which  were  adapted  to  their  climate  and  to  the  constitu- 
tion of  their  government."  He  further  remarks  that  in  attributing  & 
corruptive  effect  to  the  sciences  and  arts,  he  understood  by  them  not 
"the  sovereign  intelligence  which  sees  in  a  twinkle  of  an  eye  the  truth 
of  all  things,  but  vain  and  deceptive  knowledge  (connaissances) .  Sci- 
ence taken  in  its  real  and  abstract  way  deserves  our  admiration;  the 
faulty  science  of  men  deserves  but  mockery  and  contempt."  74 

After  this  it  is  comprehensible  why  Rousseau  styles  the  cities  "the 
source  of  perdition  of  mankind";  as  a  "source  of  physical  and  moral 
degeneration";  as  "the  suckers  who  bleed  the  nation";  as  "the  school 
of  vices  and  contempt."  "It  is  the  rural  world  which  teaches  us  to  love 
and  to  serve  mankind;  while  in  the  cities  they  learn  but  to  scorn  it." 75 
Rousseau  was  well  aware  of  the  role  of  the  cities  as  the  centers  of  the 
waste  of  human  material  and  its  energy;  of  the  negative  biological  bal- 
ance of  the  cities;  of  their  inability  to  increase  or  maintain  their  popu- 
lations without  migration  from  the  country;  of  the  unhealthy  city  con- 
ditions, and  so  on.76 

Among  other  negative  effects  of  the  cities  he  sees  that  in  them  "hu- 
man beings  become  different  from  what  they  are.  This  is  especially 
true  of  Paris  and  particularly  in  regard  to  women.  Meeting  a  lady  in  a 
society,  instead  of  seeing  a  Parisian  lady  as  you  expected,  you  see  but  a 
simulacrum  of  fashion.  Her  haughtiness,  her  ampleness,  her  poise,  her 
stature,  her  breast,  her  color,  her  air,  her  looks,  her  gossip,  her  manners, 
nothing  of  this  is  her  own;  if  you  should  see  her  in  her  natural  condi- 
tion you  would  hardly  recognize  her.  Such  a  change  is  rarely  favorable 
to  those  to  whom  it  happens."  TT 

73"Les  sciences  et  les  arts,"  in  Exttaits  de  J.  J.  Rousseau,  by  M.  Gidel,  Paris,  2d 
ed,,  chaps,  i-tv,  pp.  1-14. 

^Oeuvres  completes,  V,  103. 
75/&W.,  II,  27,  186,  441;  X,  145. 
nllM.,  II,  27,  163  if.,  186. 
'"Ibid.,  IV,  188. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       137 

In  a  similar  way  he  mocks  the  attitude  of  superiority  that  urbanites 
maintain  with  regard  to  the  rural  people  and  assails  "the  authors,  the 
literati,  the  philosophers  who  do  not  cease  to  cry  that  in  order  to  per- 
form the  duties  of  a  citizen  and  to  serve  one's  fellowmen,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  dwell  in  large  cities.  According  to  them  to  evade  Paris  means 
to  hate  mankind;  the  rural  people  are  nothing  in  their  eyes;  if  we  are 
to  believe  them,  there  is  no  human  being  outside  of  the  boarding 
houses,  academies,  and  dinner  parties.  .  .  .  Rural  life  and  agriculture 
have  their  own  pleasures;  and  these  pleasures  are  less  insipid  and  less 
rude  than  they  think  them;  among  rural  people  there  may  be  found  a 
taste,  exquisiteness,  and  delicacy;  a  respectable  man  who  would  retire 
with  his  family  to  the  country  and  would  become  his  own  farmer  can 
enjoy  a  life  as  sweet  as  that  amidst  the  amusements  of  the  city;  a  man- 
ager of  a  farm  may  be  a  charming  woman,  graceful  and  full  of  more 
tender  charms  than  all  the  urban  landladies  (les  p elite s-maitr esses) ; 
finally,  the  most  tender  sentiments  of  the  heart  may  animate  rural  so- 
ciety more  pleasantly  than  the  artificially  exquisite  language  of  the  city 
circles,  where  our  satirical  and  morbid  laughter  is  a  poor  substitution 
for  a  natural  gaiety  lost  by  us."  7S  Besides,  "the  country's  lessons  are  in 
loving  and  serving  humanity  while  the  city's  lessons  are  in  despising 

k;579 

All  these  details  of  Rousseau's  attitude  toward  the  problem  discussed 
are  well  summed  up  in  his  advice  to  Poland  and  the  Polish  people. 
Writing  concerning  the  project  of  their  constitution,  Rousseau  says: 
"The  choice  of  an  economic  system  which  Poland  must  adopt  depends 
on  the  objective  which  it  has  in  view  in  correcting  its  constitution.  If 
you  (Poles)  want  but  to  become  buoyant,  brilliant,  redoubtable,  and 
influential  in  regard  to  other  people  of  Europe,  you  have  their  exam- 
ples, and  all  that  you  have  to  do  is  to  imitate  them.  Cultivate  sciences, 
arts,  commerce,  industry,  have  a  large  army,  fortresses,  academies,  espe- 
cially a  good  financial  system  with  a  good  circulation  of  money,  which 
facilitates  its  multiplication.  ...  In  this  way  you  would  create  an  in- 
triguing, ardent,  greedy,  ambitious,  servile,  roguish,  and  fraudulent 
nation  similar  to  others  with  the  extremes  of  misery  and  opulence,  li- 
centiousness and  slavery,  but  then  you  will  be  regarded  as  one  of  the 
grand  powers  of  Europe;  you  will  be  involved  in  all  political  systems; 
your  alliance  will  be  sought  for  in  all  diplomatic  negotiations;  there 
will  be  no  war  in  which  you  will  not  have  a  hand.  .  .  . 

But  if  by  chance  you  would  prefer  to  form  a  free,  peaceful,  and  wise 
nation,  which  does  not  fear  or  need  anybody,  which  is  self-sufficing  and 
happy,  then  you  must  follow  quite  a  different  way,  namely  to  main- 

w/foW.f  iv,  10-11. 
"Ibid.,  X,  145. 


138  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tain  and  reestablish  simple  mores,  sound  tastes,  martial  spirit  without 
ambition;  educate  courageous  and  disinterested  souls;  turn  your  peo- 
ple to  agriculture  and  the  arts  necessary  for  life;  make  them  disdainful 
of  money.  .  .  .  Following  this  route,  you,  of  course,  will  not  fill  the 
papers  with  the  noise  of  your  fetes,  your  negotiations,  your  exploits; 
and  philosophers  will  not  flatter  you;  poets  will  not  sing  of  you;  and 
Europe  will  not  be  talking  of  you;  but  you  will  be  living  in  abundance, 
liberty,  and  justice.  .  .  .  Favor  your  agriculture  and  useful  arts,  not 
for  the  sake  of  the  enrichment  of  the  cultivators,  but  for  the  sake  of 
making  life  honorable  and  agreeable.  Establish  the  manufacture  of  the 
primary  necessities;  multiply  incessantly  your  grain  and  your  popula- 
tion and  do  not  trouble  yourselves  about  other  things.  This  is  the  prin- 
ciple which  I  would  like  to  see  reigning  in  your  economic  system.  Un- 
der such  a  system,  luxury  and  poverty,  beggars  and  millionaires,  would 
disappear  gradually;  and  the  citizens,  cured  of  frivolous  inclinations 
which  lead  to  opulence,  and  of  vices  connected  with  misery,  would  put 
their  cares  and  their  glory  in  serving  their  country  well  and  would  find 
their  happiness  in  the  fulfillment  of  their  duties." 80 

The  above  quotations  outline  the  essentials  of  Rousseau's  opin- 
ions in  the  field.  They  are  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  nega- 
tive attitudes  toward  the  city  and  complex  civilization.81 

H.  PROMINENT  AMERICAN  THINKERS  OF  THE 
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

The  majority  of  the  American  writers  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury expressed  views  similar  to  those  of  the  Political  Arithmeti- 
cians and  the  Physiocrats.  These  views  are  representatively  ex- 
pressed in  the  writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Thomas  Jefferson, 
and  the  president  of  Yale  College,  Dr.  Styles.  Another  division  of 
prominent  political  writers  and  statesmen,  represented  by  Alex- 
ander Hamilton,  held  views  somewhat  nearer  to  those  of  Hume 
and  other  thinkers  who  regarded  positively  not  only  agriculture 

"Ibid.,  V,  277-279. 

81  These  views  naturally  provoked  sharp  criticism  on  the  part  of  Rousseau's  contem- 
poraries. As  a  sample  of  this  criticism  Helvetius'  sharp  and  caustic  denunciation  of 
Rousseau's  theories  may  serve.  Rejecting  Rousseau's  views,  Helvetius  claims  that  educa- 
tion and  the  progress  of  the  arts  and  sciences  lead  to  the  intellectual,  social,  and  moral 
improvement  of  man;  that  they  are  not  responsible  for  decay;  that  ignorant  peoples  are 
the  most  cruel,  wretched,  and  bloodthirsty;  that  the  development  of  commerce,  money 
economy,  cities,  and  even  luxury,  is  beneficial.  In  brief,  in  regard  to  urban,  commercial, 
and  refined  civilization,  Helvetius  is  more  optimistic  than  even  Hume  or  Montesquieu. 
See  Helvetius,  De  I'homme,  Qettvres  completes  d'Helvetius,  Paris,  1818,  Vol.  II,  Sec.  V, 
chaps,  iv-xi;  Sec.  VI,  chap,  xviii,  pp.  304-389. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       139 

and  the  farmer,  but  also  commerce,  manufacture,  and  the  cities. 
These  opinions  are  illustrated  by  the  subsequent  excerpts  from 
the  works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Thomas  Jefferson,  and  Alexan- 
der Hamilton.82 
I.  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 

Being  under  the  influence  of  William  Petty  and  later  on  of  the 
French  Physiocrats,  Franklin  (1706-1790)  had  a  very  high  esti- 
mation of  agriculture  and  the  farmers,  a  view  similar  to  that  of 
the  school  of  Quesnay. 

Food  is  always  necessary  to  all,  and  much  the  greatest  part  of  the 
labor  of  mankind  is  employed  in  raising  provisions  for  the  mouth.  Is 
not  this  kind  of  labor,  then,  the  fittest  to  be  the  standard  by  which  to 
measure  the  values  of  all  other  labor,  anH  consequently  of  all  other 
things  whose  value  depends  on  the  labor  of  making  or  procuring 
them?  May  not  even  gold  and  silver  be  thus  valued?  If  the  labor  of 
the  farmer,  in  producing  a  bushel  of  wheat,  be  equal  to  the  labor  of 
the  miner  in  producing  an  ounce  of  silver,  will  not  the  bushel  of  wheat 
just  measure  the  value  of  the  ounce  of  silver? 

Thus  for  him  agricultural  value  is  the  basis  and  the  standard  of 
all  other  values. 

There  seem  to  be  but  three  ways  for  a  nation  to  acquire  wealth.  The 
first  is  by  war,  as  the  Romans  did,  in  plundering  their  conquered 
neighbors.  This  is  robbery.  The  second  by  commerce,  which  is  gener- 
ally cheating.  The  third  by  agriculture,  the  only  honest  way,  wherein 
man  receives  a  real  increase  of  the  seed  thrown  into  the  ground,  in  a 
kind  of  continual  miracle,  wrought  by  the  hand  of  God  in  his  favor, 
as  a  reward  for  his  innocent  life  and  his  virtuous  industry. 

Consequently  "the  great  business  of  the  [American]  conti- 
nent is  agriculture."  It  is  "the  most  useful,  the  most  independent, 
and  therefore  the  noblest  of  employments."  And  Franklin's 
farmer  says:  "I  am  one  of  that  class  of  people  that  feeds  you  all 
and  at  present  is  abused  by  you  all."  And  he  indicated  further 
how  the  interests  of  the  farmer  class  in  America  were  sacrificed 
in  favor  of  manufacturing  and  other  employments.  Meanwhile 
"only  agriculture  is  truly  productive  of  new  wealth,"  and  "manu- 
factures will  naturally  spring  up  in  a  country  as  the  country  be- 
comes ripe  for  them."  He  remarks  further  that  England  "is  fond 

83  For  other  writers  and  opinions  see  Styles,  A  Discourse  on  Christian  Union,  Boston, 
1761;  Jesse  Buel,  The  Farmer's  Companion,  Boston,  1839;  American  State  Papers: 
Finance,  Vol.  Ill  (1815-1822),  and  Vol.  V  (1824-1828), 


140  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  manufactures  beyond  their  real  value,  for  the  true  source  of 
riches  is  husbandry."  The  farmer,  being  the  incarnation  of  hon- 
esty, independence,  frugality,  thrift,  industry,  and  other  positive 
characteristics,  is  the  best  counter-agent  against  luxury,  vice,  and 
other  defects  which  are  dangerous  to  the  welfare  of  a  society. 
With  deep  satisfaction  he  stresses  that  this  country  has  a  predomi- 
nantly agricultural  character,  an  overwhelming  agricultural  popu- 
lation, and  excellent  conditions  for  the  further  development  of 
agriculture.  Its  benefits  are  general  for  the  whole  commonwealth 
while  "the  advantages  [of  a  regulation  of  commerce]  .  ,  .  not 
being  general  for  the  commonwealth  are  but  particular,  to  private 
persons  or  bodies  in  the  State  who  procured  them,  and  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  rest  of  the  people." 

If  we  add  to  the  above,  that  Franklin  regarded  with  especial 
favor  an  agricultural  system  where  the  land  is  held  by  farmer- 
owners,  in  contrast  to  the  system  of  the  concentration  of  land 
in  a  few  hands,  which  is  necessarily  followed  by  a  class  of  poor 
landless  laborers  and  poor  tenants,  the  essentials  of  Franklin's 
attitude  toward  agriculture  and  farmers  are  outlined.83 
II.  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

The  agricultural  sympathies  of  Jefferson  (1743-1846)  are  well 
known.  They  also  were  strongly  influenced  by  the  French  Physio- 
cratic  School.  The  following  fragment  gives  his  opinion  on  the 
subject.  Writing  to  John  Jay  (August  23,  1785)  on  the  question 
of  "whether  it  would  be  useful  to  us,  to  carry  all  our  own  pro- 
ductions, or  none"  he  states: 

Were  we  perfectly  free  to  decide  this  question,  I  should  reason  as 
follows:  We  have  now  lands  enough  to  employ  an  infinite  number  of 
people  in  their  cultivation.  Cultivators  of  the  earth  are  the  most  valu- 
able citizens.  They  are  the  most  vigorous,  the  most  independent,  the 
most  virtuous,  and  they  are  tied  to  their  country,  and  wedded  to  its 
liberty  and  interests,  by  the  most  lasting  bonds.  As  long,  therefore, 
as  they  can  find  employment  in  this  line,  I  would  not  convert  them 
into  mariners,  artisans,  or  anything  else.  But  our  citizens  will  find  em- 
ployment in  this  line,  till  their  numbers,  and  of  course  their  produc- 
tions, become  too  great  for  the  demand,  both  internal  and  foreign. 
This  is  not  the  case  as  yet,  and  probably  will  not  be  for  a  considerable 
time.  As  soon  as  it  is,  the  surplus  of  hands  must  be  turned  to  some- 

9  The  Writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  ed.  by  A.  H.  Smith,  New  York,  1905-190(5, 
I,  147  if.;  V,  535  tf.,  361,  194  H.;  X,  116  S. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       141 

thing  else,  I  should  then,  perhaps,  wish  to  turn  them  to  the  sea  in  pref- 
erence to  manufactures;  because,  comparing  the  characters  of  the  two 
classes,  I  find  the  former  the  most  valuable  citizens.  I  consider  the  class 
of  artificers  as  the  panders  of  vice,  and  the  instruments  by  which  the 
liberties  of  a  country  are  generally  overturned.  However,  we  are  not 
free  to  decide  this  question  on  principles  of  theory  only. 84 

III.  ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 

The  attitude  of  Hamilton  (1757-1804)  towards  agriculture  was 
less  enthusiastic,  while  his  attitude  towards  commerce  was  more 
favorable  than  that  of  Jefferson.  In  this  sense  Hamilton's  views 
are  nearer  to  the  urban  standpoint  on  the  question.  The  essentials 
of  his  opinion  are  summed  up  in  his  paper  published  in  The 
Federalist,  November  27,  1787.y5 

The  prosperity  of  commerce  is  now  perceived  and  acknowledged  by 
all  enlightened  statesmen  to  be  the  most  useful  as  well  as  the  most 
productive  source  of  national  wealth,  and  has  accordingly  become  a 
primary  object  of  their  political  cares.  By  multiplying  the  means  of 
gratification,  by  promoting  the  introduction  and  circulation  of  the 
precious  metals  ...  it  serves  to  vivify  and  invigorate  the  channels  of 
industry,  and  to  make  them  flow  with  greater  activity  and  copiousness. 
The  assiduous  merchant,  the  laborious  husbandman,  the  active  me- 
chanic, and  the  industrious  manufacturer — all  orders  of  men — look 
forward  with  eager  expectation  and  growing  alacrity  to  this  pleasing 
reward  of  their  toil.  The  often  agitated  question  between  agriculture 
and  commerce  has,  from  indubitable  experience,  received  a  decision 
which  has  silenced  the  rivalship  that  once  subsisted  between  them,  and 
has  proved,  to  the  satisfaction  of  their  friends,  that  their  interests  are 
intimately  blended  and  interwoven.  It  has  been  found  in  various  coun- 
tries that,  in  proportion  as  commerce  has  flourished,  land  has  risen  in 
value.  And  how  could  it  have  ever  happened  otherwise?  ...  It  is 
astonishing  that  so  simple  a  truth  should  ever  have  had  an  adver- 
sary. .  .  . 

The  ability  of  a  country  to  pay  taxes  must  always  be  proportioned, 
in  a  large  degree,  to  the  quantity  of  money  in  circulation,  and  to  the 
celerity  with  which  it  circulates.  Commerce,  contributing  to  both  these 
objects,  must  of  necessity  render  the  payment  of  taxes  easier,  and  facili- 
tate the  requisite  supplies  to  the  treasury.  The  hereditary  dominions 
of  the  Emperor  of  Germany  contain  a  great  extent  of  fertile,  cultivated, 
and  populous  territory.  ...  In  some  parts  of  this  territory  are  to  be 

8iTke  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  Philadelphia,  1871,  I,  403-404;  see  also  pp. 
465-466. 

™The  Works  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  ed.  by  H.  C.  Lodge,  New  York,  1904,  XL 
89-97. 


142  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

found  the  best  gold  and  silver  mines  in  Europe.  And  yet,  from  the 
want  of  the  fostering  influence  of  commerce,  that  monarch  can  boast 
but  slender  revenues. 

Hamilton  and  his  followers  contended,  further,  that  the  cities 
and  manufactures  do  not  lead  to  an  increase  of  vice,  immorality, 
pauperism,  and  other  bad  effects;  on  the  contrary,  absorbing 
the  mass  of  the  surplus  population  and  giving  employment  to 
them  they  prevent  poverty,  crime,  and  vice.  He  believed  that  the 
employment  of  children  in  manufacturing  enterprises  inculcated 
in  them  "habits  of  industry,  order,  and  regularity,  which  gener- 
ally adhere  to  them  through  life." 8C 

I.  CONCLUSION:  A  CENSUS  OF  OPINIONS 

The  above  sketch  gives  a  survey  of  the  most  developed  theories 
of  the  most  prominent  thinkers  in  the  field  studied,  before  the 
nineteenth  century.  It  somewhat  fills  a  void  that  has  existed  up 
to  the  present  moment  in  a  section  of  the  history  of  rural  soci- 
ology and  rural-urban  social  philosophy.  Such  a  history  has  not 
before  been  written,  nor  has  there  been  a  single  work  that  has  at- 
tempted to  outline  the  development  of  opinions  and  theories 
concerning  the  rural-urban  aspects  of  social  life  from  ancient 
times  to  the  nineteenth  century.  This  survey  outlines  the  essen- 
tials of  this  development.  It  shows,  first,  that  many  problems  of 
rural-urban  sociology  appeared  long  ago;  second,  that  they  were 
also  thought  over  and  given  this  or  that  answer  long  ago;  third, 
that  the  majority  of  the  fundamental  problems  of  rural  sociology 
were  discussed  and  analyzed  long  before  the  nineteenth  and  the 
twentieth  centuries.  Contemporary  rural-urban  sociologists  neither 
formulated  their  problems  for  the  first  time  nor  set  forth  the 
varieties  of  solutions  for  these  problems.  In  this  sense  the  survey  is 
useful  and  helps  us  today  to  acquire  a  little  more  accurate  per- 
spective in  the  field  of  contemporary  theories  and  hypotheses  of 
rural-urban  sociology. 

In  addition  to  these  functions  the  survey  fulfils  an  additional 
one:  it  represents  a  kind  of  census  of  the  opinions  of  the  most 
prominent  social  philosophers.  If  we  do  not  assume  that  these 
opinions  are  worthless  and  wrong— an  assumption  scarcely  justi- 
fied from  any  standpoint — then  it  may  be  of  some  value  to  know 

88  American  State  Papers:  Finance,  Vol.  Ill  (1815-1822),  pp.  456,  601  ff. 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       143 


what  these  thinkers  have  really  thought  of  rural  and  urban  life 
and  of  rural  and  urban  people.  We  know  that  these  thinkers  lived 
under  widely  differing  conditions;  some  of  them  were  rural  born 
and  reared,  some  were  urban  born  and  reared;  some  lived  in  a 
stage  of  relatively  undeveloped  urbanization,  others  amid  highly 
urbanized  conditions.  The  opinions  themselves  are  composed 
either  of  collective,  impersonal  thought,  such  as  that  embodied 
in  the  religious  and  sacred  books,  or  of  the  thoughts  of  social 
thinkers  who,  by  their  prestige  and  authority,  are  generally  rec- 
ognized as  masters  of  the  social  sciences.  Computing  as  one  the 
entire  Chinese,  the  entire  Jewish,  the  entire  Egyptian,  the  entire 
Babylonian,  the  entire  Hindu,  and  the  entire  Zoroastrian  thought 
and  excluding  the  opinions  of  European  poets  and  story-writers, 
we  have  about  forty-one  units  of  opinions  and  theories.  Let  us 
roughly  compute  how  many  of  these  units  share  this  or  that 
opinion,  and  how  many  of  them  ascribe  this  or  that  character- 
istic to  rural  life  and  to  the  rural  world.  In  an  abbreviated  form 
the  results  of  such  a  very  rough  census  of  the  opinions  may  be 
summed  up  as  follows: 


OPINION 


PER  PER 

CENT  CENT 

OF  OF 

"YES"  "No" 


No 
DEFI- 
NITE 
STATE- 
MENT 


1.  Agriculture^  is  a  very  useful,  necessary,  and  im- 
portant industry  .         100 

2.  Agriculture  and  cultivators  are  more  important  or 
"useful"  than  manufacture,  commerce,  other  trades, 

and  other  classes  40          5        55 

3.  Agriculture  and   cultivators   are   more   important 
and  superior  than  the  professional  and  religious 

occupations       10        25        65 

4.  Farmers  and  free  cultivators  are  more  healthy  than 
the  city  population  and  rural  life  is  more  healthful 

than  urban  life     80          5        15 

5.  Farmers  are  the  best  soldiers     40         .  60 

6.  Farmers  and  the  rural  people  are  more  blameless 
and  virtuous  than  the  urban  people;  the  cities  are 

the  centers  of  vice  and  crime ....  65        10        25 

7.  The  agricultural  class  is  the  only  productive  class  .10        20        70 

8.  The   agricultural   class   is   more   productive  than 
other  large  social  classes  (those  engaged  in  manu- 
facturing, commerce,  trades,  etc.) 18          6        76 


144  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


PEK       PER        N« 

n  CENT     CENT     UEFI~ 

OPINION  OF        NITE 

"YES"     "No"    STATE" 

MENT 

9.  The  agricultural  occupation  is  hard  70  30 

10.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  frugal  60  40 

11.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  patient  50  50 

12.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  peaceful  and  orderly  50  50 

13.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  happier  than  the  urban 

classes  40        10        50 

14.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  anticommunistic,  anti- 
socialistic,  and  antirevolutionary  ...  10  90 

15.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  more  religious  than  the 

urban  people 30          5        65 

16.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  more  independent,  self- 
governing,  and  fit  for  democracy  .  30        20        50 

17.  The  class  of  cultivators  is  less  cosmopolitan  and 

more  patriotic  than  the  urban  people 45  55 

18.  With  the  exception  of  the  professional  and  intel- 
lectual classes,  the  agricultural  class  is  more  intelli- 
gent than  the  bulk  of  the  city  population         ...     25        15        60 

19.  Its  place  in  the  hierarchy  of  social  classes  is  im- 
mediately after  the  group  of  the  priests  and  rulers 

and  above  all  other  classes 40  15        45 

20.  The  agricultural  class  is  unjustly  exploited  and  dis- 
franchised        30  5        65 

21.  It  is  very  sturdy 65  .          35 

22.  It  has  a  higher  birth  rate  than  the  urban  class  ...  35  . .        65 

23.  It  has  a  lower  mortality  than  the  urban  class.  40  .        60 

24.  It  has  a  higher  marriage  rate  than  the  urban  class  30  .        70 

25.  It  is  more  honest,  less  sophisticated,  and  less  con- 
troversial than  the  urban  class .  20  10        70 

26.  Rural  people  are  less  shifting  and  more  stable  than 

city  people    20  80 

27.  Rural  people  are  more  altruistic  and  inclined  to 

mutual  help  and  cooperation  than  city  people.  ...     25          5        70 

28.  The  cities  are  the  source  of  demoralization,  disor- 
ganization, disorder,  decay 50        10        40 

29.  The  city  population  is  unable  to  keep  its  biological 

balance    20         .          80 

30.  The  cities  are  growing  entirely  at  the  cost  o£  mi- 
gration from  the  country 16         . .         84 

31.  Those  who  migrate  from  the  country  are  the  well- 
to-do  country  people 8         2        90 

32.  Those  who  migrate  are  the  superior  elements  of 

the  country  population 6         4       90 


FOURTEENTH  TO  NINETEENTH  CENTURIES       145 


PER       PER       nN° 

CENT    CENT     DEFI' 
OPINION  op         op         NITE 

"YES"    "No"     STATE- 

MENT 

33.  Those  who  migrate  are  principally  of  ages  10  to  40     12  88 

34.  Females  migrate  in  a  greater  proportion  than  males      8  92 

35.  The  rural  family  is  larger,  more  integrated,  more 

stable,  and  purer  than  the  urban  family  45          5        50 

36.  The  cities  are  the  centers  of  arts,  science,  literature    35  65 

37.  The  cities  are  the  centers  of  artificiality  and  stand- 
ardization of  manners  .  5  95 

38.  One  of  the  reasons  why  the  rural  classes  are  subju- 
gated and  exploited  by  the  cities  is  that  they  are 
scattered  over  a  vast  territory  and  for  this  reason 
cannot  defend  their  interests  as  successfully  as  the 

city  people . .  .  6  94 

39.  Rural  people  are  more  homogeneous  (or  pure)  ra- 
cially than  the  urban  people  .  4         .          96 

40.  Rural  people  have  a  stronger  esprit  de  corps  than 

urban  people 8  92 

41.  Agriculture  ennobles  the  position  of  women,  puri- 
fies love  and  sexual  life,  increases  the  parental  au- 
thority and  attachment  to  children;  while  indus- 
trial   and   urban    development   tends    to    debase 
women  and  to  disintegrate  the  purity  of  sex  rela- 
tions and  the  family   . .  .  4  96 

Though  this  census  of  opinions  is  very  rough,  nevertheless  it 
has  some  significance.  On  the  whole  the  opinions  of  the  authors 
and  sources  studied  show  a  rather  remarkable  unanimity.  On 
some  points  it  is  extraordinary  (as,  for  instance,  that  the  rural 
people  are  more  healthy,  more  blameless,  less  unmoral,  the  best 
soldiers,  etc.).  On  other  points,  though  few  of  the  authors  stress 
this  or  that  characteristic,  it  is  not  repudiated  by  others.  We  see 
further  that  these  authors  noticed  a  great  many  urban-rural  dif- 
ferential characteristics.  They  indicated  almost  all  the  most  im- 
portant rural-urban  differences  and  the  differences  of  the  city- 
country  people  which  are  discussed  in  contemporary  works  on 
rural-urban  sociology.  This  is  more  true  than  is  indicated  by  the 
table,  in  which  are  enumerated  not  all  but  only  a  part  of  the  dif- 
ferences stressed  by  these  authors.  In  the  subsequent  parts  of  this 
work  we  shall  see  to  what  extent  these  generalizations  are  valid. 
In  view  of  the  above  unanimity  and  prominence  of  the  authors  it 


146  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

is  reasonable  to  expect  that  their  opinions  must  contain  a  great 
deal  of  truth.  The  subsequent  parts  will  show  that  this  assumption 
is  justified  to  a  very  considerable  degree.87 

87  Bibliography. — The  principal  sources  and  works  are  given  in  the  text  and  foot- 
notes above.  For  the  sake  of  economy  of  space  the  titles  of  these  works  are  not  repeated 
here.  As  to  additional  bibliography,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  there  does  not  exist  any 
single  work  which  gives  a  survey  and  analysis  of  the  theories  and  opinions  about  rural 
life  and  rural  people  from  the  ancient  to  the  present  time  All  we  have  are  a  few  mono- 
graphs, like  Dr.  Heitland's  work  quoted,  which  give  a  survey  of  the  theories  for  a  single 
country  or  for  a  definite  limited  period,  or  for  one  or  a  few  authors.  Since  in  the  above 
most  of  the  primary  sources  and  original  works  of  the  most  important  authors  are  men- 
tioned and  many  monographs  relating  to  the  problems  are  quoted,  it  is  scarcely  neces- 
sary to  add  here  other  works  that  only  indirectly  or  cursorily  touch  the  problems  dis- 
cussed. Readers  or  investigators  who  would  like  to  make  a  more  substantial  study  of 
the  theories  of  a  certain  author,  or  school,  or  period  mentioned  in  the  text  must  turn  to 
the  works  of  the  author,  or  school,  or  period,  and  the  vast  literature  relating  to  each. 
The  above  survey  gives  a  starting  point  and  "the  Ariadne  thread"  for  this  purpose. 
But  it  is  far  beyond  the  purpose  of  this  work  to  list  here  the  thousands  of  monographs 
written  about  various  social  thinkers  and  their  works  generally.  To  do  this  would 
transform  the  work  into  a  history  of  the  social  sciences  and  the  mental  development  of 
man,  which  is  quite  different  from  the  purpose  of  these  two  chapters 


CHAPTER  III 

ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENTIATION 

As  will  be  shown  in  a  later  chapter  rural-urban  differentiation 
seems  to  originate  and  grow  or  proceed  as  a  parabolic  function. 
It  begins  gradually,  increases  its  tempo,  gains  rapidly,  and  the 
city-country  differentiation  becomes  great;  then  it  lessens  either 
through  the  engulfment  of  the  city  by  the  country  or  of  the  coun- 
try by  the  city,  or  the  mutual  fusion  of  the  city  and  the  country. 
In  this  chapter,  the  purpose  is  to  describe  the  circumstances  which 
bring  about  the  first  part  of  the  curve  of  rural-urban  differentia- 
tion, Why  does  city-country  differentiation  arise,  and  how  does 
it  proceed  in  its  first  phases  of  growth?  These  are  the  questions 
which  engage  us  now. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  analysis,  it  is  first  necessary  to  have 
at  least  a  preliminary  definition  of  the  city  in  contrast  to  the  coun- 
try. Otherwise  the  very  analysis  of  the  problem  of  the  origin  of 
the  city-country  differentiation  is  impossible.  This  explains  why 
the  authors  who  have  discussed  this  problem  have  preceded  it  by 
some  definition  of  the  "city"  as  a  social  phenomenon  different 
from  the  "country."  The  variety  of  these  definitions  is  revealed  in 
the  subsequent  readings.  These  definitions  stress  only  some  of  the 
important  characteristics  of  the  city.  But  although  they  do  not  de- 
scribe all  the  constant  and  important  differences  between  the 
urban  and  the  rural  worlds  in  their  developed  forms,  they  are 
sufficient  for  a  consideration  of  the  initial  stages  of  rural-urban 
differentiation  and  permit  the  analysis  of  its  forms  and  factors. 
In  the  next  chapter  we  give  a  more  adequate  and  complex  analy- 
sis of  the  principal  differences  between  the  city  and  the  country 
in  their  clearly  defined  form. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  details  of  the  problem,  let  us  sum  up 
the  principal  conclusions  reached  by  various  authors  in  this  field. 
Practically  all  the  competent  authors  agree  that  nomadic  life  and 
tribal  organization  preceded  the  appearance  of  the  first  cities. 
They  all  agree  also  that  the  initial  stage  of  rural-urban  diff erentia- 

[147] 


148  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tion  was  very  slight  and  almost  imperceptible.  The  first  city  was 
one  tribe  gathered  together  for  a  time.  Only  by  a  long,  slow,  and 
gradual  process  did  the  difference  between  the  city  and  the  coun- 
try widen  and  become  tangible  and  clear-cut.  Even  at  a  relatively 
late  period  in  the  development  of  cities,  as  in  the  case  of  many 
large  ancient  cities  of  Egypt  and  Assyro-Babylonia,  or  during  the 
first  nine  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  urban  world  still  con- 
tained a  considerable  proportion  of  agricultural  population  and 
many  characteristic  traits  of  the  rural  world.  Many  of  these  cities 
were  somewhat  "movable"  also,  having  been  rapidly  erected  by 
the  will  of  a  sovereign  and  often  forsaken  after  his  death. 

The  transition  from  nomadic  to  sedentary  life  comes  about  through 
the  pitching  of  tents  round  a  spring,  at  a  ford  important  for  commer- 
cial intercourse,  or  in  one  of  the  fertile  sites.  .  .  .  Gradually  the  tents 
are  replaced  by  huts  of  wattle  or  of  mud,  sometimes  by  dwellings  ex- 
cavated in  the  hillside  or  in  natural  caves.  Finally,  the  advantages  of 
a  regular,  varied,  and  certain  diet  induce  the  nomads  to  cultivate 
plants,  to  train  more  numerous  beasts  for  agricultural  work,  and  to 
set  up  workshops  for  weaving  wool,  manufacturing  implements  of 
stone,  clay,  and  copper,  and  for  all  the  primitive  industries.  Thereafter 
the  cluster  of  tents  become  villages,  the  villages  form  federations,  real 
and  personal  property  wins  recognition,  and  the  need  of  a  State  or- 
ganization makes  itself  felt.1 

The  details  of  this  process  are  ably  shown  in  the  subsequent 
readings  from  R.  Maunier,  W.  Sombart,  K.  Biicher,  V.  Kluchev- 
sky,  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  and  HL  Pirenne.  These  excerpts  give  the 
essentials  of  the  process  of  rural-urban  differentiation  among 
many  primitive  groups,  in  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  in  medieval 
Europe,  and  among  the  Slavs  and  other  peoples. 

Further,  almost  all  investigators  agree  also  that  the  origin  of  the 
city  has  been  paralleled  by  the  origin  of  the  state  organization, 
which  began  to  unite  several  tribes  into  one  political  body  and  to 
replace  the  tribal  organization. 

In  order  to  designate  State  the  Greeks  used  the  term  polis  which 
means  also  the  city.  This  synonymity  is  significant;  generally  there  is 
no  State  without  the  city.  Political  unification  has,  as  a  rule,  the  city 
either  as  its  starting  point  or  as  its  basis:  there  was  the  city  of  Athens 
before  there  was  the  Athenian  state;  the  city  of  Rhodes  and  the  state 

XA.  Moret  and  G.  Davy,  From  Tribe  to  Empire,  New  York,  1926,  pp.  197-198. 
Additional  quotations  are  reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  publishers, 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          149 

of  Rhodes  were  created  simultaneously.  Exceptions  to  this  rule  are  very 
rare:  perhaps  Sparta  and  Elis.  .  .  .  What  characterizes  the  city?  In 
the  first  place,  a  relatively  large  number  of  inhabitants;  in  the  second, 
and  rather  often,  a  rampart  which  surrounds  it  and  makes  it  a  forti- 
fied place;  such  is  the  very  initial  meaning  of  the  word  polls,  which 
signifies  a  citadel.  Thus,  the  preliminary  existence  of  a  city  is  very 
often  a  circumstance  that  facilitates  political  unification;  the  founda- 
tion of  a  city  is  a  circumstance  which  accompanies  this  unification.2 

This  process  was  very  gradual,  but  it  was  common  none  the 
less.  In  this  sense,  the  first  state  organizations  were  the  city-states. 
Such  was  the  situation  in  ancient  Egypt,  Assyria,  Babylonia, 
China,  Greece,  Rome,  among  the  Slavs,  and  among  the  European 
peoples  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  readings,  espe- 
cially the  papers  of  V.  Kluchevsky  and  Petrie,  show  this  clearly. 

While  it  was  a  place  of  refuge  and  a  political  and  religious  cen- 
ter, the  city  was,  at  the  same  time,  an  economic  phenomenon: 
a  center  for  the  accumulation  of  wealth  and  an  aggregate  of  peo- 
ple which,  at  least  in  part,  did  not  live  on  the  produce  of  the  land 
but  obtained  its  means  of  subsistence  from  other  rural  aggregates. 
Early  cities  were  consumption  cities  par  excellence?  The  source 
from  which  the  cities  obtained  their  wealth  and  means  of  sub- 
sistence are  problems  answered  in  the  papers  of  Petrie,  Sombart, 
and  Pirenne. 

Any  city  is  also  an  aggregate  of  population.  Who  built  the  early 
cities?  By  whom  were  they  filled?  Whence  came  their  popula- 
tions ?  What  were  the  dominant  occupations  of  the  city-builders 
and  the  city-fillers  ?  These  questions  are  elucidated  in  the  papers 
given,  particularly  in  those  of  Sombart  and  Pirenne.4 

As  to  the  factors  responsible  for  the  origin  and  development  of 
the  city-country  differentiation,  here  again  we  find  a  great  deal  of 
agreement  among  the  investigators.  Almost  all  stress  the  impor- 
tant roles  played  by  economic  factors,  war  and  safety,  the  increase 
of  the  population,  demography,  religious  factors,  inventions,  espe- 

3  Henri  Francotte,  La  polls  grecque,  Paderhorn,  1907,  pp.  106-107,  in  the  Studlen 
zur  Geschiclite  und  Kultttr  des  Altertttms,  Band  I,  Hefte  3,  4;  see  there  many  important 
details;  see  also  Korneman,  Polls  und  Vrbs,  Beltrage  z.  alt.  Gesch.,  Band  V,  Heft  1. 

8  See  esp.  K.  Biicher's  paper  in  Die  Grossestadt,  quoted  further. 

4  Some  of  the  details  of  Sombart's  theories  are  questionable  but  the  essentials  of  his 
statements  in  this  field  seem  to  be  adequate.  See  a  criticism  of  Sombart's  theories  in 
G,  von  Below,  Problems  der  Wlrtschaftsgeschlchte,  Berlin,  1926,  chap,  vii, 


150  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

daily  in  the  fields  of  technique,  division  of  labor,  and  other  less 
important  factors. 

The  disagreement  among  the  authors  is  largely  on  secondary 
points.  For  instance,  some  of  the  authors,  like  Maunier  and 
A.  F.  Weber,5  are  inclined  to  see  principally  the  dispersing  func- 
tion of  agriculture  and  the  concentrating  role  of  other  industries; 
while  other  authors  indicate  that  agriculture,  under  some  condi- 
tions and  at  certain  stages,  has  played  not  only  a  dispersing  but 
a  concentrating  or  urbanising  role.  A  sample  of  this  is  given  in 
the  following  lines  from  Moret  and  Davy: 

As  in  all  agricultural  countries  exposed  to  sudden  attacks  from 
nomads,  the  sedentary  peasants  did  not  dwell  in  scattered  huts.  By 
night  they  gathered  behind  the  solid  walls  of  villages,  where  they  left 
their  families  and  treasures  in  safety  when  they  went  forth  to  their 
fields.  Each  village  planted  above  its  fortified  gates  an  ensign-fetish, 
talisman,  rallying  sign.  ...  In  these  villages  the  hunters  and  tillers 
had  come  together  for  reason  of  defence,  mutual  aid,  and  collective 
safety. 

Besides,  there  were  many  other  tasks  to  be  done  together,  and 
these  tasks  kept  the  people  together  and  facilitated  an  enlarge- 
ment of  the  group.  For  instance,  in  Egypt,  for  the  sake  of  agri- 
culture, it  was  necessary  to  develop  a  complex  system  for  the 
regulation  of  the  elevation  of  the  Nile  and  the  construction  of 
a  vast  system  of  irrigation;  "to  drive  out  the  wild  beasts  from  the 
valley;  to  choose  the  animals  suitable  for  taming,"  etc.  In  all  these 
respects  the  role  of  agriculture  led  to  concentration  of  the  popula- 
tion, causing  them  to  live  together  and  to  create  and  enlarge 
the  villages,  which,  in  many  cases,  became  large  towns  or  small 
cities.6  What  has  been  said  in  regard  to  the  discrepancy  of  opin- 
ions about  the  r61e  played  by  agriculture  may  be  said  of  many 
other  factors.  Some  of  the  authors  stress  one  aspect  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  city,  while  others  pay  attention  to  other  phases. 

Two  additional  remarks  need  to  be  made.  First,  when  the  cities 
were  so  much  differentiated  from  the  country  that  they  became 
abodes  of  a  permanently  settled  population,  such  early  cities  were 
economically  consumption  cities:  they  fed  themselves  at  the  cost 
of  the  rural  population  and  did  not  give  back  an  economic  equiva- 
lent for  the  supplies  taken  from  the  country.  These  supplies  were 

"See  Adna  F.  Weber,  The  Growth  of  Cities.  New  York,  1899,  chap.  iu. 
0  Moret  and  Davy,  op,  dt.,  pp.  123-125. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          151 

taken  from  the  rural  population  in  the  form  of  taxes,  levies,  mili- 
tary booty,  and  similar  duties  and  they  were  collected  by  the 
agents  of  kings,  princes,  conquerors,  religious  bodies,  landlords 
settled  in  the  city,  and  other  "city-builders"  and  "city-fillers." 
These  and  similar  sources  furnished  the  subsistence  basis  of  early 
Oriental  and  medieval  cities.  On  this  point  all  the  competent  in- 
vestigators seem  to  be  in  substantial  agreement.7 

Second,  not  all  cities  at  all  times  are  identical  or  even  similar. 
While  all  had  several  common  characteristics  (analyzed  in  the 
next  chapter)  they  varied  in  different  ages  and  in  different  areas 
in  regard  to  other  traits.  For  instance,  in  the  course  of  time  many 
cities  ceased  to  be  purely  consumption  centers;  they  developed 
many  industries  and  began  to  return  to  the  country  an  economic 
equivalent  for  the  goods  of  the  rural  population.  Some  cities  have 
been  predominantly  political,  some  commercial,  and  others  manu- 
facturing, religious,  or  educational  centers.  Likewise,  other  char- 
acteristics of  the  city,  such  as  its  size,  density,  and  degree  of  inde- 
pendence, have  varied  with  location  and  time.  K.  Biicher  at- 
tempted to  give  a  few  fundamental  types  of  cities.  Although  his 
theory  is  too  schematical  and  in  many  respects  inadequate  from 
the  standpoint  of  contemporary  science,  nevertheless  it  still  has 
some  value  and  deserves  to  be  mentioned.  He  distinguished,  in  the 
first  place,  'the  ancient  Oriental  type  of  large  city,  such  as  Baby- 
lon, Thebes,  Memphis,  Nineveh,  and  so  on.  Such  a  city  usually 
occupied  a  very  large  area;  the  circumference  of  its  circle  was  to 
be  computed  by  tens  of  kilometers.  Its  population  was  very  nu- 
merous, and  usually  it  was  surrounded  by  a  wall.  Within  the  wall 
and  near  by,  the  population  was  engaged  partly  in  agriculture. 
Nevertheless,  such  cities  were  predominantly  consumption  cities, 
and  their  principal  functions  were  military  and  political.  They 
were  the  abodes  of  rulers,  officials,  priests,  soldiers,  and  their  reti- 
nues. The  functionaries  lived  on  the  supplies  taken  from  the 
country. 

The  next  type  was  that  of  the  early  cities  of  ancient  Greece  and 
Rome.  They  were  but  places  of  refuge  for  clans.  Each  was  closely 
interwoven  with  its  rural  part.  Each  citizen  was  also  a  landowner 

7  See  further  the  readings  from  Petrie,  Sombart,  and  Pirenne.  See  also  K  Biicher, 
"Die  Grossestadte  in  Gegenwart  und  Vergangenheit,"  in  Die  Grossestadt,  Dresden,  1903, 
pp.  1-32.  "Economically  such  cities  were  purely  consumption  cities,  which  scarcely  con- 
tributed anything  to  the  increase  of  the  commodities  of  the  nation." 


152  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  a  cultivator  who  had  a  villa,  estate,  or  farm  outside  the  city 
wall  and  managed  it  with  the  help  of  serfs  or  slaves,  tenants,  or 
members  of  his  family.  Later  on,  with  the  growth  of  city  life  in 
Greece  and  Rome,  this  typ,e  of  city  gradually  disappeared  and 
was  replaced  by  another  type.  The  third  type  is  the  medieval  city. 
Cities  of  this  type  rapidly  ceased  to  be  agricultural.  In  contrast  to 
the  early  Greek  and  Roman  cities,  whose  citizens  were  land- 
owners and  cultivators,  the  inhabitants  of  the  medieval  cities  were 
primarily  artisans,  handicraftsmen,  merchants,  etc.,  but  not  agri- 
culturists. The  division  of  labor  between  the  city  and  the  country 
in  medieval  Europe  was  much  greater  than  in  early  Greece  or 
Rome.  The  country  produced  food  and  raw  materials,  whereas, 
the  city  transformed  this  material  into  the  products  of  the  handi- 
crafts and  imported  from  other  places  such  goods  as  were  unob- 
tainable in  the  immediate  rural  surroundings.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances, the  medieval  cities  could  not  be  very  large;  in  con- 
trast to  the  Oriental  cities,  they  grew  naturally  from  villages  and 
were  not  primarily  the  abodes  of  political  and  military  powers 
but  the  centers  of  handicrafts,  trades,  and  commerce.  As  such 
they  were  market  places.  Each  of  them  had  to  secure  some  means 
of  subsistence;  and  in  order  to  do  this,  they  produced  the  handi- 
craft commodities  and  performed  the  marketing  or  trading  func- 
tions. Each  also  took  some  political  and  economic  measures  to 
make  its  economic  basis  more  solid.  Each  of  such  cities,  with 
its  rural  surroundings,  composed  a  kind  of  a  self-sufficient  area 
in  which  all  the  necessities  were  produced. 

Finally,  the  fourth  type  is  the  modern  city.  The  modern  city 
is  also  a  center  of  manufacturing  and  production,  like  the  medie- 
val city;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  economic  basis  of  the  modern 
city  is  not  founded  only  upon  small-scale  trades  and  production 
for  the  surrounding  rural  territory.  The  modern  city  produces 
for  the  whole  world;  its  market  is  not  a  place  for  the  meeting  of 
the  near-by  peasants  with  the  city  producers  but  "the  world  mar- 
ket." Consequently  it  is  more  independent  of  the  demands  of 
the  rural  area  immediately  around  the  city  and  does  not  compose 
with  it  a  self-sufficient  "urban  area."  Furthermore,  the  modern 
city  itself  does  not  try  to  produce  everything  necessary  for  its 
population.  It  specializes  in  the  production  of  such  commodities 
as  can  be  manufactured  there  most  profitably.  After  selling  these 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  153 

in  the  world  market,  the  city  buys  and  imports  whatever  is  neces- 
sary for  its  population.  In  contrast  to  the  Oriental  cities,  the 
modern  city  is  not  an  abode  of  a  despot  or  ruler.  Many  of  them 
are  not  political  centers  at  all;  they  do  not  care  to  acquire  politi- 
cal autonomy.  Others  are  the  seats  of  national  governments;  but 
even  in  that  case  the  political  functions  of  such  cities  are  much 
less  important  than  their  industrial  and  commercial  functions.8 
In  spite  of  several  shortcomings  Biicher's  theory  of  the  principal 
types  of  city  continues  to  have  some  value.  Let  us  now  turn  to  the 
readings,  which  develop  various  aspects  of  the  problem.* 

28.  R.  MAUNIER:  DEFINITION  OF  A  Cmd" 

Since  we  propose  as  our  subject  of  study  certain  modalities  of  urban 
phenomena,  it  is  necessary  to  define  what  will  be  included  under  the 
name  of  city  throughout  this  study;  and  before  developing  a  new  defi- 
nition, it  is  necessary  to  see  if  it  is  not  possible  to  accept  one  of  the  cur- 
rent definitions.  The  latter  can  be  divided  into  two  groups. 

I.  Most  of  these  are  based  on  a  unique  character;  they  give  the  name 
of  city  to  all  social  establishments  presenting  a  certain  definite  property, 
but  they  differ  as  to  the  nature  of  this  character. 

Certain  authors  use  morphological  traits.  They  commonly  designate 
agglomerations  having  a  certain  population  as  cities  l  ;  that  is,  they 
distinguish  the  urban  group  by  its  volume  or  its  dimension,  by  the 
quantity  of  its  human  elements  in  relation  to  its  territorial  element. 
This  is  most  often  the  case  with  administrative  statistics;  the  French 
censuses  since  1846  and  the  International  Institute  of  Statistics  since 
1887  have  called  all  communities  of  more  than  2,000  inhabitants  cities. 
Such  a  definition  cannot  serve  as  a  basis  for  a  scientific  study,  and  it 
has  long  been  denounced  by  many  as  arbitrary;  the  size  of  establish- 
ments is  too  variable  and  too  external  in  different  places. 

8Biicher,  op.  cit.,  passim. 

*  Besides  the  works  cited  in  the  text  and  footnotes  of  this  chapter,  see  G.  von  Below, 
Problems  der  Wirtschajtsgeschichte  (2d  ed.,  1926),  particularly  chap,  vii,  in  which 
von  Below  criticizes  Sombart's  theories;  William  R.  Halliday,  The  Growth  of  the  City 
State  (Boston,  1923);  E.  Kuhn,  fiber  die  Entstchung  der  Stadte  der  Alten  (Leipzig, 
1878);  Edward  ^  Meyer,  Kleine  Schriften  (1910),  pp.  79  ft,  169  fL;  Neurath,  Antikf 
Wirtschaftsgeschichte  (1918);  M.  Rostovtzeff,  The  Social  and  Economic  History  of  the 
Roman  Empire  (1926);  Max  Weber,  General  Economic  History  (1927);  and  the  works 
cited  in  the  next  three  chapters. 

t  From  R.  Maunier,  Uorigine  et  la  fonction  economique  des  miles,  etude  de  morpho- 
logic sociale,  Paris,  V,  Giard  and  E.  Briere,  1910,  Int.,  chap,  ii,  pp.  34-44.  Translated 
and  published  with  the  permission  of:  the  author  and  the  publisher.  Numbered  footnotes 
are  those  of  Maunier  in  the  work  quoted. 

1This  is  notably  the  point  of  view  of  P.  Meuriot,  Des  agglomerations  urbaines  dans 
VEuropc  contemporaine ,  1898,  and  of  A.  Weber,  The  Growth  of  Cities,  New  York,  1899. 


154  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Numerous  historians  have  defined  the  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages 
morphologically  by  the  existence  of  a  fortification  2  ;  but  the  absence 
of  this  character  in  modern  cities  and  the  lack  of  consistency  in  this 
definition  prevents  its  serving  to  define  and  to  specify  the  medieval 
type  of  city,  for  villages  in  some  forms  often  possessed  a  fortification 
also.3 

Other  authors,  among  them  Rumelin,  have  employed  demographic 
characteristics  and  defined  the  city  chiefly  by  the  low  birth  rate  or  the 
high  marriage  rate;  but  they  themselves  recognize  that  these  charac- 
teristics are  not  specific.  The  demography  of  the  great  city  resembles 
that  of  the  farm;  that  of  the  small  city  is  similar  to  that  of  the  village.4 
Besides,  the  demographic  properties  of  the  city  are  too  unstable  to  be 
discriminating;  they  vary  with  the  size  of  the  city  and  in  time  and 
between  social  groups.  Thus,  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  urban  mortality 
rate  was  lower  than  the  corresponding  rural  rate;  in  the  times  of 
Graunt,  the  reverse  was  true;  today,  for  other  causes,  the  urban  rate 
is  becoming  less  than  the  rural.* 

The  juridical  definitions 5  have  the  same  defects  as  certain  morpho- 
logical definitions;  they  are  useful  only  for  particular  types  of  cities, 
and  they  are  not  even  constant  in  a  given  social  group.  Municipal  law 
and  the  law  of  the  market  place,  which  have  often  served  as  criteria 
for  the  historians,  were,  even  in  the  Middle  Ages,  lacking  in  many 
population  groupings  called  "cities"  in  texts.6 

The  most  reputable  of  the  unilateral  definitions  are  those  based  on 
a  functional  character.  The  term  "city"  has  often  been  applied  to  all 
agglomerations  which  have  been  the  seat  of  special  functions,  whatever 
these  functions  might  be 7  ;  the  abstract  specialization  of  functions  has 
been  considered  aside  from  its  concrete  content.  Other  authors,  more 

2  The  German  writers  o£  the  eleventh  century  already  distinguished  two  types  of 
places:  those  not  fortified  (villages)  and  those  fortified  (cities).  They  thus  opposed  urbs, 
castdlttm,  or  civitas  to  the  villa  or  to  the  vicus  (F.  Keutgen,  Untersuchungen  uber  dettt- 
schen  Stadtverfassung,  p.  46).  Von  Maurer  (Geschichte  der  Stadteverjassung,  I,  31  ct  seq.} 
says  the  same:  "The  cities  are  villages  surrounded  by  walls."  Cf.  also  Bobean  (La  ville 
sous  I'ancien  regime,  p.  239),  who  sees  in  the  wall  the  essential  property  of  the  city. 

dSee  below.  Inversely,  in  many  civilizations,  even  ancient  ones,  the  cities  are  often 
not  fortified;  it  was  thus  in  Japan  until  the  eighteenth  century  (Chartevoix,  Histoirc  et 
description  du  Japan,  p.  10). 

4  Rumelin,  Ville  et  campagne,  in  Problemes  d' economic  politiqne  el  de  statistique, 
pp.  210-212. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — These  statements  are  questionable. 

*  Von  Justi  defined  the  city  by  the  existence  of  a  council,  Stadtrat;  but  many  medieval 
villages  had  an  organization  of  this  type,  like  the  contemporary  panchayat  o£  Hindu 
villages.  Some  have  also  defined  the  city  by  the  speciality  of  its  law,  by  the  group  of  its 
privileges  (V.  Maitland,  Domesday  Book  #nd  Beyond,  p.  173),  what  the  Germans  have 
called  its  Privilegierung. 

"See  for  example,  Planiol,  Les  villes  de  Bretagne  au  XVlll  siecle  (Nonv.  Rev.  histo- 
rique  de  droit,  1894,  p.  134). 

7  Muller-Lyer,  Phasen  der  Kuhur  nnd  Richtungslinien  des  Forischritts,  1908,  p.  133. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  155 

exacting,  have  insisted  on  the  existence  of  certain  specific  and  concrete 
functions  and  notably  certain  economic  functions.8  Even  today  the 
historians  commonly  define  the  medieval  city  by  the  existence  of  a 
market.  But  the  history  of  the  localization  of  industries  shows  suffi- 
ciently that  no  economic  function  is  a  constant  and  specific  trait  of 
cities.  Ancient  cities,  as  Sombart  notes,  following  Biicher,9  were  above 
all  cities  of  consumption,  even  the  largest  ones;  and  in  modern  times 
one  finds  cities  with  complex  functions  and  some  with  specialized 
functions,  some  industrial  cities  and  some  commercial  cities.  One  can 
even  state  that  function  is  the  most  variable  of  the  characters  of  the 
city. 

II.  Let  us  now  consider  the  definitions  based  on  multiple  characters. 
These  most  often  indicate  the  city  by  a  multiplicity  of  characters 
which  are  of  the  same  nature.  Thus  H.  Pirenne  defined  the  city  by 
a  group  of  morphological  traits 10  ;  and  the  contemporary  economists 
define  it  by  a  group  of  functional  characters.11  But  the  characters  com- 
prised in  this  definition  can  also  be  of  a  different  nature;  the  definition 
is  then  based  at  the  same  time  on  morphological  characters  and  on  the 
characters  of  the  function  of  grouping.12  These  definitions  are  only  an 
amalgam  of  many  simple  definitions  previously  stated  and  incur  the 
same  criticisms. 

8 Adam  Smith  (Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  Ill,  Part  I):  "The  cities  were  inhabited 
chiefly  by  artisans  and  business  men."  This  is  an  assertion  which  a  part  of  this  book 
will  demonstrate  to  be  false  as  regards  the  Middle  Ages.  See  Sombart,  Der  Begriff  der 
Stadt  und  das  Wesen  der  Stadtebildttng  (Brauris  Archiv,,  1907,  XXV,  2):  the  cities 
were  "collections  of  men  who  were  dependent  for  their  subsistence  on  products  of  agri- 
cultural work  carried  on  outside."  But  that  proposition,  as  well  as  that  of  Smith,  is  true 
only  for  relatively  modern  cities.  Ratzel  (Anthropogeographie,  II,  406)  also  defined  the 
city  as  an  industrial  and  commercial  center.  Sievekmg  (Die  nnttelalterhche  Stadt,  in 
Vierteljafaschrtft  fur  Soc.  und  Wirtschajtsgeschichte,  1904,  II,  190)  defined  it  as  a  center 
of  exchange. 

0  See  Etudes  d'histoire  d' economic  pohnque,  pp.  342-343.  Cantillon  had  the  more 
correct  view  when  he  wrote  (Essai  stir  la  nature  du  commerce,  p.  20):  "The  group  of 
many  rich  proprietors  of  land  who  reside  together  in  the  same  place  suffice  to  form 
a  city."  Sombart  replied  that  these  pure  consumers  depended  on  agricultural  work  out- 
side the  city;  but  it  will  be  shown  later  in  detail  that  in  many  civilizations  agriculture 
holds,  even  within  the  cities,  a  considerable  importance.  This  is  a  fact  often  disregarded. 

10  The  city,  he  said,  was  distinguished  from  the  open  country  by  its  gates,  churches, 
and  density  of  population   (L'origine  des  constltttttons  urbaines,  in  Revue  histonque, 
LVII,  64). 

11  For  example,  by  the  coexistence  of  industrial,  commercial,  and  political  functions. 

1S  In  1801  the  Cour  de  Rennes  gave  the  title  of  city  to  a  collection  having  "a  numer- 
ous population,  to  which  are  joined  some  public  establishments  for  the  harmony  of  the 
general  association  and  the  commercial  needs."  (Cited  by  Ramalho,  Des  miles,  bourgs, 
et  villages,  in  Revue  generals  d" administration,  1901,  I,  291.)  Patrick  Geddes  ("Civics  as 
Concrete  and  Applied  Sociology,"  m  Sociological  Papers  of  the  Sociological  Society  of 
London,  1905,  II,  67  et  seq.,  88  et  seq.}  defined  the  city  as  formed  of  three  elements: 
people  (individuals  and  institutions),  affairs  (functions),  and  places.  Von  Below  (V.  Bur- 
ger, in  Handworterbuch  der  Staatswissenschajten,  ed.  by  J.  Conrad,  II,  1181)  character- 
ized the  medieval  city  as  having  both  fortification  and  a  market.  Similarly  Heil,  Die 
deutschen  Stadte  im  l/littelalter ,  pp.  25-27.  M.  Flach  (Origines  de  I'ancienne  France,  II, 


156  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

All  these  definitions,  both  simple  and  complex,  have  some  common 
vices.  They  are  based  upon  characters  which  are  too  special,  of  which 
many  are  superficial  and  secondary,  and  many  also  are  not  constant 
but  rather  belong  only  to  certain  types  o£  cities.  The  definition  of  a 
sociological  character  must  have  the  following  qualities: 

1.  This  trait  must  be  constant,  that  is,  it  must  be  found  in  all  urban 
types;  this  condition  is  obvious. 

2.  It  should  be  fixed;  that  is,  it  should  be  found  relatively  unchanged 
and  vary  as  little  as  possible  in  degree;  for  a  modality  which  persists 
in  the  diverse  forms  of  its  object  but  varies  too  much  in  degree  in 
different  instances  does  not  fulfil  the  function  of  a  definition  which  is 
to  facilitate  the  identification  of  the  defined  object  and  to  permit  its 
sure  distinction. 

It  will  be 'seen  later  that  the  character  in  question  cannot  be  a  func- 
tional one;  there  is  no  character  of  this  sort  which  is  constant  and 
fixed.  The  specificity  of  the  function,  considered  abstractly  and  in  itself, 
is  a  fact  only  for  certain  types  of  cities;  it  is  lacking  in  what  has  been 
called  "urban  economy."  Even  the  concrete  quality  of  function  is  quite 
variable  according  to  the  specialized  cities  (cities  of  commerce,  indus- 
try, or  even  those  depending  on  one  particular  industry). 

The  criteria  that  we  will  employ  thus  ought  to  be  of  a  morphological 
order;  and,  as  we  have  already  eliminated  certain  criteria  of  this  spe- 
cies, the  field  of  choice  remaining  to  us  is  quite  restricted.  Neither  the 
dimension  of  the  settlement,  nor  the  state  of  things  that  this  involves 
(walls,  construction  of  houses)  can  serve;  the  exterior  form  of  the 
grouping  is  not  of  specific  advantage.  There  remain  to  us  only  char- 
acteristics relative  to  internal  structure.  Thus  the  question  is  what 
constitutes  the  phenomena  of  structure  which  differentiate  the  city 
among  the  modes  of  settlement;  and  to  answer  it,  we  must  make  a 
classification  of  the  latter. 

Cantillon,  who  had  one  of  the  first  of  these  classifications,  tried  13 
to  distinguish  four  types  of  habitat:  the  village,14  the  borough  or  mar- 

329)  defined  the  city  by  material  protection,  religious  protection,  and  commercial 
activity.  But  the  possession  of  a  market  with  the  special  law  attached  to  it  was  by  no 
means  a  property  of  all  cities.  See  a  criticism  of  these  definitions  by  M.  Hassert,  Die 
Stadte  geographtsch  betrachtet,  1907,  pp.  4-6. 

w  It  is  necessary  to  mention  before  him  Botero  (Delle  cause  della  grandezza  e  mag- 
nificcnza  delta  titta,  Rome,  1588),  who  insisted  on  the  physical  conditions  and  limits  of 
the  development  of  cities  and  whose  importance  for  statistics  and  sociology  has  been 
shown  by  M.  Kovalevsky,  (See  his  memoir  on  Botero  in  Vol.  Ill  of  the  Annales  de 
I'lnstitut  International  de  Sociologie.} 

uHe  does  not  mention  the  isolated  farm,  which  without  doubt  was  rare  in  his  time; 
but  one  finds  such  farms  in  England  by  the  eleventh  centuiy  (Vinogradojfif,  English 
Society  in  the  Eleventh  Century,  Oxford,  1908,  pp.  264,  267-268;  Maitland,  Domesday 
and  Beyond,  pp.  15-16).  A  little  later  Steuart  (Recherche  des  principes  de  I'econo- 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          157 

ket  place,  the  city,  and  the  capital.  The  classification  in  use  today  is 
more  simple;  distinction  is  made  between  the  isolated  farm,  the  vil- 
lage, and  the  city.  The  one  we  propose  is  simpler  still:  it  distinguishes 
between  only  two  essential  types  of  establishment,  including  in  each 
a  certain  number  of  subtypes. 

The  first  category  includes  simple  establishments,  that  is  to  say,  those 
composed  of  a  single  social  group.  It  thus  includes  what  is  currently 
called  the  farm,  formed  of  one  family,  and  the  hamlet  and  the  village, 
composed  of  several  or  many  families  which  form  among  themselves, 
however,  an  indivisible  society,  a  single  politico-social  organism.  The 
purest  type  of  village  is  the  "long  house"  such  as  one  observes  among 
the  Indians  of  America  or  in  Oceania,  where  all  the  members  of  the 
village  live  in  common  in  the  same  house,15  each  family  having  a  spe- 
cial compartment  assigned  to  it.  In  its  origin  the  village  is  only  the 
prolongation  of  the  clan;  it  forms  a  true  indivisible  family,  a  com- 
munity closely  bound  together  by  collective  responsibility.  Although 
the  modern  village  is  composed  of  a  multiplicity  of  families  dwelling 
apart,  these  families  are  unities  of  too  limited  and  yet  too  loose  a  nature 
to  constitute  true  social  divisions.  They  do  not  affect  the  village  or- 
ganization, which  remains  homogeneous  and  simple. 

The  second  category  of  social  settlements  includes  the  complex  estab- 
lishments, those  formed  from  a  multiplicity  of  distinct  social  groups. 
In  this  book  these  will  be  called  cities.  They  present  different  degrees 
of  complexity,  and  the  composition  of  their  component  groups  follows 
different  patterns;  but  all  present  two  common  properties  which  con- 
stitute the  definition  of  the  city:  a  dominant  character  and  a  secondary 
character. 

A.  Ordinarily  one  regards  the  city  as  a  fact  of  agglomeration,  or,  we 
say  more  precisely,  as  a  contraction  of  society 1G  or  of  a  part  of  society. 
This,  for  us,  is  not  the  most  important  characteristic,  but  rather  the  fact 
that  the  city  is  a  complex  society,  that  is,  formed  from  a  multiplicity  of 
secondary  groups.17  The  city  is  a  society  made  by  an  assembling  of 
smaller  societies:  families,  professional  groups,  etc.  It  is  thus  conceived 
not  as  a  simple  geographical  fact,  nor  even  as  a  simple  economic  phe- 

mie  politiquc,  translation,  I,  chap,  ix)  completed  from  this  point  of  view  the  classification 
of  Cantillon  and  distinguished  the  farm,  the  hamlet,  the  village,  and  the  city. 

15  Cf.  Morgan  (Ancient  Society,  New  York,  1878,  p.  399),  who  notes  that  some  of 
these  houses  contained  160  persons.  Morgan  (Les  premieres  civilizations,  Etudes  sur  h 
prehistoire  ft  I'histoire,  1909,  p.  121)  indicates  that  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  popu- 
lations of  Kamtchatka  lived  in  some  sort  of  subterranean  houses  from  20  to  100  meters 
long  and  6  to  10  meters  wide,  divided  into  compartments,  where  up  to  300  persons 
were  huddled  together. 

10  It  will  be  seen  later  that  there  are,  in  origin,  some  cities  which  result  from  the  con- 
centration of  an  entire  society. 

17  La  Bruyere  has  already  said:  'The  city  is  divided  into  diverse  societies  like  little 
republics  with  their  laws,  customs,  dialects.  ..."  (Caracteres,  chap,  vii,  4.) 


158  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

nomenon,  but  rather  as  a  social  fact.  Cities  do  not  appear  as  isolated 
phenomena,  sui  generis;  they  are  societies  which  can  be  connected  by 
their  characteristics  to  a  certain  social  type  and  which  differ  from  so- 
cieties of  the  same  type  only  in  degree. 

B.  In  fact,  even  in  the  interior  of  the  genus  formed  by  complex  so- 
cieties, there  exist  societies  of  two  species.  Those  of  one  type  have  a 
definite  local  base,  no  doubt  more  or  less  clearly  limited,  but  they  are 
always  rigidly  tied  to  some  portion  of  territory;  the  others  are  com- 
posed of  personal  associations  deprived  of  geographic  base.  The  local 
clan,  the  village,  the  province,  the  nation,  are  societies  of  the  first  type; 
the  totemic  clan,  commercial  society,  the  universal  Church,  are  of  the 
second  type.  Without  doubt,  the  latter  are  not  totally  lacking  in  bonds 
uniting  them  to  a  certain  point  in  space— the  totemic  center,  social 
seat,  or  holy  city;  but  these  latter  societies  extend  always  beyond  these 
limits,  and  the  site  serves  them  only  as  a  center. 

The  city  is  a  society  of  the  first  sort.  But  it  occupies  a  special  place 
in  this  group  of  societies,  and  thus  the  second  character  permits  us  to 
separate  it  from  societies  of  the  same  type.  All  have  a  local  base  which 
is  clearly  enough  defined;  but  that  local  base  is  more  or  less  extensive, 
the  society  on  it  is  more  or  less  distended,  and  consequently  the  density 
of  the  social  elements,  men  and  things,  varies.  An  Indian  or  an  Eskimo 
tribe  occupies  a  space  which,  relative  to  the  number  of  its  members,  is 
truly  enormous.  The  city,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  society  which,  in  rela- 
tion to  its  volume— that  is,  to  its  population — occupies  a  restricted 
space.18  This  difference  is  one  of  degree  solely,  which  is  specific  only 
in  that  it  separates  the  city,  a  social  subtype,  from  societies  of  the  same 
type;  however  it  is  not  this  character  which  distinguishes  the  city  from 
the  other  modes  of  settlement  and  this  is  why  we  regard  it  as  a  secon- 
dary character.  One  cannot  truly  say  where  begins  the  space  which  is 
so  small  that  the  society  occupying  it  can  be  called  a  city;  this  is  not  an 
absolute  notion  but  a  relative  idea  which  varies  according  to  the  social 
types  and  chiefly  with  the  population  of  the  city.  There  is  a  whole  scale 
of  intermediate  steps  between  the  city  and  the  most  extended  society  of 
the  same  type.  A  city  such  as  Paris  occupies  a  larger  space  than  a  small 
society  that  is  not  a  city;  but  by  reason  of  its  enormous  population  it 
constitutes  a  compact  conglomeration  of  social  groups,  and  that  is 
sufficient. 

18  Consequently,  a  market  can,  in  case  it  unites  a  multiplicity  of  social  groups,  as  do 
intertribal  markets,  be  considered  as  a  temporary  city.  There  are  some  "cities*1  which  are 
periodic.  In  another  way  the  market  often  presents  morphological  characters  like  those 
of  the  "city";  it  is  often  fortified.  But  we  do  not  wish  to  imply  by  this,  with  H.  Pirenne, 
that  all  cities  originate  from  market  places;  the  first  part  of  this  book  aimed  to  demon- 
strate the  opposite.  The  market  is  only  a  species  of  city  characterized  by  periodicity  and 
a  certain  junction, 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          159 

The  city  is  then  a  complex  society  whose  geographical  base  is  par- 
ticularly restrained  for  the  size  of  its  population,  or  whose  territorial 
element  is  relatively  meager  in  amount  compared  to  that  of  its  human 
elements. 

29.  MAUNIER:  FORMATION  OF  THE  CITY  BY  TEMPORARY  CONCEN- 
TRATION OF  A  COMPLEX  SOCIETY* 

I.  We  are  here  in  the  presence  of  the  most  rudimentary  of  urban 
phenomena;  this  is  the  intermittent  or  periodic  city;  its  causes  are  the 
original  causes  of  the  city.  This  phenomenon  is  something  complex 
in  itself.  It  is  constituted,  in  fact,  in  two  ways:  either  by  a  temporary 
and  periodic  contraction  of  a  society  that  is  normally  more  dispersed, 
or  by  a  permanent  concentration  of  elements  previously  dispersed,  but 
the  agglomeration  thus  constituted  is  mobile  and  is  rhythmically 
shifted  between  two  fixed  points. 

A.  The  first  formation  is  already  noted  in  the  seminomadic  societies. 
Among  the  Omahas  the  tribe  regularly  gathers  in  a  camp  where  each 
of  the  clans  of  the  tribe  has  its  indicated  place 1  and  which  thus  consti- 
tutes the  embryo  of  a  city.  Among  the  Eskimos  the  rhythm  of  concen- 
tration and  of  dispersion  is  regular;  in  summer  the  society  is  dispersed, 
in  winter  it  is  gathered  together  and  then  forms  groups  which  are 
often  of  considerable  size.2  In  the  more  stable  societies,  true  cities, 
which  are  deserted  in  times  of  peace,  serve  as  periodic  refuges  during 
wars.  Nomads  themselves  gather  in  these  refuges  with  their  flocks; 
most  of  these  refuges  give  a  shelter  to  whole  tribes 3 ;  that  is  to  say, 
complex  societies,  formed  of  clans,  necessarily  constitute  cities  within 
which  the  nomadic  life  of  the  open  is  transformed  in  a  way.  The  tem- 
porary constriction  of  the  society  leaves  its  organization  intact 4 ;  and 
likewise  its  functioning  is  undisturbed  and  nomadism  is  perpetuated 
even  within  the  city.5 

But  it  is  in  the  sedentary  and  agricultural  societies  that  this  phe- 
nomenon develops.  Whether  it  is  a  seasonal  rhythm  of  dispersion  and 

*  R.  Maunier,  op.  cit.t  Bk.  I,  Sec.  VII,  chap,  i,  pp.  54-60, 

1Dorsey,  Omaha  Sociology  (Third  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington, 
1883,  pp.  219-220).  Cf.  Powell,  Wyandot  Government  (First  Report,  p.  64;  Wyandots). 

3Mauss,  Essai  sur  les  variations  saisonni&res  des  societes  Eskimos  (L'annee  $ociolo~ 
gique,  IX,  65,  78,  and  esp.  83-84). 

sDurrieux  and  Fauvelle,  Samarkand,  pp.  47-48:  the  fortified  circle  of  Gheok-Tepe 
can  even  contain  several  tribes. 

4  Often  they  simply  set  up  their  tents  inside,  iust  as  outside  (ibid,  p.  48),  the  fortified 
circle,  in  ordinary  times  consisting  solely  o£  bare  ground. 

"Durrieux  and  Fauvelle,  Samarkand,  p.  149;  these  vast  agglomerations,  called  Kala, 
contain  a  great  number  of  empty  houses  and  the  indigenous  inhabitants  move  from  one 
to  the  other  of  these  with  great  facility. 


160  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  concentration,6  or,  particularly,  if  the  concentration  occurs  in  times 
of  warfare,  the  temporary  shelters,  empty  or  nearly  empty  in  times  of 
peace,  constitute  true  periodic  cities.7 

B.  The  second  formation  is  a  direct  transition  between  the  phenome- 
non of  periodic  cities  and  permanent  settlements.  The  concentration  is 
now  continued  longer,  but  the  establishment  is  periodically  displaced; 
there  is  a  summer  village  and  a  winter  village,8  and  this  displacement 
is  not  only  horizontal  but  also  vertical;  the  first  is  an  establishment  of 
the  plain,  the  other  of  the  mountain.9  One  has  here  in  some  fashion 
a  city  whose  parts  are  successive  instead  of  being  coexistent,  so  that  each 
serves  as  a  periodic  refuge  for  the  other.  This  is  a  phenomenon  which 
will  be  constant  in  those  permanent  establishments  in  which  one  part, 
better  defended,  serves  as  periodic  refuge  for  the  others.  Even  in  the 
temporary  cities  one  finds  such  a  refuge  place 10  ;  and  thus  there  is 
a  continuous  and  gradual  transition  from  the  forms  of  periodic  con- 
centration to  the  "city"  as  a  permanent  establishment.  The  perio- 
dicity of  the  city  is  prolonged  in  some  manner  in  its  interior;  a  periodic 
city  survives  in  the  permanent  city  itself. 

II.  What  are  the  causes  upon  yvhich  these  diverse  and  successive 
forms  of  the  same  phenomenon  depend? 

The  identity  of  the  fundamental  characteristic,  namely,  the  perio- 
dicity of  the  establishment,  permits  our  saying  that  the  causes  are  the 
same  and  vary  only  in  degree  or  in  quantity  in  proportion  as  one 
passes  from  the  periodic  city  to  the  permanent  city  with  mobile  base; 
and  that  evolution  reveals  the  existence  of  a  struggle  between  the  con- 
ditions facilitating  concentration  and  those  aiding  dispersion,  the  first 

eRatzel,  VolJterfymde,  I,  200  (Afrique);  Flach,  L' origins  historique  de  I' habitation 
(Enqucte  sur  lf  habitation)  >  II,  36:  the  Gauls  in  summer  inhabit  little  rural  aedificia  and 
retire  in  winter  into  the  villages  and  cities. 

7  Such  a  situation  has  been  found  among  the  Negroes  of  Africa  (Dapper,  Description 
de  1' Afrique,  Amsterdam,  1686,  p.  259);  among  the  Pueblo  Indians  (Krause,  DIG  Pueblo- 
Indianer  Abhandhmgen  der  KaiserL  Leopold  deutschen  Academic  der  Naturforscher, 
Halle,  1907,  LXXXVII,  p.  53);  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  (Westermarck,  Origin  and  De- 
velopment of  the  Moral  Ideas,  II,  629-631);  among  the  ancient  Romans  (Mommsen, 
Histoire  tomaine,  I,  51-52);  in  Roman  Africa   (Diem,  VAjrique  byzantine,  1896,  pp. 
143-144,  215);  in  Greece  (Haussoullier,  Let  vie  mtmidpale  en  Attique,  pp.  193-194);  in 
Gaul  (Jullian,  Histoirc  de  la  Gauls,  1908,  I,  174-175,  II,  38-39,  and  Flach,  L'origine  <fc 
I' habitation,  p.  26).   See  also  for  the   later  Middle  Ages:  Coggese,    Class'i  e  comuni 
mr ali  nd  medio  evo  italiano,  1907,  I,  176-177;  Hegel,  Geschichte  der  Stadteuerjassung 
in  Italien,  I,  480;  Ballard,  The  Domesday  Boroughs,  p,  109;  Meitzen,  Siedelung  und 
Agrarwesen,  etc.,  II,  239  (the  old  Slavic  cities  were  completely  empty  in  times  of  peace); 
Reinhardt,  Vol\sdichte  und  Siedlungsverhdltnisse  Oberschwabens,  Stuttgart,  1908,  p.  67. 

8  See  Ratzel,  Anthropogeographie,  I,  171    (Alaska,  Balkans). 
0  Krause,  Die  Pueblo -Indianer,  pp.  51-52. 

10  One  of  the  ancient  periodic  refuges  or  terramare  of  antiquity  is  formed  of  a  circle 
not  over  400  meters  diameter  inside  of  which  a  second  wall  encloses  a  citadel  of  60  or 
70  meters;  still,  there  is  no  indication  of  any  construction  within  these  circles.  (See  Bau- 
meister,  Denfynaler  des  \lassischcn  Altertums,  V.  Stadtanlage,  III,  1694-1695,  with  map.) 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          161 

becoming  more  and  more  important  and  the  latter  offering  less  and 
less  resistance. 

The  dispersing  tendencies  are  the  work  of  necessities  of  the  economic 
order;  they  partake  of  the  nature  of  the  economic  activity  of  the  socie- 
ties where  these  first  cities  are  located.  In  some  it  is  hunting  that  neces- 
sitates the  maximum  of  dispersion  of  the  social  units;  the  society 
gathers  together  in  winter  when  hunting  is  impossible  or  infrequent. 
In  other  cases  it  is  a  rudimentary  agriculture  which  exhausts  the  soil 
and  thus  requires  frequent  migrations  or  at  least  a  pronounced  dis- 
persion of  the  social  elements.  But  the  dispersion  necessitated  by  agri- 
cultural activity  is  less  than  that  associated  with  hunting:  the  neces- 
sity for  dispersion  weakens  as  one  mounts  the  scale  of  societies. 

At  the  same  time  there  is  a  necessity  for  concentration  when  in  a 
state  of  warfare.11  In  the  societies  that  are  not  stable,  war  is  rare  and 
intermittent,12  while  in  settled  societies  it  becomes  frequent  and  peri- 
odic,13 and  necessitates  the  existence  of  fixed  havens  where  the  popula- 
tion first  concentrates  periodically  and  later  in  a  permanent  manner, 
when  the  war  is  continued  for  a  considerable  period.  Thus  the  action 
of  economic  necessity  for  dispersion  determines  the  rhythmic  change 
from  the  settlement  in  the  plain  during  the  summer  to  the  heights  in 
winter  where  there  is  more  security.  This  occurs  when  the  cycle  of 
agricultural  tasks  is  accomplished. 

It  remains  for  us  to  determine  what  causes  the  lack  of  economic  dif- 
ferentiation inherent  in  these  first  urban  settlements.  One  comes  to  see 
that  the  city  is  in  its  origin  only  a  gathering  together,  at  first  tempo- 
rary and  then  permanent,  of  a  complex  society  formed  of  a  multi- 
plicity of  distinct  groups.  It  is  generally  a  tribe  which  constitutes  this 
society,  and  the  tribe  is  an  assemblage  of  clans.  When  concentrated 
it  remains  what  it  was  when  dispersed;  it  continues  to  be  formed 
from  many  local  groups,  normally  independent  of  each  other  from 
an  economic  point  of  view,  the  tribe  scarcely  constituting  more  than 
a  political  and  religious  unity.  Thus  this  society  finds  itself  composing 
a  city  of  undifferentiated  type  by  simple  contraction  from  a  pre- 
existing organization.  The  internal  organization  of  the  city  is  only 
a  prolongation  and  a  transference  of  the  tribal  organization.  All  the 
divisions  of  the  latter  are  found  in  it;  not  only  do  the  clans  have  their 
indicated  place  in  the  periodic  city  of  the  Omahas,  but  also  the  two 
phratries  of  the  tribe  occupy  opposing  positions  in  that  transitory 

11  This  is  what  the  books  themselves  often  say:  The  cities  and  chateaux  are  built,  say 
the  old  English  books,  "for  the  shelter  of  the  folk,"  (See  Ballard,  "Domesday  Boroughs, 
P.  109.) 

1  The  pacific  character  of  the  intertribal  relations  in  Australia  have  often  been  noted. 

18  It  was  a  chronic  state  among  the  agricultural  Indians  in  North  America. 


162  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

city  14  ;  and  even  the  periodic  fortified  refuges  often  include  many 
small  circles,  besides  the  central  circle,15  which  are  the  first  germ  of 
suburbs,  and  where  the  many  divisions  of  the  group  which  is  taking 
refuge  in  this  gathering  without  doubt  continue  to  live  apart. 

The  organization  of  these  first  cities  is  then  only  a  particular  form 
of  a  more  general  organization,  the  tribal  organization,  from  which  it 
issues  by  simple  contraction.  The  economic  autonomy  of  the  parts  of 
the  city  is  only  the  prolongation  of  the  economic  autonomy  of  the 
class,  and  it  depends  upon  the  same  causes.  We  are  not  going  to  in- 
vestigate these  causes  at  this  time;  it  suffices  to  relate  them  to  this  more 
general  structure  and  to  have  shown  in  the  essential  character  of  the 
undifferentiated  city  a  continuation  of  the  general  character  of  the 
social  milieu  in  which  it  is  formed. 

30.  W.  M.  FLINDERS  PETRIE:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  CITIES  AND  THE  CITY- 
STATES  IN  ANCIENT  EGYPT  AND  ITS  FACTORS* 

The  earliest  stage  which  we  know  was  that  of  a  hunting  people.  .  .  . 
The  first  condition  for  a  hunting  life  is  the  reservation  of  rights  over 
an  area  by  the  tribe,  excluding  other  tribes.  Our  notice,  "Trespassers 
will  be  prosecuted,"  is  the  most  venerable  formula  that  we  have.  Tribal 
wars  over  hunting  grounds  and  collecting  grounds  have  always  been 
going  on,  for  getting  meat,  fruits,  seeds,  roots,  and  herbs.  The  tribe  is 
organized  to  protect  those  rights.  .  .  .  This  exclusive  use  of  land  for 
food  gathering  needs  a  united  tribe  to  defend  it  from  intruders,  and 
therefore  a  chief  to  hold  it  together.  .  .  . 

So  soon  as  the  rainfall  ceased  in  North  Africa  and  the  Nile  partly 
dried  up,  there  were  mud  flats  for  cultivation,  and  there  was  less  game 
on  the  hills.  A  race  pushed  in  from  the  west,  bringing  agriculture  and 
abolishing  cannibalism,  changes  linked  with  the  Osiris  group  of  gods. 
This  regular  production  of  food,  artificially  sown,  provided  larger  sup- 
plies, which  could  be  stored  in  greater  amounts  than  were  needed  by 
the  cultivators.  This  provided  capital,  and  thus  the  means  of  extending 
power  and  control,  which  made  a  city-state  possible.  It  has  been  no- 
ticed before  how  remarkably  similar  the  distances  are  between  the 
early  nome  capitals  of  the  Delta  (twenty-one  miles  on  an  average)  and 

"  Dorsey,  Omaha  Sociology  (Third  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  pp.  219,  220). 
Cf.  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  p.  95.  (There  is  also  local  opposition  among  the  Iroquois 
when  the  tribe  assembles  in  council.) 

15  Baumeister,  Den^maler  des  kfassischen  Altertums,  V.  Stadtanlage,  HI,  1695-1696; 
Meitzen,  Siedelung  und  Agrartvesen  der  Westgermanen  und  Qstgermanen,  etc.,  II,  239, 
These  circles  do  not  contain,  he  notes,  any  type  of  buildings;  the  temporary  gathering 
of  the  tribe  does  not  even  modify  the  methods  of  habitation. 

*  From  W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie,  Social  Life  in  Ancient  Egypt,  Houghton  Mifllin  Co., 
Boston  and  New  York,  1923.  Reprinted  with  permission  of  the  publisher. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          163 

the  early  cities  of  Mesopotamia  (averaging  twenty  miles  apart).  Some 
physical  cause  seems  to  limit  the  primitive  rule  in  this  way.  Is  it  not 
the  limit  of  central  storage  of  grain,  which  is  the  essential  form  of 
early  capital?  Supplies  could  be  centralised  up  to  ten  miles  away;  be- 
yond that  the  cost  of  transport  made  it  better  worth  while  to  have 
a  nearer  center.  If  so,  the  unit  of  the  nome,  or  Euphratean  state,  was 
the  central  corn  store;  and  it  was  the  central  store  of  the  surplus  pro- 
duction which  gave  the  power  to  form  an  independent  city-state.  The 
medium  of  exchange  regulated  the  size  of  the  state,  and  this  principle 
we  shall  see  to  apply  to  later  ages.  In  this  period  the  storage  of  corn 
was  the  only  form  of  capital  which  could  be  used  to  pay  for  united 
action,  and  purposes  which  were  beyond  the  powers  of  a  village. 

For  a  city-state  to  control  a  country  was  impossible  if  working  on 
a  corn  basis.  Neither  Egypt,  nor  Greece,  nor  Italy  could  establish  a 
wider  rule  until  metals  became  common  enough  to  be  accumulated 
and  used  to  pay  for  labor.  Corn  could  not  be  sent  to  and  fro  as  taxes, 
and  sent  back  again  for  payments  over  long  distances;  it  was  too  bulky, 
heavy  and  liable  to  wastage.  So  soon  as  Egypt  obtained  a  full  supply  of 
copper  (as  the  large  tools  show),  at  the  close  of  the  prehistoric  age, 
then  united  dominion  became  possible.  Values  were  reckoned  in  cop- 
per down  to  Ptolemaic  times.  The  same  was  the  case  in  other  coun- 
tries, and  Italy  retained  the  fiction  of  weighing  copper,  as  the  legalising 
of  a  sale,  long  after  silver  and  gold  were  the  currency. 

The  next  stage  of  the  growth  of  power  depends  on  a  free  supply  of 
silver,  a  more  portable  form  of  capital,  which  allows  of  tribute  and  pay- 
ment over  a  wide  area.  Silver  was  not  much  used  in  Egypt,  as  the  sup- 
ply had  to  come  from  a  distance,  and  silver  and  gold  together  became 
fairly  usual  about  the  XVIIIth  dynasty.  Then  we  see  the  immense  ex- 
pansion of  Egypt,  when  tribute  could  be  levied  in  precious  metal,  and 
army  supplies  thus  kept  up.  In  Mesopotamia,  the  turning  point  of 
silver  coming  in  is  given  on  the  obelisk  of  Manishtusu  (equivalent  to 
the  IXth  dynasty) ,  when  land  is  valued  both  in  corn  and  in  silver,  the 
old  corn  unit  just  giving  way  to  metal.  A  century  later  came  the  first 
great  unification  by  Naram-sin.  In  Greece,  silver  gave  the  power  of 
union  of  states  under  Athens,  the  joint  treasure  of  silver  being  kept  at 
Delos.  Such  sufficed  for  a  united  Greece  to  work  upon;  but  yet  Persia, 
the  power  with  gold,  could  not  be  touched.  When  Philip  started  a 
great  gold  currency,  it  was  then  that  sufficient  fluid  capital  could  be 
wielded  to  attack  Persia.  The  union  of  that  great  kingdom,  the  might- 
iest known  in  the  world  till  then,  from  the  Balkans  to  Lahore,  rested 
upon  a  vast  gold  basis,  the  central  store  being  tons  of  gold,  worth 
28,000,000  pounds.  This  capital,  immense  for  the  ancient  world,  was 
five  times  as  much  as  the  modern  reserve  of  Germany,  and  was  kept 


164  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  the  Julius  tower;  when  it  was  scattered  over  the  Greek  world  it  gave 
the  Greek  the  power  of  welding  the  later  kingdoms,  that  were  each 
far  greater  than  the  Greece  which  bounded  the  race  a  century  before. 
The  growth  of  Roman  power  similarly  expanded  on  transfer  to  a  silver 
and  then  to  a  gold  basis.  England,  on  a  silver  currency,  could  only  hold 
itself  together;  but  when  the  gold  currency  begins  to  be  effective,  the 
battle  of  Sluys  started  the  career  of  expansion,  which,  after  attempting 
to  conquer  France,  finally  found  its  scope  overseas.  Lastly,  we  have 
gone  a  step  further.  International  trade  can  hardly  shift  all  its  pay- 
ments in  gold  about  the  world;  it  has  on  a  credit  basis  resorted  to 
paper,  and  so  obtained  a  still  more  portable  system  of  bills  of  exchange. 

The  limit,  then,  of  political  union  and  extensive  trade  depends  on 
the  transmissibility  of  payments.  Corn  suffices  for  a  city-state,  copper 
for  a  small  group  of  cities,  silver  for  an  isolated  country,  gold  for  an 
empire,  paper  for  the  relations  between  empires.  Without  the  means 
of  storing  power  by  capital,  a  wide  dominion  can  only  rest  on  violence, 
and  is  merely  a  series  of  plunder  raids;  the  dominion  may  exist,  like 
that  of  the  Huns  or  Mongols  or  Bolshevists,  but  it  is  merely  a  tempo- 
rary compulsion.  No  stable  and  united  rule,  levying  and  distributing 
currency,  can  be  extended  beyond  the  limits  available  for  that  cur- 
rency. 

Let  us  now  look  back  to  the  condition  of  society  in  Egypt  in  the  pre- 
historic age,  when  it  was  working  on  the  corn  basis.  The  chief  of  each 
nome  would  be  supported  by  the  central  store,  but  as  soon  as  a  wider 
dominion  of  several  cities  joined,  the  chief  would  have  to  travel  round 
and  be  supported  by  each  in  turn.  He  would  have  maintenance  like 
a  Celtic  chief  by  food-rents  proportioned  to  each  estate,  so  many  days 
at  one  and  another.  In  England  this  system  of  local  maintenance  re- 
mained in  Saxon  and  Norman  times,  owing  to  the  scarcity  of  precious 
metals,  and  the  Court  shifted  around,  mainly  between  London,  Win- 
chester, and  Gloucester,  during  each  year,  so  as  not  to  eat  up  one  dis- 
trict, nor  to  require  all  supplies  to  be  sent  long  distances.  It  seems  very 
likely  that  this  system  in  Egypt  originated  the  "royal  offering"  for 
the  benefit  of  the  dead  nobles;  the  king  allowed  so  much  food-rent  of 
his  to  be  allotted  to  the  ancestral  offerings.  In  one  of  the  earliest  tomb 
inscriptions  (Meten)  we  find  "a  concession  of  a  domain"  to  a  noble, 
and  "a  concession  of  twelve  land  endowments  for  funeral  offerings" 
for  his  benefit,  clearly  a  royal  gift  for  endowment  of  the  dead.  There 
does  not  seem  in  Egypt  any  trace  left,  in  historic  times,  of  a  tenancy 
for  life  or  lives,  with  reversion  to  the  State,  so  we  need  not  suppose  this 
to  have  been  in  force  in  prehistoric  society;  only,  as  land  was  looked 
on  as  belonging  primarily  to  the  king,  we  may  take  it  that  in  the  tribal 
state  the  land  was  allotted  by  the  chief,  and  reverted  in  case  of  failure 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          165 

of  heirs.  There  do  not  seem  to  have  been  feudal  tenures  with  special 
obligations,  only  all  land  had  to  provide  various  dues  and  taxes,  unless 
specially  exempt  because  of  transfer  to  a  temple. 

When  the  dynastic  people  came  in,  just  after  the  beginning  of  a  free 
use  of  copper,  they  organised  a  considerable  and  growing  class  of  offi- 
cials, who  were  no  doubt  quartered  on  the  country,  but  who  could  use 
metal  as  capital  in  hand,  for  which  every  one  would  work  because  it 
was  wanted  for  tools.  By  the  third  reign,  there  was  a  director  of  the 
inundation;  in  the  fourth  reign  there  is  a  list  of  the  nomes  on  the  seal 
of  an  official  who  had  a  control  in  them;  there  are  commanders  of  fort- 
resses, a  director  of  the  interior,  and  other  offices.  After  that  the  high 
officials  rapidly  multiply,  until  in  the  great  settlement  of  the  kingdom 
under  Khufu  (Cheops)  the  priestly  property  was  cut  down,  and  the 
whole  realm  organised  on  lines  which  it  retained  ever  after. 

31.  FUSTEL  DE  COULANGES:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  ClTY  IN  ANCIENT  GREECE 

AND  ROME* 

The  tribe,  like  the  family  and  the  phratry,  was  established  as  an  in- 
dependent body,  since  it  had  a  special  worship  from  which  the  stranger 
was  excluded.  Once  formed,  no  new  family  could  be  admitted  to  it. 
No  more  could  two  tribes  be  fused  into  one;  their  religion  was  op- 
posed to  this.  But  just  as  several  phratries  were  united  in  a  tribe,  sev- 
eral tribes  might  associate  together,  on  condition  that  the  religion  of 
each  should  be  respected.  The  day  on  which  this  alliance  took  place 
the  city  existed. 

It  is  of  little  account  to  seek  the  cause  which  determined  several 
neighboring  tribes  to  unite.  Sometimes  it  was  voluntary;  sometimes  it 
was  imposed  by  the  superior  force  of  a  tribe  or  by  the  powerful  will 
of  a  man.  What  is  certain  is  that  the  bond  of  the  new  association  was 
still  a  religion.  The  tribes  that  united  to  form  a  city  never  failed  to 
light  a  sacred  fire  and  to  adopt  a  common  religion. 

Thus  human  society,  in  this  race,  did  not  enlarge  like  a  circle,  which 
increases  on  all  sides,  gaining  little  by  little.  There  were,  on  the  con- 
trary, small  groups,  which,  having  been  long  established,  were  finally 
joined  together  in  larger  ones.  Several  families  formed  the  phratry, 
several  phratries  the  tribe,  several  tribes  the  city.  Family,  phratry,  tribe, 
city,  were,  moreover,  societies  exactly  similar  to  each  other,  which  were 
formed  one  after  the  other  by  a  series  of  federations. 

We  must  remark,  also,  that  when  the  different  groups  became  thus 
associated,  none  of  them  lost  its  individuality  or  its  independence.  Al- 

*  Taken  from  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  The  Ancient  City,  trans,  by  Willard  Small  from 
the  latest  French  edition  published  before  1878,  Boston,  Lee  and  Shepard,  1900,  pp. 
167-170. 


166  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

though  several  families  were  united  in  a  phratry,  each  one  of  them 
remained  constituted  just  as  it  had  been  when  separate.  Nothing  was 
changed  in  it,  neither  worship  nor  priesthood,  nor  property  nor  inter- 
nal justice.  Curies  afterwards  became  associated,  but  each  retained  its 
worship,  its  assemblies,  its  festivals,  its  chief.  From  the  tribe  men 
passed  to  the  city;  but  the  tribe  was  not  dissolved  on  that  account,  and 
each  of  them  continued  to  form  a  body,  very  much  as  if  the  city  had 
not  existed.  In  religion  there  subsisted  a  multitude  of  subordinate  wor- 
ships, above  which  was  established  one  common  to  all;  in  politics, 
numerous  little  governments  continued  to  act,  while  above  them  a 
common  government  was  founded. 

The  city  was  a  confederation.  Hence  it  was  obliged,  at  least  for  sev- 
eral centuries,  to  respect  the  religious  and  civil  independence  of  the 
tribes,  curies,  and  families,  and  had  not  the  right,  at  first,  to  interfere 
in  the  private  affairs  of  each  of  these  little  bodies.  It  had  nothing  to  do 
in  the  interior  of  a  family;  it  was  not  the  judge  of  what  passed  there; 
it  left  to  the  father  the  right  and  duty  of  judging  his  wife,  his  son,  and 
his  client.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  private  law,  which  had  been  fixed  at 
the  time  when  families  were  isolated,  could  subsist  in  the  city,  and  was 
modified  only  at  a  very  late  period. 

The  mode  of  founding  ancient  cities  is  attested  by  usages  which  con- 
tinued for  a  very  long  time. 

If  we  examine  the  army  of  the  city  in  primitive  times  we  find  it  dis- 
tributed into  tribes,  curies,  and  families,1  "in  such  a  way,"  says  one  of 
the  ancients,  "that  the  warrior  has  for  a  neighbor  in  the  combat  one 
with  whom,  in  time  of  peace,  he  has  offered  the  libation  and  sacrifice 
at  the  same  altar."  If  we  look  at  the  people  when  assembled,  in  the 
early  ages  of  Rome,  we  see  them  voting  by  curies  and  by  gentes?  If  we 
look  at  the  worship,  we  see  at  Rome  six  Vestals,  two  for  each  tribe.  At 
Athens,  the  archon  offers  the  sacrifice  in  the  name  of  the  entire  city, 
but  he  has  in  the  religious  part  of  the  ceremony  as  many  assistants  as 
there  are  tribes. 

Thus  the  city  was  not  an  assemblage  of  individuals;  it  was  a  con- 
federation of  several  groups,  which  were  established  before  it,  and 
which  it  permitted  to  remain.  We  see,  in  the  Athenian  orators,  that 
every  Athenian  formed  a  portion  of  four  distinct  societies  at  the  same 
time;  he  was  a  member  of  a  family,  of  a  phratry,  of  a  tribe,  and  of  a 
city.  He  did  not  enter  at  the  same  time  and  the  same  day  into  all  these 
four,  like  a  Frenchman,  who  at  the  moment  of  his  birth  belongs  at 
once  to  a  family,  a  commune,  a  department,  and  a  country.  The  phra- 
try and  the  tribe  are  not  administrative  divisions.  A  man  enters  at 

1  Homer,  Iliad t  II,  362;  Varro,  De  Ling.  Lett.,  V,  89;  Isacus,  II,  42. 
2Aulus  Gellius,  XV,  27. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          167 

different  times  into  these  four  societies,  and  ascends,  so  to  speak,  from 
one  to  the  other.  First,  the  child  is  admitted  into  the  family  by  the  reli- 
gious ceremony,  which  takes  place  six  days  after  his  birth.  Some  years 
later  he  enters  the  phratry  by  a  new  ceremony,  which  we  have  already 
described.  Finally,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  or  eighteen,  he  is  presented  for 
admission  into  the  city.  On  that  day,  in  the  presence  of  an  altar,  and 
before  the  smoking  flesh  of  a  victim,  he  pronounces  an  oath,  by  which 
he  binds  himself,  among  other  things,  always  to  respect  the  religion  of 
the  city.  From  that  day  he  is  initiated  into  the  public  worship,  and  be- 
comes a  citizen.3  If  we  observe  this  young  Athenian  rising,  step  by 
step,  from  worship  to  worship,  we  have  a  symbol  of  the  degrees 
through  which  human  association  has  passed.  The  course  which  this 
young  man  is  constrained  to  follow  is  that  which  society  first  followed. 

32.  V.  O.  KLUCHEVSKY:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  CITIES  AMONG  EASTERN 

SLAVS* 

So  far,  then,  as  can  be  seen,  the  union  of  the  clan  was  still  the  domi- 
nant form  of  social  life  among  the  Eastern  Slavs  at  the  time  of  their 
settlement  of  the  Russian  plain.  At  all  events,  this  is  the  only  form 
which  the  Poviest  specifies  with  any  clearness.  "Each  man  lived  with 
his  own  clan,  in  his  own  place,  and  ruled  there  his  clan.  .  .  ."  As  the 
immigrants  spread  themselves  over  the  plain  they  tended  chiefly  to- 
wards its  forest  strip.  ...  In  those  wilds  the  Slavonic  settlers  sup- 
ported themselves  by  trapping  fur-bearing  animals,  by  forest  apicul- 
ture, and  by  primitive  husbandry.  Yet,  inasmuch  as  spots  capable  of 
being  utilised  for  such  pursuits  were  comparatively  few  and  far  be- 
tween, it  follows  that  the  immigrants  would  have  to  search  the  thickets 
and  marshes  until  they  found  some  comparatively  dry  and  open  clear- 
ing capable  of  being  prepared  for  agriculture  or  of  being  used  as  a 
basis  for  hunting  and  wild  apiculture  in  the  surrounding  forest,  and 
these  arable  spots  would  be  like  little  islands  scattered  over  a  sea  of 
timber  and  swamp.  Upon  them  the  settlers  would  erect  their  lonely 
dwellings,  surround  those  dwellings  with  earthen  fortifications,  and 
clear  a  space  about  them  for  husbandry  and  for  the  preparation  of  ap- 
pliances for  the  chase  and  apiculture.  To  this  day  the  region  around 
ancient  Kiev  retains  vestiges  of  such  fortified  homesteads,  the  so-called 
gorodistcha.  .  .  .T  These  gorodistcha  are  usually  round  (though  occa- 
sionally square)  spaces  marked  out  by  the  remains  of  a  rampart,  and 

8  Demosthenes,  in  Etibul;  Isaeus,  VII,  IX;  Lycurgus,  I,  76;  Schol.,  in  Demosth.,  p.  438; 
Pollux,  VIII,  105;  Stobaeus,  DC  Repub, 

*  V.  O.  Kluchevsky,  A  History  of  Russia,  trans,  by  C.  J.  Hogarth,  London,  J,  M.  Dent 
&  Sons,  1911,  I,  41-63. 

1  Literally,  remains  of  towns,  or  sites  of  towns. 


168  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

are  to  be  found  scattered  along  the  Dnieper  at  a  distance  of  from  four 
to  eight  versts  from  one  another.  .  .  . 

Still  more  important  than  juridical  changes  was  the  series  of  eco- 
nomic results  which  followed  upon  the  settling  of  the  Eastern  Slavs  in 
the  Dnieper  region.  We  see  from  the  Poviest  that  the  great  mass  of  the 
Slavonic  population  occupied  the  western  half  of  the  Russian  plain; 
and  it  was  by  the  great  river  which  bisects  this  plain  from  north  to 
south  that  the  industry  of  that  population  was  governed.  The  vital 
importance  of  rivers  as  affording,  in  those  days,  the  only  means  of  com- 
munication from  point  to  point  caused  the  Dnieper  to  become  the 
principal  industrial  artery,  the  main  trade-route,  of  the  western  half  of 
the  plain.  .  .  . 

The  most  important  result  of  this  flourishing  trade  with  the  East 
was  the  rise  of  the  ancient  trading  towns  of  Rus.  ...  A  glance  at  their 
geographical  distribution  will  suffice  to  show  that  they  owed  their 
origin  to  the  growth  of  Russian  foreign  trade,  seeing  that,  for  the  most 
part,  they  stretched  in  a  chain  along  the  principal  river  route  leading 
"from  the  Varaeger  to  the  Greeks" — that  is  to  say,  along  the  Dnieper- 
Volkhov  line.  .  .  .  The  rise  of  these  great  trading  towns  was  the  direct 
outcome  of  the  complex  economic  process  imposed  upon  the  Slavs  by 
their  new  environment.  We  have  seen  how,  as  they  settled  on  the 
Dnieper  and  its  tributaries,  people  began  to  live  in  isolated,  fortified 
homesteads.  Next,  with  the  growth  of  trade,  there  grew  up  among 
these  isolated  settlements  a  number  of  trading-centers  or  places  of  in- 
dustrial exchange,  whither  fur-hunters  and  forest  apiculturists  would 
assemble  for  gostiba  or  barter :  whence  such  spots  acquired  the  name  of 
pogosti,  or  places  where  gostiba  was  carried  on.  Subsequently,  upon 
the  adoption  of  Christianity,  shrines  became  established  at  these  local 
rural  markets  (as  places  of  the  most  general  resort)  and,  eventually 
also,  parish  churches.  Around  the  parish  church  it  was  customary  to 
inter  the  dead,  and  thus  the  pogost  acquired  also  the  importance  of 
being  the  site  of  the  local  burial  ground.  Finally  the  parish  was  made 
to  coincide  with,  or  came  to  be  formed  into,  a  local  area  of  administra- 
tion, and  so  developed  into  something  resembling  a  volost.  All  thesSe 
terms,  however,  are  borrowed  from  a  later  terminology,  since,  origi- 
nally, these  developed  pogosti  were  known  only  as  gostinnia  miesta,  or 
places  for  gostiba  (barter).  In  time,  certain  of  the  smaller  gostinnia 
miesta  which  chanced  to  lie  close  to  a  busy  trade  route  developed  into 
markets  of  considerable  size,  and  from  these  larger  markets,  serving  as 
places  of  exchange  between  the  native  producer  and  the  foreign  buyer, 
there  arose  those  ancient  Russian  trading  towns  which  marked  the 
water  route  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Greek  colonies  and  served  as  the 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          169 

industrial  centers  and  chief  storage  depots  of  the  provinces  which  sub- 
sequently became  formed  around  them.  .  .  . 

Soon  the  great  trading  towns  of  Rus  had  to  undertake  their  own 
defence  against  possible  foes.  From  this  period,  therefore,  they  began 
to  arm  their  citizens,  to  gird  themselves  about  with  walls,  to  introduce 
military  organisation,  and  to  rely  upon  trained  fighting  men.  Thus 
what  were  once  only  industrial  centers  and  storage  depots  for  com- 
merce now  became  converted  into  fortified  points  and  armed  places 
of  refuge. 

One  circumstance  in  particular  which  contributed  to  the  growth  of 
the  military-industrial  population  of  these  towns  was  the  fact  that,  with 
the  commencement  of  the  ninth  century  and  the  close  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  the  Great,2  the  coasts  of  Western  Europe  began  to  be  overrun 
by  bands  of  armed  pirates  from  Scandinavia,  and  inasmuch  as  the 
greater  proportion  of  these  rovers  emanated  from  Dania,  or  Denmark, 
they  came  to  be  known  in  the  West  as  Danes.  At  about  the  same 
period,  sea  rovers  from  the  Baltic  began  to  make  their  appearance  also 
upon  the  river  trade  routes  of  the  Russian  plain,  where  they  acquired 
the  local  name  of  Variagi  or  Varangians.  .  .  . 

In  proportion,  too,  as  there  arose  in  the  Russian  towns  an  armed  class 
constituted  of  the  native  and  immigrant  elements  just  mentioned,  and 
the  towns  became  converted  into  fortified  points,  the  relation  of  the 
latter  to  the  surrounding  populations  also  necessarily  underwent  a 
change;  with  the  result  that,  when  the  Chozar  yoke  began  to  relax  its 
grip,  those  towns  which  lay  among  tribes  hitherto  subject  to  the  Cfo> 
zars  declared  themselves  independent.  .  .  .  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  those  towns  soon  followed  up  their  assumption  of  their  own  de- 
fence by  a  corresponding  political  subordination  to  themselves  of  their 
trade  districts  or  the  districts  of  which  each  such  town  was  the  central 
storage  depot.  This  process  of  placing  the  trade  districts  in  political  de- 
pendence upon  the  now  fortified  towns  seems  to  have  been  begun  .  .  . 
before  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century.  ...  It  is  difficult  to  say  by 
what  means  this  system  actually  became  established.  Possibly  the  trade 
districts  were  driven  by  the  pressure  of  external  danger  to  make  volun- 
tary submission  to  the  towns,  but  it  is  more  probable  that  the  towns 
availed  themselves  of  the  large  military-industrial  class  which  they  now 
contained  to  subdue  the  districts  by  force  of  arms.  Or  sometimes  the 
one  may  have  been  the  case,  and  sometimes  the  other.  .  .  . 

The  question  next  arises,  Were  the  trading  towns  responsible  for 
the  formation  of  these  provinces,  or  had  the  latter  a  tribal  origin?  .  .  . 
If  they  had  had  a  tribal  origin,  and  had  been  compounded  of  whole 
tribes  irrespectively  of  economic  interests,  each  such  tribe  would  have 

2  Of  Sweden. 


170  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

formed  a  province  by  itself — or,  in  other  words,  each  province  would 
have  been  composed  only  of  one  particular  tribe.  This,  however,  was 
not  the  case:  there  was  not  a  single  province  consisting  wholly  of  one 
complete  tribe.  The  majority  of  them  included  within  their  boundaries 
two  or  three  different  tribes  or  parts  of  tribes,  while  the  remainder 
were  made  up  of  one  complete  tribe  and  one  or  more  details  of  others. 
.  .  .  Thus  we  see  that  the  old  tribal  areas  coincided  neither  with  the 
old  town  districts  nor  with  the  newly-formed  provinces  of  the  Princi- 
pality of  Kiev.  Nevertheless,  it  is  possible  to  tell  from  the  tribal  con- 
tents of  those  provinces  what  was  the  factor  which  governed  their  allot- 
ment. If  among  a  tribe  there  arose  two  great  towns,  that  tribe  became 
split  into  portions;  while  if,  on  the  other  hand,  a  tribe  possessed  no 
great  town  at  all,  that  tribe  became  absorbed  into  a  province  attached 
to  some  other  capital  town.  We  have  seen  that  the  rise  of  an  important 
trading  town  among  a  tribe  depended  upon  the  geographical  position 
occupied  by  that  unit.  Consequently  such  towns  as  became  capitals  of 
provinces  arose  exclusively  among  the  populations  lining  the  great 
river  trade  routes  of  the  Dnieper,  the  Volkhov,  and  the  Western 
Dwina,  while  tribes  remote  from  those  routes  possessed  no  great  town 
of  their  own,  and  therefore  did  not  constitute  separate  provinces,  but 
were  absorbed  into  those  belonging  to  tribes  possessing  such  a  center. 
.  .  ,  From  this  we  see  that  the  factor  which  governed  the  formation 
of  the  provinces  was  the  great  trading  towns  which  arose  along  the 
principal  river  trade  routes  and  of  which  none  stood  among  tribes 
living  remote  from  those  routes.  .  .  . 

To  sum  up,  then,  we  see  that  the  great  fortified  towns  which  became 
capitals  of  provinces  arose  solely  among  those  tribes  which  were  most 
closely  connected  with  the  foreign  trading  movement,  and  that,  after 
placing  in  subordination  to  themselves  the  surrounding  rural  popula- 
tions of  their  respective  tribes  (for  whom  they  served,  first  of  all  as 
trade  centers,  and  subsequently  as  centers  of  administration),  absorbed 
into  their  provinces  some  of  the  population  of  neighboring  tribes  which 
possessed  no  great  town  of  their  own. 

33.  SOME  ART:  DEFINITION  OF  A  CITY  IN  THE  ECONOMIC  SENSE* 

A  city  in  the  economic  sense  is  a  rather  large  settlement  of  people 
who  are  dependent  for  their  sustenance  upon  the  products  of  the  agri- 
cultural labor  of  others.1  The  specifically  economic  coloring  of  this 

*From  Werner  Sombart,  Der  modcrne  Kapitahsmtts,  3te  Auflage,  erster  Band,  erste 
Halfte,  Munchen  und  Leipzig,  Verlag  von  Duncker  und  Humblot,  pp.  128-129.  Trans- 
lated and  published  with  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publisher. 

1I  added  to  my  definition  which  I  gave  in  the  1st  ed.  (Vol.  II,  p.  191)  the  expres- 
sion, "rather  large,"  being  fully  aware  that  I  carried  a  certain  vagueness  into  the  defini- 
tion. It  will  never  be  possible  to  decide  numerically  when  a  group  of  men  living  in 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  171 

concept  becomes  clear  at  once  if  we  compare  it  with  other  conceptions 
of  city:  for  instance,  the  architectonic,  the  juridical,  the  statistical,  or 
any  other  one.  A  city  in  the  economic  sense  may  very  well  be  a  village 
in  the  administrative  sense:  for  instance,  Langenbielau  at  the  present 
time,  or  Kempen  up  to  the  year  1294.2 

A  village  in  the  economic  sense  of  the  word  does  not  become  a  city 
by  being  fortified,  as  for  instance  the  vici  in  modum  municipiomrn  of 
Roman  Africa,  of  which  Frontin  speaks,  and  which  are  elsewhere 
called  castella,  i.e.,  which  were  villages  prepared  for  defense.3  It  be- 
comes a  city  just  as  little  by  having  a  fair  in  it  or  even  by  being  granted 
the  right  of  keeping  a  market.  Neither  does  a  village  become  a  city  in 
the  economic  sense,  even  if  it  were  ten  times  a  city  in  the  administra- 
tive sense.  The  numerous  "villages"  which  were  raised  to  the  rank  of 
cities  in  the  Middle  Ages  by  being  invested  with  city  rights  4  remained, 
of  course,  in  the  economic  respect  what  they  had  been  before:  villages. 

Finally,  the  economic  concept  of  the  city  is  also  distinguished  from 
the  statistical,  which  is  an  agglomeration  of  a  great  number  of  persons, 
We  must  learn  to  consider  the  giant  cities  of  Oriental  antiquity,  like 
Nineveh  and  Babylon,  not  as  cities  in  the  economic  sense.5  Likewise 
we  must  not  ascribe  the  character  of  city  to  the  large  old  communities 
of  India  like  Calcutta 6  or  the  modern  Teheran  or  similar  settlements.7 

34.  SOMBART:  GENESIS  OF  THE  CITY* 

If  we  raise  the  question  as  to  the  genesis  of  a  city  in  the  economic 
sense  of  the  word,  we  must,  according  to  my  opinion,  answer  in  two 
ways. 

First,  whence  came  these  men  without  land  and  without  possessions 
who  were  destined  to  form  a  city,  and  what  caused  them  to  congre- 

a  city  way  is  large  enough  to  constitute  a  "city."  A  certain  size  must,  however,  exist; 

a  single  man  cannot  make  up  a  city.  The  quantity  becomes  quality  (city)  at  a  certain 

point.  For  my  purposes  this  little  vagueness  is  of  no  concern. 

*  Th.  Ilgen,  "Die  Entstehung  der  Stadte  des  Erzstifts  Koln  am  Niederrhcin,"  in  the 

Annalen  des  htstorischen  Vercins  fur  den  Niederrhdn,  1902,  LXXIV,  14. 
?  A.  Schulten,  Die  romischen  Grundherrschaften,  p.  45, 
4Rietschel,  Marty  und  Stadt,  pp.  147  f.;  Keutgen,  Amter  imd  Ztinftc,  p.  75. 

6  They  were  "territories  surrounded  by  colossal  enclosures,  containing  a  complex  of 
cities  more  or  less  loosely  connected"  with  fields  and  pastures  in  order  to  be  able  to  feed 
the  population  in  a  case  of  siege.  R.  Pohlmann,  Die  ft  bervolkerun  g  der  antigen  Grossc- 
stddte ,  1884,  pp.  374. 

ft  The  older  cities  o£  India  are  described  to  us  as  a  group  of  villages  that  had  "in  the 
city"  only  their  common  pastures.  Hunter,  The  Indian  Empire,  1886,  p.  46. 

7  "The  walled  cities  of  Middle  Asia  enclose  in  their  clay  walls  much  larger  spaces 
than  necessary  for  a  city  alone.  In  Buchara,  China,  among  others,  fields  and  gardens, 
vacant  lots,  ponds  and  swamps,  groves  of  elm  trees  and  poplars,  extensive  cattle-yards, 
cover  more  than  half  of  the  area.  ...  In  including  these  areas  they  reckoned  upon  the 
necessity  of  an  independent  maintenance  in  case  of  siege."  F.  Ratzel,  AnthropogcQgra~ 
phie,  1891,  II,  447. 

*Sombart,  op.  cit.,  130-136. 


172  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

gate  as  a  city  settlement?  That  is  the  question  as  to  the  reasons  which 
led  to  the  migration  of  the  country  population;  it  is  the  question  as  to 
the  reasons  which  caused  the  individuals  to  become  city  dwellers.  Sec- 
ondly, it  will,  however  (and  above  all),  be  our  task  to  explain  how  it 
became  possible  (in  an  economic  sense)  that  such  peculiar  settlements 
could  be  formed,  settlements  that  differ  from  all  natural  ways  of  ex- 
istence. In  order  to  find  an  answer,  we  must  first  of  all  bear  in  mind 
that  a  city  lives  on  the  surplus  produce  of  the  country,  that  its  essential 
conditions  and  its  life  activity  are  consequently  dependent  upon  the 
amount  of  this  surplus  produce  of  which  it  may  avail  itself.1  The  de- 
tails of  these  facts  can  be  made  clearer  probably  through  the  following 
sentences : 

(1)  The  size  of  a  city  is  conditioned  by  the  amount  of  the  produce  of 
its  subsistence  area  and  by  its  share  in  what  we  call  surplus  produce. 

(2)  The  size  of  the  subsistence  area  being  given  and  the  amount  of 
the  total  produce  being  given  by  the  degree  of  fertility  of  a  district  or 
the  state  of  agricultural  technique,  the  size  of  a  city  depends  on  the 
amount  of  the  surplus  produce.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  circumstances 
otherwise  being  equal,  there  are  larger  cities  in  despotically  ruled  states 
with  a  high  exploitation  coefficient  as  to  the  country  population  than 
in  countries  with  a  democratic  government. 

(3)  The  size  of  the  subsistence  area  and  the  amount  of  the  surplus 
produce  being  given,  the  size  of  a  city  is  conditioned  by  the  fertility  of 
the  soil  or  the  state  of  the  agricultural  technique.  Fertile  countries  un- 
der such  circumstances,  therefore,  can  have  larger  cities  than  infertile 
ones.2 

(4)  The  amount  of  the  surplus  produce  and  the  productiveness  of 
the  soil  being  given,  the  size  of  a  city  is  conditioned  by  the  extent  of 
its  subsistence  area.  Hence,  for  instance,  the  possibility  of  larger  com- 
mercial towns,  the  possibility  of  larger  leading  cities  in  larger  countries. 

(5)  The  extent  of  the  subsistence  area  is  conditioned  by  the  degree 
of  development  of  the  transportation  technique.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, therefore,  a  situation  near  a  river  or  the  sea  favorably  affects  3 
the  expansibility  of  cities,  and  in  a  country  with  highways — again,  un- 

1  "It  is  the  surplus  produce  of  the  country  only  .  .  .  that  constitutes  the  subsistence 
of  the  town,  which  can  therefore  increase  only  with  the  increase  of  this  surplus  produce." 
(Adam  Smith,  The  Wealth  of  the  Nations,  Bk.  Ill,  chap,  i.)  This  subject  has  been 
treated  very  fully,  though  not  always  successfully,  by  the  predecessors  of  Adam  Smith  in 
the  treatise  of  the  Count  d'Arco,  Dell'armonia  pohtico-economica  tra  la  atta  e  il  suo 
tnrritorio,  1771,  and  in  Custodi,  Scrittori  class,  ital.  di  econ.  poL,  P.  M.  Torno  30. 

2J.  Botero,  Delle  cause  della  grandezza  dette  citta,  1589,  Libro  I,  cap.  ix. 

3  "Great  cities  are  built  as  a  rule  on  the  coast  of  the  sea  or  on  large  rivers  for  the  sake 
of  the  convenience  of  transportation,  because  the  transportation  by  water  of  goods  and 
merchandise  necessary  for  the  subsistence  and  convenience  of  the  inhabitants  is  much 
better  than  by  wagons  and  transportation  on  land."  (Cantillon,  Essai  sur  la  nature  du 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  173 

der  such  circumstances — cities  can  be  larger  than  where  there  are  only 
common  roads;  in  a  country  with  railroads,  larger  than  where  there 
are  only  highways. 

City-founding  people:  city-builders  and  "city -fillers." — Furthermore 
we  must  clearly  understand  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  "city-found- 
ing" people,  which  are  specifically  different  from  each  other:  those 
who,  by  virtue  of  some  power,  of  some  fortune,  of  some  activity,  are 
strong  enough  to  procure  the  produce  of  the  country  necessary  for  sub- 
sistence: for  their  own,  as  perhaps  for  that  of  other  people.  These  are 
the  city-founders  proper,  the  real  agents  in  the  formation  of  cities,  the 
active  or  genuine  or  primary  city-builders:  for  instance  the  king  who 
levies  taxes,  a  landlord  who  draws  rent,  a  merchant  who  gains  in  deal- 
'ing  with  strangers,  an  artisan,  an  industrial  man  who  sells  his  products 
abroad,  an  author  whose  writings  are  sold  outside  of  the  city  limits, 
a  physician  who  has  his  patients  in  the  country,  a  student  whose  parents 
live  in  another  place  and  who  is  dependent  on  the  check  from  his 
parents,  etc.  .  .  . 

There  are  other  people  in  the  city  who  cannot  procure  by  their  own 
power  the  necessary  means  of  subsistence  (I  mean  to  say  the  produce 
of  the  country),  but  simply  share  that  procured  by  the  primary  city- 
builders.  We  may  designate  them  as  "city-fillers,"  as  objects  in  the 
formation  of  cities;  as  passive  or  second  class  or  secondary  (tertiary, 
and  so  forth)  city-builders.  They  are  secondary  city-builders  if  they 
get  their  subsistence  directly  from  a  primary  city-builder:  the  shoe- 
maker who  makes  the  boots  for  the  king;  the  singer  who  sings  for 
him;  the  innkeeper  with  whom  the  landlord  takes  his  meals;  the 
jeweler  in  whose  store  the  merchant  buys  the  jewels  for  his  sweetheart; 
the  manager  of  a  theater  which  the  artisan  attends;  the  bookseller  who 
furnishes  the  books  for  our  author;  the  barber  who  shaves  our  physi- 
cian, the  landlady  from  whom  our  student  rents  his  room,  etc. 

The  evolution  of  cities  from  milages. — One  may  very  well  doubt 
whether  there  were  any  cities  at  all  (in  the  economic  sense)  during  the 
European  Middle  Ages.  At  any  rate  they  did  not  originate  at  any  time 
within  a  brief  period,  as,  for  instance,  an  American  city  does;  but  all 
of  them  have  grown  through  a  process  of  transformation,  which  in 
most  cases  probably  lasted  for  centuries.  They  have  grown  from  vil- 
lages, slowly  and  in  an  organic  way  (all  of  them  from  villages  in  the 
economic  sense) !  How  very  slow  the  change  from  villages  into  cities 
must  have  been  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  even  the  largest  cities 
(not  to  speak  of  the  many  of  middle  and  small  size)  show  traces  of 

commerce,  1755,  pp.  22-23.)  In  the  era  o£  railroads  the  truth  of  this  statement  will 
surely  be  questioned.  For  the  Middle  Ages,  see  the  study  o£  K.  W.  Nitzsch,  "Die  ober- 
rheinische  Tiefebene  und  das  deutsche  Reich  im  Ma,"  in  the  Preuss,  lahrb.,  No.  30, 
pp.  239  ff. 


174  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

country-  or  farmer-cities  as  late  as  the  central  and  later  part  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  i.e.,  traces  of  settlements  which  were  half  urban  settlements, 
in  which  a  part  of  the  population  was  still  engaged  in  agriculture, 
hence  had  not  yet  become  real  townsmen. 

A  true  picture  of  the  village-like  character  of  the  medieval  cities  is 
drawn  by  Gustav  Freytag  in  his  Pictures  of  the  German  Past  (II, 
119  £): 

He  who  enters  a  city  in  the  morning  certainly  meets  first  the  city  cattle. 
For  even  in  the  large  Free  Cities  the  citizen  is  engaged  in  agriculture  on 
meadows,  pastures,  fields,  vineyards  of  the  city  area;  most  of  the  houses, 
even  the  better  ones,  have  cattle  barns  and  sheds  in  their  narrow  court- 
yards. The  sound  of  the  flail  is  heard  in  Nuremberg,  Augsburg,  Ulm  near 
the  city  hall  as  late  as  1350;  not  far  from  the  city  wall  there  stand  barns 
and  sheds,  every  house  has  its  granary  and  frequendy  a  room  for  the  wine- 
press. ...  In  the  streets  of  the  city  there  walk  the  cows;  the  shepherd  with 
his  dog  drives  his  flock  to  the  nearby  heights;  also  in  the  city  forest  there 
graze  the  cattle.  .  .  .  The  pigs  invade  the  houses  through  the  doors  and 
seek  their  dirty  feed  on  their  way.  The  cattle  wade  in  the  branches  of  the 
river  which  runs  through  the  city.  The  mill  is  also  not  missing;  in  out-of- 
the-way  places  there  are  deposited  large  heaps,  etc. 

I  believe  that  no  feature  of  this  picture  is  wrong  and  that  what  Frey- 
tag says  here  in  regard  to  the  large  German  cities  of  the  real  Middle 
Ages  holds  good  to  the  same  degree  of  the  Italian  cities,  anyway  up  to 
the  twelfth  century,  as  well  as  of  the  English  and  of  all  medieval 
cities.  .  .  . 

35.  SOMBART:  THE  COMPOSITION  OF  THE  MEDIEVAL  CITIES* 

I  shall  now  give  a  survey  as  clearly  arranged  as  possible  as  to  the 
structure  and  the  evolution  of  the  cities  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  begin 
with  an  analysis  of  those  elements  that  I  have  designated  as  city- 
builders  or  dynamic  factors  in  the  formation  of  cides. 

DYNAMIC  FACTORS  IN  THE  FORMATION  OF  CITIES 

1.  The  Consumers 

He  who  wants  to  understand  correctly  the  genesis  of  the  medieval 
cities  must  learn  to  see  first  of  all  that  these  cities  in  their  vast  ma- 
jority— and,  certainly,  practically  all  the  important  ones — have  been 
almost  nothing  but  consuming  cities  during  the  first  centuries  of  their 
existence.  Hence  understanding  their  genesis  means  to  comprehend 
how  a  consuming  city  could  grow  up  under  the  conditions  existing  in 
the  Middle  Ages. 

*  Adapted  from  Sombart,  op.  at,,  142-179. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          175 

I  call  a  consuming  city  that  city  which  does  not  pay  for  its  mainte- 
nance (as  far  as  it  gets  such  from  outside  of  the  city  in  the  form  of  sur- 
plus produce  of  agricultural  labor)  with  its  own  products  because  it 
does  not  need  to  do  so,  since  it  receives  its  maintenance  by  virtue  of 
a  legal  tide  (taxes,  rent,  or  the  like)  without  being  obliged  to  return  an 
equivalent.  "It  receives"  means  of  course  that  a  number  of  people  re- 
ceive who  thereby  become  the  founders  of  this  city.  The  distinguishing 
characteristic  of  a  consuming  city  consists  therefore  in  the  fact  that  these 
consumers  are  its  founders,  while  its  "fillers"  are  all  those  who  work  for 
the  former  and  thereby  receive  also  a  share  in  their  consumption  fund. 
The  original,  primary  city-builders  are  therefore  the  consumers,  while 
the  fillers  in  a  derivative  sense  are  the  producers.  The  consumers  are 
in  this  case  the  independent  ones,  the  people  with  a  vital  power  of  their 
own,  while  the  producers  are  the  dependent  ones  whose  possibility  of 
existence  is  determined  by  the  amount  of  the  share  which  the  consum- 
ing class  is  willing  to  grant  them  out  of  their  consumption  fund.  (The 
term  dependency  must  be  understood  correctly:  it  is  a  matter  of  course 
that  in  every  community  all  are  really  dependent  on  all  if  we  wish  to 
express  thereby  that  nobody  can  be  without  his  neighbor  without 
losing  some  of  his  life's  content.) 

Consequently,  in  order  that  consuming  cities  may  arise,  it  is  neces- 
sary above  all  that  in  a  certain  place  a  large  consumption  fund  is  gath- 
ered which  will  be  consumed  there.  The  consumption  fund  may  be 
gathered  by  one  (or  a  few)  mighty  consumers  or  by  a  larger  number 
of  average  or  small  consumers:  a  king  can  found  a  consuming  city  just 
as  well  as  a  thousand  retired  generals.  Who,  however,  were  these  con- 
sumers m  the  Middle  Ages?  Essentially,  we  may  say,  the  rulers  who 
subsisted  on  taxes  and  the  landlords  who  subsisted  on  their  rents.  It  is 
to  be  noticed  that  the  line  between  rulers  and  landlords  in  the  sense  of 
the  word  here  used  is  not  fixed:  the  ruler  who  levied  taxes  was  at  the 
same  time  a  great  landed  proprietor,  therefore  received  likewise  reve- 
nues from  his  own  property  in  the  form  of  rent  from  his  estate.  A  clear 
distinction  between  royal  domain  and  national  property  had  not  yet 
been  made. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  a  first  group  of  important  cities  originated  as 
residences  of  secular  and  clerical  princes.  These  are  those  in  which  the 
landlord,  who  everywhere  is  the  nucleus  o£  the  medieval  city,  grows 
into  a  somewhat  greater  prince,  a  sovereign  in  the  sense  that  he  in- 
creases his  revenues  from  real-estate  rents  by  revenues  through  taxes. 
That  is  a  gradual  process,  and  consequently  the  formation  of  cities  in 
such  cases  is  likewise  effected  slowly  and  gradually. 

The  cities  that  concern  us  here  are  therefore  the,  residences  of  bishops, 
archbishops,  counts,  duces,  margraves,  dukes,  kings. 


176  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Churches  and  monasteries.— Besides  these  great  princely  consumers 
there  gather  in  a  medieval  city  a  number  of  men  who  draw  average 
and  small  rent  from  their  landed  property,  and  who  again  can  form 
a  considerable  consumption  fund.  I  think  first  of  all  of  all  churches  and 
monasteries,  some  of  which  had,  as  we  know,  the  control  of  rather  con- 
siderable revenues.  If  we  now  begin  to  write  the  economic  history  of 
medieval  cities  we  shall  have  to  ascertain  the  amount  of  these  revenues. 
As  an  example  I  cite  St.  Thomas  Foundation  and  St.  Peter  Foundation 
in  Strassburg,  which  had  (in  the  fifteenth  century)  a  revenue  of  alto- 
gether 2,374  marks,  or  33,000  marks  in  our  present  currency.1 

Clerical  orders  of  \nighthood. — Besides  the  churches  and  monas- 
teries the  clerical  orders  of  knighthood  were  also  of  importance  for 
"many  German  cities,  because  they  established  here  a  prebend  of  their 
own  and  being  rich,  as  we  know,  could  draw  together  and  have  con- 
sumed considerable  amounts  of  rent  in  the  cities.2 

Pupils  and  students.— The  ecclesiastical  capitalists  are  then  associ- 
ated with  the  secular  people  entitled  to  rents.  In  the  first  place  I  shall 
mention  at  least  in  passing  a  category  of  original  city-founders  who 
probably  have  not  been  without  significance  for  some  cities  (Bologna, 
Paris,  Oxford).  I  mean  the  pupils 3  and  students 4  who  got  their  check 
from  outside  of  the  city.  They  certainly  supported  many  an  innkeeper, 
many  a  grisette  besides. 

2.  The  Producers 

We  can  hardly  think  of  a  city  where  some  part  of  the  population 
does  not  support  itself  and  others  by  industrial  or  commercial  activity; 
that  means  which  gets  its  subsistence  from  abroad  by  exchange  of  its 
own  accomplishments.  Even  in  the  Middle  Ages  these  constituent 
parts  were  not  entirely  lacking  in  any  city.  It  is  time  that  we  recall 
them  and  learn  to  comprehend  them  one  after  the  other  in  their 
peculiarity. 

The  inland  town. — In  the  first  place  we  shall  have  to  mention  the 
work  of  the  cities  for  the  surrounding  country:  the  manufacture  of 
industrial  objects  for  the  peasants  and  the  delivery  of  foreign  import 
articles  to  them.  A  city  whose  population  subsists  for  the  most  part  on 

*Wilh.  Kothe,  Kirchliche  Zustdnde  Strassburgs  im  14.  Jahrh.,  1903,  p.  2. 

2W.  Arnold,  Verf.  Geschichte  d.  deutsch.  Freistddte,  pp.  178£f.  (Regensburg,  Speier, 
Koln,  Mainz,  Strassburg,  Basel,  Worms);  K.  Bucher,  Die  Bevol\erung  von  Frankfurt 
a.  M.  im  14.  und  15.  Jahrhundert,  1886,  pp.  5140. 

3  Cloister  schools  and  their  extension  in  Europe  are  treated  fully  by  Montalembert, 
Die  Monche  des  Abendlandes,  6th  German  ed,,  1878,  pp.  169  fi.  See  also  G.  von  Maurer, 
Geschichte  der  Stadtevcrfassung,  III,  57$. 

*  For  the  later  time  c£.  first  of  all  the  work  of  F.  Eulenburg,  Die  Frequenz  dcr  deut- 
schen  Universitdten,  1904. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          177 

this  intercourse  with  the  surrounding  country  we  call  an  inland  town, 
sometimes  a  market  place.  Doubtless  in  the  Middle  Ages  this  type  of 
city  existed  to  a  larger  extent  than  today;  such  cities  were  the  boroughs 
of  500  to  1,000  inhabitants  in  which,  along  with  city  work,  agriculture 
was  carried  on  to  a  considerable  extent  as  it  is  today,  and  which  there- 
fore always  remained  petty  farming  towns.  Most  of  these  270  "found- 
ing cities"  in  Eastern  Germany  were  of  this  type. 

Exchange  with  the  peasants. — Also  in  the  large  cities,  that  is  in  those 
of  which  we  think  first  of  all  when  speaking  of  cities,  there  existed  an 
exchange  with  the  peasants  (and  still  more  with  the  landlords)  of  the 
vicinity,  and  a  part  of  the  population  (tradesmen  and  grocers)  sub- 
sisted on  it.  We  must,  however,  not  consider  this  sale  to  the  rural  dis- 
tricts in  the  Middle  Ages  as  very  extensive:  because  the  agriculture 
within  the  cities  was  still  too  strongly  developed  and  the  cultural  level 
of  the  country  population  was  not  high  enough.  We  must  not  think, 
for  instance,  that  this  exchange  between  city  and  country  was  the  vital 
nerve  of  a  medieval  city.  We  must  not  think  that  the  peasant  bought 
from  the  city  people  industrial  and  foreign  products  to  the  amount  for 
which  they  sold  to  them  their  products  at  the  weekly  markets.  The 
larger  part  of  their  net  proceeds  rather  went  into  the  pockets  of  the 
landlords  in  the  country  and  in  the  city,  and  these  bought  now  with 
the  tribute  money  (or  the  proceeds  from  the  food  delivered  to  them) 
the  merchandise  from  the  tradesmen  and  the  merchants  in  the  city. 
So  that  if  the  landlords  lived  in  the  city,  they  were  maintained  by  the 
peasants  and  not  by  themselves. 

International  trade. — Of  somewhat  greater  importance  for  many  of 
the  medieval  cities  was  the  international  trade.  However,  we  should 
not  exaggerate  this  international  trade  as  a  factor  in  city-building.  The 
commercial  town  has  economically  the  peculiarity  that  it  draws  its  sub- 
sistence in  small  amounts  from  a  very  large  circle.5  And  this  peculiarity 
of  its  existence  puts  narrow  boundaries  to  the  expansion  of  a  merely 
commercial  town.  There  never  have  been  and  there  cannot  be  very 
large  purely  commercial  towns,  for  either  the  transportation  technique 
is  still  so  undeveloped  that  the  extent  of  commerce  can  be  only  a  limited 
one,  or,  the  transportation  technique  being  more  highly  developed,  the 
rate  of  profit  by  trade  is  comparatively  so  low  that  immense  amounts 
of  merchandise  must  be  sold  in  order  to  leave  a  considerable  quantity 
of  value  as  gain  in  the  hands  of  the  merchants  and  therefore  as  sub- 
sistence material  for  the  city  population.  ...  If  we  assume  an  average 
income  of  only  100  marks  in  our  present-day  currency  for  the  city  of 
Lubeck  of  the  fourteenth  century  and  a  profit  rate  of  20  per  cent  on 

8  "They  drew  their  subsistence  from  the  whole  universe":  Montesquieu,  U esprit  des 
lots,  Bk.  XX,  chap.  v. 


178  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  turnover,  the  trade  itself  would  have  maintained  only  about  6,000 
people  in  Liibeck. 

The  industrial  city.— There  remains  to  mention  the  export  business 
as  a  factor  in  the  formation  of  cities.  As  far  as  it  is  to  be  taken  into 
account  it  gives  rise  to  the  industrial  type  of  city.  And  this  type  cer- 
tainly existed  in  the  Middle  Ages,  undoubtedly  also  on  the  basis  of 
industrial  production  in  the  narrower  sense  (i.e.,  the  improvement  of 
the  material).  In  this  case,  cities  which  specialized  in  a  certain  indus- 
try certainly  were  able  to  maintain  thereby  a  few  hundred,  in  a  few 
cases  a  couple  of  thousand,  people:  Milan  with  weapons,  Nuremberg 
with  its  "Nuremberg  goods,"  Constance  with  its  linen,  Florence  with 
its  cloths.  These,  however,  are  only  exceptions.  And,  as  the  develop- 
ment of  these  industries  occurred  in  the  later  years  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  hardly  enters  into  a  consideration  of  the  origin  and  earlier 
expansion  of  the  city. 

With  more  right  we  may  say  that  of  greater  significance  for  the  be- 
ginnings of  city  life  were  certain  products  of  the  ground  (or  of  the 
sea)  on  which  or  near  which  the  city  was  situated.  I  am  thinking  of 
the  salt  cities,  of  the  mountain  (silver)  cities,  of  the  wine  cities,  of  the 
herring  cities.  But  I  must  warn  again  not  to  overestimate  the  power 
even  of  these  sources  of  income  as  factors  in  city  formation. 

Money  transaction. — Only  one  factor,  besides  the  accumulation  of 
rent  from  land,  plays,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  an  important  part  in  the  de- 
velopment of  medieval  cities;  that  is  money  transaction,  the  banking 
business,  or  usury,  as  we  may  distinguish  in  individual  cases.  In  re- 
gard to  usury  and  its  importance  I  shall  go  into  more  detail  in  the 
further  course  of  this  discussion.  At  this  time  I  wish  only  to  point  out 
in  advance  that  the  instinctively  correct  evaluation  of  usury  as  a  factor 
in  the  formation  of  cities  probably  explains  the  endeavors  of  many 
citizens  (town  councillors),  anxious  for  the  welfare  of  their  city,  to 
bring  about  settlements  of  Jews. 

If,  however,  in  spite  of  all,  anybody  still  doubts  the  correctness  of  my 
thesis  that  the  medieval  city  has  been  principally  and,  at  any  rate  in 
the  first  part  of  its  existence,  a  consuming  city  and  hence  owes  its  de- 
velopment to  the  mass  of  rents  from  land  (and  taxes)  accumulated  at 
one  point,  he  will,  I  think,  be  relieved  from  his  doubt  if  he  looks  at  the 
objects  of  city  formation  in  the  Middle  Ages,  those  secondary,  tertiary, 
etc.,  city-builders,  hence  builders  in  a  derivative  sense,  who  in  reality 
are  the  first  to  fill  the  cities.  We  shall  speak  of  them  from  now  on. 

THE  OBJECTS  IN  THE   FORMATION  OF  CITIES 

I  divide  the  city-fillers  into  two  groups,  direct  and  indirect  bread- 

*  Adapted  from  Sombart,  op.  cit.,  pp.  159-180. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          179 

getters.  The  direct  bread-getters  are  those  who  are  in  the  service  of  the 
city-builders  and  are  paid  for  services  which  they  render  to  them, 
hence  are  maintained  by  them  directly.  To  this  group  belong  the 
servants  in  the  widest  sense,  belong  the  courtiers,  but  also  the  officers 
of  the  king,  of  the  bishop;  belongs  finally  also  the  whole  clergy- 
priests,  monks,  etc.  Indirect  bread-getters  are  the  independent  trades- 
men and  merchants  who  manufacture  industrial  products  for  the  city- 
builders  or  procure  goods  from  outside  of  the  city.  Principal  classes  of 
the  "city-fillers"  were  as  follows. 

1.  The  clergy. — The  clergy  of  the  higher  and  lower  orders,  together 
with  their  numerous  servants,  constituted  a  large  part  of  the  popula- 
tion, e.g.,  5  per  cent  in  Strassburg  and  Nuremberg. 

2.  Soldiers  and  officers.— Though  we  have  no  definite  statistical  ma- 
terial, we  may  assume  that  the  garrisons  in  the  larger  cities,  as  well  as 
the  officers  and  dignitaries  of  the  clerical  and  secular  princes,  composed 
another  large  part  of  the  population. 

3.  Craftsmen. — We  cannot  doubt  that  craftsmen  were  among  the 
primary  builders  of  cities,  yet  they  were  of  no  great  direct  significance, 
since  they  were  in  the  service  of  the  landlords.  Most  of  the  latter,  how- 
ever, clerical  as  well  as  secular,  lived  in  the  cities  and  needed  the 
craftsmen  for  building  purposes:  churches  and  palaces.  The  eleventh 
century  was  especially  actively  engaged  in  building. 

4.  The  tradesmen. — The   present-day   theory    that   the   tradesmen 
were  the  real  founders  of  cities  is  not  held  by  the  author.  The  itinerant 
tradesmen  did  not  help  to  build  cities  until  they  settled  down  in  a  cer- 
tain place,  induced  by  the  opportunities  for  trading  that  they  found 
after  sufficient  landlords  had  settled  at  or  near  such  places.  The  cities 
of  the  Middle  Ages  were,  in  the  economic  sense,  the  foundation  of 
those  who  received  revenues.  Only  these  people  made  continuous 
trading  possible. 

5.  The  recipients  of  alms. — Since  it  was  one  of  the  objects  of  the 
monasteries  to  take  care  of  the  poor  and  needy,  we  may  assume  that 
there  were  many  who  depended  on  alms  in  the  cities  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

The  "urge  to  the  city." — Up  to  this  time  we  have  spoken  only  of 
the  interest  of  the  primary  city-builders  (i.e.,  for  the  most  part  of  the 
landlords)  in  the  evolution  of  a  city  as  well  as  of  its  (economic)  possi- 
bilities. In  order  that  a  city  might  really  grow,  the  objects  in  the  forma- 
tion of  cities  also  had  to  make  their  appearance.  A  history  of  the  cities, 
therefore,  should  show  the  various  motives  causing  people  to  settle 
down  within  their  walls.  Of  course,  a  part  of  them  were  already  living 
at  the  place  where  the  city  came  into  existence:  the  servants  (in  the 
widest  sense  of  the  word  all  the  jratribus  et  ecclesie — and  o£  course 


180  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

also  the  other  landlords)  cottidie  in  propria  persona  servientes;  further, 
the  industrial  laborers  who  originally  had  worked  for  the  landlords 
and  now  gradually  had  become  independent  craftsmen.  They  and 
their  progeny  formed  the  stock  of  those  who  filled  the  cities.  To  these 
we  add  the  free  itinerant  craftsmen. 

A  considerable  part  of  the  city  population,  however,  was  constituted 
of  those  who  arrived  from  the  rural  districts,  as  we  may  safely  assume 
from  numerous  indications,  though  we  hardly  know  more  than  the 
mere  fact.  In  order  that  an  immigration  from  the  rural  districts  may 
take  place  on  a  large  scale,  two  series  of  definite  circumstances  must 
concur:  the  country  must  expel,  the  city  must  attract. 

That  which  disgusted  people  with  the  life  in  the  country  during 
the  centuries  which  come  especially  under  consideration,  resulting  in 
the  first  inner  strengthening  of  the  cities,  seems  principally  to  have 
been  the  following: 

1.  The  lack  of  safety,  which  had  especially  appeared  during  the 
tenth  century  as  a  consequence  of  the  invasions  of  ravaging  tribes  and 
the  following  excessive  increase  of  domestic  chivalry.  The  most  detailed 
description  of  these  conditions  is  found  in  the  second  volume  of  Flach's 
work  \Qrigines  de I'anaenne  France^.  He  attributes  great  significance 
to  this  lack  of  safety  (for  the  development  of  France).  But  even  for 
other  fields  it  is  evidently  a  sign  of  the  times  about  the  year  1000:  the 
lacJ^  of  safety.  That  is  why  they  built  walls. 

2.  The  socage  duty  in  many  parts  of  the  country.  At  least  this  is  ex- 
pressly reported  by  a  monk  in  regard  to  secular  landlords  whom  their 
serfs  left  in  order  to  seek  refuge  in  the  monastery.  The  fact  that  nu- 
merous serfs  came  to  the  cities  permits  the  conclusion  that  they  had 
at  least  enough  of  the  socage  duty. 

3.  Since  the  twelfth  century  it  seems  to  have  been  popular  in  some 
places  to  confiscate  independent  farms.  Peasants  thus  treated  were  de- 
prived of  the  possibility  of  existing  on  the  land. 

4.  For  the  period  of  the  ninth  to  the  twelfth  centuries  and  beyond 
that,  at  least  in  many  countries,  we  must  take  into  account  a  strong 
increase  in  population  whereby  a  surplus  population  was  created  which 
helped  to  increase  the  crowd  of  those  who  left  the  rural  district.  This 
surplus  population  either  migrated  into  the  districts  lately  settled  or 
served  in  filling  the  cities. 

That  which  made  the  city  attractive  for  those  driven  from  the  rural 
districts  was  first  of  all  the  possibility  to  make  a  living  for  themselves 
and  their  families,  even  without  landed  property;  the  possibility  to  se- 
cure permanently  the  means  of  existence.  And  this  in  a  state  of  free- 
dom. This  ideal  of  freedom  seems  to  have  exercised  at  least  as  much 
attraction  as  the  prospect  of  safety  and  acquisition.  We  know  that  the 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          181 

cities  really  did  their  part  to  give  or  to  preserve  to  the  newcomers  the 
freedom  for  which  they  longed.  In  all  countries  it  became  a  principle 
of  the  city  law  that  the  city  meant  freedom  and  that  the  serf  was  (un- 
der definite,  very  easy  conditions)  to  be  protected  against  the  persecu- 
tions of  his  master.  All  these  circumstances  combined  gave  rise  to  a  lik- 
ing for  the  city,  which  turned  into  a  "prejudice'*  and  created  an  urge 
for  the  city  as  we  see  it  again  a  thousand  years  later. 

In  these  cities  a  new  specific  economy  unfolded,  which  was  of  de- 
cisive importance  for  the  ensuing  culture  of  Europe.  Two  forces  cre- 
ated it:  the  interest  of  those  small  craftsmen  whom  we  saw  camping 
in  those  market  booths  or  in  those  frame  houses  that  like  swallows' 
nests  were  attached  to  the  castle  of  the  landlord,  and  the  interest  of  the 
city  itself. 

36.  SOMBART:  THE  ECONOMIC  POLICY  OF  THE  CITY* 

"And  therefore  the  city  is,  according  to  the  Aristotelian  description 
and  according  to  the  idea  which  underlies  its  natural  manifestations, 
a  self-sufficing  economic  unit,  an  organism  of  people  living  together  in 
close  communion."  l  These  truthful  words  introduce  Tonnies'  beauti- 
ful meditations  regarding  the  nature  of  the  city  per  se.  And  every  trea- 
tise on  the  city  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  its  peculiarity  should  begin 
with  the  same  words. 

In  these  words  we  are  directed  to  that  idea  which  alone  can  give  us 
a  conception  of  the  nature  of  this  strange  formation  of  the  Middle 
Ages  which  we  call  city:  to  that  idea  of  solidarity  which  we  do  not 
simply  carry  into  these  matters  we  like  to  understand;  which  therefore 
in  this  case  does  not  simply  serve  as  a  philosophical  means  of  help  to 
our  reflection;  which  rather  represents  the  central  sun  that  gave  life  to 
all  that  happened  in  a  medieval  city  because  it,  as  an  active  idea,  filled 
the  souls  of  the  inhabitants  and  certainly  of  those  who  were  a  decisive 
factor  in  the  formation  of  city  life. 

The  policy  of  the  cities. — Hence  from  this  sense  of  solidarity  there 
flowed  also  like  a  natural  current  the  totality  of  those  measures  that  we 
generally  call  the  policy  of  the  cities.  In  this  policy  the  strong  con- 
sciousness of  solidarity  becomes,  as  it  were,  visible.  Whether  it  was  the 
landlords  of  the  city  in  the  beginning  of  municipal  evolution,  or  later 
the  patrician  families,  or  finally  the  plebeian  guilds  from  which  these 
measures  proceeded,  they  were  always  filled  with  the  same  spirit;  they 
were  always  carried  by  the  naive  egoism  of  this  small  group  of  people 
who  felt  that  they  were  a  unit  and  were  determined  to  assert  them- 
selves successfully  as  such  against  the  entire  world,  which,  to  them, 

*  Adapted  from  Sombart,  op,  cit.,  pp,  180-187. 
1Fcrd.  Tonnies,  Gemeinschajt  und  Gesellschaft,  p.  18. 


182  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

meant  foreign  territory — toward  which  they  felt  no  obligations,  which 
they  would  strive  to  subject  to  their  own  use,  the  emissaries  of  which 
they  would  meet  with  distrust  because  they  did  not  expect  anything 
good  of  them. 

The  principle  of  supplying  the  needs. — This  community  idea  deter- 
mines also  the  material  principle  on  which  the  entire  economic  policy 
of  the  medieval  cities  is  based;  that  basic  principle  which  is  nothing 
else  but  that  which  had  regulated  the  economic  constitution  of  the 
tribe,  of  the  village,  of  the  socage— the  principle  of  economic  self- 
sufficiency,  of  economic  autarchy,  the  principle  of  supplying  the  needs. 

If  we  do  not  lose  sight  of  the  object  of  all  municipal  economic  policy 
— to  provide  for  a  supply  of  goods  satisfactory  as  to  quantity  and 
quality — we  shall  very  easily  be  able  to  understand  these  thousands  of 
little  measures  in  which  the  activity  of  the  municipal  powers  finds  ex- 
pression and  to  connect  them  into  a  cohesive  system. 

Importation  policy. — It  is  in  accordance  with  the  nature  of  the  city, 
as  we  know,  that  it  has  to  provide  a  large  part  of  its  sustenance 
through  importation  from  abroad.  Hence  the  same  considerations 
which,  within  an  individually  conducted  economy,  lead  to  measures 
intended  to  put  every  single  field  of  production  into  full  operation — 
let  us  think  of  the  various  ordinances  of  the  so-called  Capitulare  de 
villis — must  prompt  the  municipal  political  economist  to  take  steps  to 
procure  the  needed  amounts  of  goods  which  the  city  itself  can  no 
longer  produce.  The  importation  policy  takes  the  place  of  the  original 
production  policy  and  then  really  constitutes  the  most  important  part 
of  the  entire  economic  policy  of  the  city. 

Street,  mileage,  and  staple  rights. — We  summarize  a  first  part  of  the 
measures  pertaining  to  this  policy  under  the  designation  of  street, 
mileage,  and  staple  rights  which  the  city  strives  to  obtain.  This  means 
the  right  to  lead  every  train  of  goods  that  moves  within  a  definite  cir- 
cuit around  the  city  (especially,  of  course,  it  is  always  the  foodstuffs, 
first  of  all  the  grain  for  bread,  which  the  city  is  intent  upon  procuring) 
through  the  city  itself  and  to  stop  the  amount  of  goods  thus  brought 
in  for  at  least  a  few  days  in  the  city  and  to  put  them  at  the  disposal 
of  the  citizens  for  a  possibly  existing  need.  That  means  in  other  words 
that  the  grain  dealers  and  others  who  had  purchased  the  grain  else- 
where were  forced  to  transport  the  same — even  if  indirectly— through 
the  city  and  to  store  it  there  before  it  could  be  taken  to  its  destination. 

The  mar\et  right.— The  farmers  in  the  city's  circuit — the  larger  the 
better — were  hindered  in  disposing  of  their  products  anywhere  else 
than  in  the  city.  The  "right"  to  enforce  this  was  called  the  market 
right,  by  virtue  of  which  the  citizens  secured  for  themselves  a  purchase 
monopoly. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES          183 

I£  the  country  people  came  to  town  with  their  products,  it  was  also 
desired  to  prevent  speculators  from  purchasing  the  goods  before  they 
had  reached  the  market.  It  was,  therefore,  forbidden  to  buy  provisions 
before  they  had  arrived  at  the  market  or  to  buy  them  at  all  for  resale 
or  at  least  to  make  delivery  of  provisions.  The  obligation  to  take  the 
products  to  the  market  was  also  based  on  the  argument  that  only  in 
this  way  could  people  convince  themselves  of  their  quality  and  of  their 
"legality." 

The  right  to  buy  first  (Einstandsrecht) , — It  was  again  in  an  en- 
deavor to  safeguard  the  interests  of  the  consumer  as  against  the  dealer 
that  the  former  was  granted  the  so-called  Einstandsrecht,  i.e.,  the 
right  to  buy  for  himself  from  any  goods  which  a  dealer  had  brought 
with  him  as  much  as  he  needed  (even  against  the  will  of  the  dealer). 
Or  the  dealer  was  not  permitted  to  buy  until  the  consumers  had  been 
provided  for:  "donee  burgenses  ad  suum  opus  emerint"  and  other 
ordinances  like  that. 

Good  quality.— That  heed  was  given  to  the  good  quality  of  the 
goods  that  were  to  be  sold  is  evident  from  the  ordinance  mentioned 
before,  which  was  the  same  in  almost  all  cities — the  provisions  brought 
into  the  city  shall  be  offered  for  sale  only  on  the  public  market  places 
designated  for  that  purpose.  Furthermore,  it  was  sought  to  prevent 
spoiled  goods  being  offered  for  sale,  exorbitant  prices  being  demanded, 
the  use  of  false  weights  and  measures,  etc.  Thus  an  extensive  system 
of  market-police  ordinances  regulated  the  trading  in  the  interest  of  the 
buyer.  On  the  other  hand,  no  objection  was  made  to  selling  sick  cattle 
or  putrid  meat  to  dear  fellow  Christians  in  the  neighborhood:  "They 
may  very  well  drive  all  sick  sheep  and  wethers  alive  into  the  country 
and  sell  them,"  decides  Strassburg  in  the  fifteenth  century,  likewise 
Nuremberg  in  1497:  "To  put  and  drive  away  from  now  on  all  such 
immature  and  faulty  cattle." 

But  arrangements  were  also  made  which  guaranteed  to  the  city  a 
good  provision,  especially  of  grain;  granaries  were  built  at  the  expense 
of  the  city  and  grain  and  the  like  stored  therein.  Furthermore,  the  city 
council  saw  to  it  that  craftsmen  and  dealers  from  abroad  offered  their 
goods  for  sale  at  the  fairs;  that  the  trades  were  well  represented,  that 
production  in  the  city  was  taken  care  of  hqnestly  and  conscientiously. 

Boundary  right  (Bannrecht). — In  a  shorter  way  the  same  goal  (to 
secure  the  sale  of  the  products  of  the  craftsmen)  was  reached  by  forc- 
ing the  rural  districts  in  as  large  a  circuit  as  possible  to  provide  them- 
selves in  the  city  with  industrial  products.  This  was  achieved  by  pro- 
hibiting all  industrial  activity  in  the  rural  districts— the  content  of  the 
so-called  boundary  right. 

Industrial  production. — With  this  provision  for  the  sale  of  industrial 


184  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

products,  the  policy  of  the  city  touches  upon  another  problem,  that 
of  the  preservation  of  a  definite  organization  of  the  municipal  pro- 
duction, the  industrial  one,  and  thereby  the  problem  the  solution  of 
which  was  of  as  great  significance  for  the  evolution  of  city  life  as  was 
providing  for  the  municipal  market.  For  just  in  this  we  find  the  peculi- 
arity of  the  city  economy,  that  it  developed  fully  this  system  of  organ- 
ized industrial  economy.  At  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages  it  is  just  the 
interests  of  the  handicraft  which  plainly  constitute  the  interests  of  the 
city. 

37.  HENRI  PIRENNE:  ORIGIN  OF  THE  MEDIEVAL  CITIES* 

An  interesting  question  is  whether  or  not  cities  existed  in  the  midst 
of  that  essentially  agricultural  civilization  into  which  Western  Europe 
had  developed  in  the  course  of  the  ninth  century.  The  answer  depends 
on  the  meaning  given  to  the  word  "city."  If  by  it  is  meant  a  locality 
the  population  of  which,  instead  of  living  by  working  the  soil,  devotes 
itself  to  commercial  activity,  the  answer  will  have  to  be  "No."  The  an- 
swer will  also  be  negative  if  we  understand  by  "city"  a  community 
endowed  with  legal  personality  and  possessing  laws  and  institutions 
peculiar  to  itself.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  think  of  a  city  as  a  center 
of  administration  and  as  a  fortress,  it  is  clear  that  the  Carolingian 
period  knew  nearly  as  many  cities  as  the  centuries  which  followed  it 
must  have  known.  That  is  merely  another  way  of  saying  that  the  cities 
which  were  then  to  be  found  were  without  two  of  the  fundamental  at- 
tributes of  the  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  of  modern  times— a  mid- 
dle-class population  and  a  communal  organization. 

Primitive  though  it  may  be,  every  stable  society  feels  the  need  of 
providing  its  members  with  centers  of  assembly,  or  meeting  places.  Ob- 
servance of  religious  rites,  maintenance  of  markets,  and  political  and 
juridical  gatherings  necessarily  bring  about  the  designation  of  localities 
for  these  purposes.  Military  needs  have  still  more  positive  effects.  Pop- 
ulations have  to  prepare  refuges.  .  .  .  War  is  as  old  as  humanity,  and 
the  construction  of  fortresses  almost  as  old  as  war.  The  acropoles  of  the 
Greeks,  the  oppida  of  the  Etruscans,  the  Latins,  and  the  Gauls,  the 
bur  gen  of  the  Germans,  the  gorods  of  the  Slavs,  like  the  {raals  of  the 
Negroes  of  South  Africa,  were  at  the  beginning  no  more  than  places 
of  assembly  and,  especially,  shelters  or  enclosures.  In  ordinary  times 
these  enclosures  remained  empty.  The  people  resorted  to  them  only 
on  the  occasion  of  religious  or  civic  ceremonies,  or  when  war  con- 
strained them  to  seek  refuge  there  with  their  herds.  But,  little  by  little 

*  From  Henri  Pirenne,  Medieval  Cities,  Their  Origins  and  the  Revival  of  Trade 
Princeton  University  Press,  1925,  pp.  56-67.  Reprinted  with  permission  o£  the  publisher'. 


ORIGIN  OF  RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES         185 

with  the  march  of  civilization,  their  intermittent  animation  became  a 
continuous  animation,  Temples  arose;  magistrates  or  chieftains  estab- 
lished their  residence;  merchants  and  artisans  came  to  settle.  What 
first  had  been  only  an  occasional  center  of  assembly  became  a  city,  the 
administrative,  religious,  political,  and  economic  center  of  all  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  tribe  whose  name  it  customarily  took.  .  .  , 

[At  that  time  the  cities  became  in  the  first  place  the  religious  cen- 
ters. While  the  secular  power  dwindled  the  authority  of  the  church 
increased.]  The  prestige  of  the  bishops  naturally  lent  to  their  places  of 
residence— that  is  to  say,  to  the  old  Roman  cities—considerable  im- 
portance. [As  contrasted  with  the  princes  who  had  to  travel  and  who 
did  not  live  in  the  city],  the  immobility  which  ecclesiastical  discipline 
enforced  upon  a  bishop  permanently  held  him  to  the  city  where  was 
established  the  see  of  his  particular  diocese.  The  city  became  synony- 
mous with  the  bishopric  and  the  episcopal  city.  .  .  ,  When  the  disap- 
pearance of  trade,  in  the  ninth  century,  annihilated  the  last  vestiges  of 
city  life  and  put  an  end  to  what  still  remained  of  a  municipal  popula- 
tion, the  influence  of  the  bishops  became  unrivalled.  Henceforward  the 
towns  were  entirely  under  their  control.  In  them  were  to  be  found,  in 
fact,  practically  only  inhabitants  dependent  more  or  less  directly  upon 
the  Church,  .  .  .  The  population  was  composed  of  the  clerics  of  the 
cathedral  church  and  of  the  other  churches  grouped  nearby;  of  the 
monks  of  the  monasteries;  of  the  teachers  and  the  students  of  the  ec- 
clesiastical schools;  and  finally,  of  servitors  and  artisans,  free  or  serf, 
who  were  indispensable  to  the  needs  of  the  religious  group  and  to  the 
daily  existence  of  the  clerical  agglomerations. 

Almost  always  there  was  to  be  found  in  the  town  a  weekly  market 
whither  the  peasants  from  roundabout  brought  their  produce.  At  the 
gates  a  market  toll  was  levied  on  everything  that  came  in  or  went  out. 
A  mint  was  in  operation  within  the  walls.  There  were  also  to  be  found 
there  a  number  of  keeps  occupied  by  vassals  of  the  bishop,  by  his  advo- 
cate or  by  his  castellan.  To  all  this  must  be  added  the  granaries  and 
the  storehouses  where  were  stored  the  harvests  from  the  monastical 
demesnes  brought  in,  at  stated  periods,  by  the  tenant-farmers.  At  the 
great  yearly  festivals  the  congregation  of  the  diocese  poured  into  the 
town  and  gave  it,  for  several  days,  the  animation  of  unaccustomed 
bustle  and  stir. 


CHAPTER  IV 

FUNDAMENTAL  DIFFERENCES  BETWEEN 
THE  RURAL  AND  URBAN  WORLDS 

A.  "SIMPLE"  AND  "COMPOUND"  DEFINITIONS 

The  preceding  chapter  depicted  the  origin  of  rural-urban  dif- 
ferentiation and  its  characteristics  at  the  earliest  stages.  In  the 
course  of  time  the  cleavage  between  the  city  and  the  country  grew, 
and  correspondingly  the  differences  between  the  urban  and  the 
rural  social  worlds  increased.  They  increased  quantitatively  as 
well  as  qualitatively:  many  differential  traits  scarcely  perceptible 
at  the  initial  stages  of  the  differentiation  became  clearer  and  more 
conspicuous,  and,  at  the  same  time,  several  differences  perceptible 
at  the  early  stages  developed  further  into  several  subclasses. 

If  one  wishes  to  study  the  differences  between  two  plants  or 
two  animals,  it  is  not  sufficient  to  study  them  only  as  they  appear 
in  the  initial  stages  of  their  development— in  the  stages  of  seed, 
embryo,  or  bud;  in  order  to  grasp  all  the  important  differences, 
one  must  study  these  plants  or  animals  in  their  developed  forms 
when  the  differences  are  more  clear-cut,  more  numerous,  and 
more  conspicuous.  The  same  is  true  in  regard  to  human  differen- 
tiation. Many  of  the  fundamental  differences  between  the  rural 
and  the  urban  worlds,  which  are  almost  imperceptible  at  the  early 
stages,  become  very  clear  at  later  stages  of  their  development; 
hence,  the  advisability  and  logical  necessity  of  an  analysis  of  these 
differences  as  they  are  exhibited  at  later  stages  of  country-city  dif- 
ferentiation. Such  an  analysis  and  establishment  of  the  differ- 
ential variables  between  the  urban  and  rural  worlds  is  absolutely 
necessary  also  for  a  causal  explanation  of  many  other  rural-urban 
secondary  differences.  As  we  shall  see,  these  secondary  differences 
are  but  a  result  of  the  fundamental  variables. 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  to  outline  the  most  important 
of  these  rural-urban  differences.  Since  sociology  is  interested  pri- 
marily in  the  differences  that  are  general  in  space  and  relatively 
constant  in  time—that  is,  those  that  appear  in  a  more  or  less  con- 

[186] 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  187 

spicuous  form  in  the  past  and  in  the  present,  and  in  all  the  rural 
and  the  urban  social  worlds  (Egypt,  Assyria,  Greece,  Rome, 
Europe,  America,  etc.) — we  shall  take  only  the  differential  vari- 
ables that  correspond  to  these  requirements.  In  other  words,  those 
variables  that  we  study  are  typical  not  only  for  this  or  that  partic- 
ular city  and  its  near-by  rural  aggregate,  but  for  the  city  and  the 
country  generally  whenever  and  wherever  they  occur.  This 
means  that  in  this  chapter  we  try  to  analyze  the  most  important 
constant  and  general,  and  in  this  sense  typical,  differences  be- 
tween the  rural  and  the  urban  worlds.  This  amounts  to  a  con- 
struction of  a  sociological  definition  of  each  of  these  worlds. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  analysis  of  these  typical  variables  of 
the  country  and  the  city,  a  few  methodological  remarks  are  ad- 
visable. First,  we  must  emphasize  that  the  sociological  definition 
of  the  country  and  the  city  worlds  is  not  to  be  described  in  terms 
of  one  characteristic,  whether  this  one  be  size  of  community, 
density  of  population,  administrative  nomenclature,  occupational 
composition  of  the  population,  or  what  not.  In  this  respect  we 
agree  with  many  of  the  authors  quoted  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ters that  the  sociological  definition  of  these  worlds  requires  a 
combination  of  several  typical  traits.  It  must  be  a  compound 
definition.1  Without  repeating  here  the  methodological  require- 
ments of  such  a  compound  definition 2  and  without  reproducing 
all  of  the  material  and  data  given  in  Sorokin  and  Zimmerman's 
Principles  of  Rural-Urban  Sociology  (chap,  ii)  we  shall  briefly 
outline  the  fundamental  differences  between  the  urban  and  rural 
worlds  and  construct  in  this  way  their  compound  sociological 
concepts, 

B.  DIFFERENTIAL  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  "COMPOUND" 
DEFINITION  OF  THE  RURAL  AND  URBAN  WORLDS 

I.  OCCUPATIONAL  DIFFERENCES 

Rural  society  is  composed  of  a  totality  of  individuals  actively 
engaged  in  an  agricultural  pursuit,  such  as  the  collection  and 
cultivation  of  plants  and  animals,  and  the  totality  of  their  chil- 
dren— "a  passive  rural  population" — whose  age  does  not  permit 

1See  also  Max  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  pp.  317ff.;  F.  Ratzel,  "Die  Geo- 
graphische  Lage  der  grosser!  Stadte,"  in  Die  Grossestadt,  Dresden,  1903;  Eduard  Linde- 
manri  and  Nels  Andersen,  Urban  Sociology,  chap.  i. 

2  See  Sorokin  and  Zimmerman,  Principles  of  Rural-Urban  Sociology,  pp.  13-15. 


188  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

them  to  be  actively  engaged  in  any  occupation  but  who,  being 
born  and  living  in  a  rural  society,  are  marked  by  many  of  its 
characteristics. 

The  principal  criterion  of  the  rural  society  or  population  is 
occupational— fat  collection  and  cultivation  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals. Through  it  rural  society  differs  from  other  populations, 
particularly  urban,  engaged  in  different  occupational  pursuits.  In 
this  aspect  rural  sociology  is  in  the  first  place  a  sociology  of  an 
occupational  group,  namely  the  sociology  of  the  agricultural  oc- 
cupation. From  this  difference  there  follows  a  series  of  other  dif- 
ferences between  rural  and  urban  communities,  most  of  which 
are  causally  connected  with  this  difference  in  occupation.  Let 
us  outline  the  principal  of  these  differences  which  have  been 
more  or  less  constantly  and  indissolubly  connected  with  the  rural 
and  urban  aggregates. 
II.  ENVIRONMENTAL  DIFFERENCES 

The  nature  of  the  agricultural  occupation  makes  the  cultivators 
work  out  of  doors  more  than  do  the  workers  in  the  majority  of 
the  urban  occupations.  They  are  exposed  more  to  the  fluctuations 
of  various  climatic  conditions.3  Further,  they  are  in  a  much 
greater  proximity  to,  and  in  a  more  direct  relation  with,  nature — 
soil,  flora,  fauna,  water,  sun,  moon,  sky,  wind,  rain — than  an 
urbanite.  The  urban  dweller  is  separated  from  all  this  by  the 
thick  walls  of  huge  city  buildings  and  the  artificial  city  environ- 
ment of  stone  and  iron.  In  many  other  respects  also,  the  nature 
of  agriculture  is  radically  different  from  almost  all  urban  occu- 
pations (see  also  chap.  xxi). 

These  environmental  differences  are  certain  for  the  contem- 
porary urban  and  rural  worlds.  They  were  present  also  in  the 
past,  for  while  they  were  insignificant  at  the  initial  stages  of  the 

3  The  following  table  shows  one  of  the  differences  between  the  air  of>the  city  and, 
that  of  the  country,  between  the  "indoor"  and  the  "outdoor"  air. 

THE  AVERAGE  MICROBIC  CONTENT  OF  THE  AIR  PER  100  CUBIC  FOOT 

MICROBES  AT  2  0  °  C.    STREPTOCOCCI 

Country    56                          12 

City     72                          11 

Offices   94                         22 

Factories     .....   113 43 

Thus  a  cultivator  has  better  air  than  the  city-dweller  and  factory-worker.  Bureau  of 
Educ.  Publication,  1915,  No.  50,  p.  171;  see  also  Monthly  Weather  Review,  XLII,  452; 
American  Journal  of  Public  Health,  March,  1915. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  189 

rural-urban  differentiation,  they  have  developed  gradually  with 
the  growth  of  the  cities.4  The  separation  of  the  dwellers  of  the 
ancient  cities  from  nature  was  possibly  not  so  great;  nevertheless, 
it  was  quite  tangible.  The  Bible  properly  remarks  the  simul- 
taneity in  the  origin  of  the  city  and  of  the  artificial  environment 
of  walls  and  city  buildings.  "And  they  [the  posterity  of  Noah] 
said  to  one  another,  'Come,  let  us  make  brick,  and  burn  them 
thoroughly.*'  And  they  had  brick  for  stone,  and  slime  had  they 
for  mortar.  And  they  said,  'Come,  let  us  build  us  a  city,  and 
a  tower,  whose  top  may  reach  unto  heaven' "  (Gen.  11:3-5).  As 
a  rule,  the  ancient  cities  of  Egypt,  Babylonia,  Assyria,  Persia, 
Greece,  Rome,  China,  medieval  Europe,  and  elsewhere  were 
separated  from  nature  by  walls  of  stone  and  brick,  which  some- 
times were  very  long  and  thick  and  were  often  ornamented  with 
a  series  of  tall  towers  (watch  posts). 

The  acropolis  of  the  Greeks,  the  oppida  of  the  Etruscans,  the  Latins, 
and  the  Gauls,  the  burgen  of  the  Germans,  the  gorods  of  the  Slavs, 
like  the  \raals  of  the  negroes  of  South  Africa,  were  at  the  beginning  no 
more  than  shelters.  The  general  arrangement  of  the  cities  was  every- 
where the  same.  They  consisted  of  a  space  surrounded  by  ramparts 
made  of  trunks  of  trees  or  mud  or  blocks  of  stone,  protected  by  a  moat 
and  entered  by  gates.  .  .  .  Little  by  little  .  .  .  temples  arose;  magis- 
trates or  chieftains  established  their  residence;  merchants  and  artisans 
came  to  settle.5 

Inside  the  wall,  the  city,  when  developed,  also  was  composed  of 
a  huge  mass  of  stone,  mud,  or  brick  structures — palaces,  temples, 
storehouses,  dwelling  houses,  sometimes  paved  streets,  which  all 
together,  especially  in  large  cities  like  Babylon,  Memphis,  Athens, 
and  Rome,  left  the  city  dwellers  very  little  direct  contact  with 
nature.  The  artificiality  of  the  ancient  cities  was  also  manifested 
by  their  regular  form.  Built  often  at  the  direction  of  a  sovereign, 
they  had  the  form  of  a  regular  square  or  a  similar  geometrical 
figure.  Jn  many  cities,  parks,  gardens,  and  vegetation  were  almost 
lacking;  where  they  existed,  as,  for  example,  in  the  famous  ter- 
raced gardens  of  Babylon,  the  trees  and  plants  had  an  artificial 
origin  and  were  given  artificial  forms  and  patterns.  The  air  of 
the  cities  was  greatly  polluted  and  full  of  various  odors.  In  brief, 
the  isolation  from  nature  and  the  artificial  character  of  the  city 

4  See  R.  Maunier,  op.  cit,t  pp.  72-86. 

SH.  Pirenne,  Medieval  Cities,  Princeton,  1926,  pp.  57-58. 


190  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

environment  was  typical  also  of  the  cities  of  the  past.6  The  chief 
differences  between  ancient  and  modern  cities  in  respect  to  the 
walls  between  the  human  organism  and  nature  are  that  the 
modern  city  is  composed,  in  a  large  degree,  from  steel,  iron,  and 
paper,  comparatively  unused  substances  in  cities  of  the  past,  and 
that  the  walls  of  gas  between  the  individual  and  nature  have 
changed  in  density  and  composition  with  the  introduction  of 
new  fuels  and  the  gas  engine. 
III.  DIFFERENCES  IN  SIZES  OF  COMMUNITIES 

The  nature  of  agriculture  has  hindered  the  concentration  of  the 
cultivators  into  large  communities  with  many  thousands  of  popu- 
lation. Even  now,  in  order  that  an  average-size  peasant,  farmer, 
or  cultivator  family  may  secure  the  necessary  means  of  subsistence 
through  agriculture,  several  acres  of  farm  land  are  needed.  At  the 
same  time,  the  nature  of  agriculture  has  required  that  the  culti- 
vator dwell  more  or  less  permanently  near  the  cultivated  land. 
These  facts  and  the  existing  means  of  transportation  have  not 
rendered  it  possible  for  the  cultivators  to  live  in  communities  of 
many  thousands  of  population.  Hence,  there  is  and  always  has 
been  a  negative  correlation  between  the  size  of  the  community 
and  the  percentage  of  the  population  engaged  in  agriculture.  Usu- 
ally an  increase  of  the  size  of  a  community  above  a  few  hundreds 
of  population,  finds  the  proportion  of  agriculturists  rapidly  de- 
creasing. This  makes  it  comprehensible  why  statisticians  have 
taken  the  size  of  the  community  as  a  criterion  of  the  city  and  the 
country.  In  the  statistics  of  the  majority  of  countries,  communi- 
ties below  500, 1,000, 2,000,  2,500,  or  8,000  (according  to  the  coun- 
try) are  regarded  as  "rural,"  while  those  with  populations  above 
these  sizes  are  viewed  as  "urban." 

Although  there  are  predominantly  agricultural  communities 
with  populations  above  500  or  even  1,000,  and  there  are  predomi- 
nantly industrial  communities  with  populations  below  500  or 
1,000,  nevertheless,  the  above  statistical  criteria  of  the  city  and  the 
country  community  serve  fairly  well.  Thus  the  third  characteristic 

41  See  further  the  description  of  some  of  the  ancient  cities  in  the  next  section.  For 
details  see  G.  Maspero,  Life  in  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria,  pp.  194  if.  and  chaps,  i  and 
ii;  Cambridge  Ancient  History,  I,  373  E,  505  ff.;  VII,  360  ff.;  Edward  Bell,  The 
Architecture  of  Ancient  Egypt,  pp.  78  ff.;  Sir  E.  A.  Wallis  Budge,  Babylonian  Life  and 
History,  pp.  229  ff.;  the  works  cited  of  R.  Pohlmann  and  Maunier,  and  in  Die  Groste- 
stadt;  Henri  Pirenne,  Medieval  Cities,  pp.  57ff. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  191 

of  the  rural  aggregates  in  contrast  to  the  non-rural  groups  is  the 
smaller  size  of  the  -former  in  comparison  with  the  latter. 

This  is  clearly  corroborated  by  the  fact  that  the  agricultural 
population  lives  either  on  open  farms  or  in  small  hamlets  and 
villages 7  and  by  the  fact  that  the  populations  of  the  large  com- 
munities have  a  very  insignificant  percentage  of  people  engaged 
in  agricultural  pursuits. 

Of  the  total  population  of  the  large  cities,  the  percentage  en- 
gaged in  agriculture,  forestry,  gardening,  etc.,  was,  in  Germany 
(1925),  from  0.68  to  2.01  per  cent;  in  Vienna  (1923),  0.78;  in 
Sophia  (1920),  2.24;  in  Copenhagen  (1921),  0.76;  in  Paris  (1921), 
0.03;  in  London  (1921),  0.23;  in  Helsingfors  (1920),  0.97;  in 
Budapest  (1920),  1.27;  in  Italian  cities  (1921),  from  3.18  to  0.48; 
in  Warsaw  (1921),  0.93;  in  Moscow  (1923);  0.51;  in  Leningrad, 
1.09;  in  Buenos  Aires  (1914),  0.78;  in  Rio  de  Janeiro  (1920),  2.54; 
in  Osaka  (1920),  0.70;  in  Bombay  (1921),  1.20;  in  Sydney  (1921), 
3.11;  in  Wellington  (1921),  2.88;  in  Cairo  (1917),  2.12,  and  so  on. 
From  30  to  50  per  cent  of  the  population  of  these  and  other  cities 
were  engaged  in  industry;  from  20  to  30  per  cent  were  in  com- 
merce; the  rest  were  engaged  in  the  professions,  personal  service, 
governmental  service,  and  other  pursuits.8 

It  is  useless  to  give  other  data.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  nega- 
tive correlation  between  the  size  of  community  and  the  propor- 
tion of  the  population  engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits  holds  for 
all  countries  and  for  practically  all  times  since  the  appearance 
of  the  differentiation  into  agricultural  and  nonagricultural  com- 
munities.9 

Although  the  exact  size  of  the  population  of  most  ancient  cities 
is  unknown,  nevertheless,  from  various  sources,  especially  from 
a  study  of  the  sites  of  the  cities,  historians  have  been  able  to  estab- 
lish the  approximate  size  of  many  of  them.  In  the  first  place, 
there  were  some  cities  with  very  large  populations.  For  example, 
the  population  of  Babylon  and  several  other  Oriental  cities  ap- 

TSee  the  evidences  of  this  in  Sorokin  and  Zimmerman,  Principles,  pp.  19-20. 

8  Annuaire  statistique  des  granges  villes,  1927,  Table  20,  pp.  2140,  See  there  other 
data. 

9  For  the  previous  years  and  centuries  see  Weber,  op.  cit,,  pp.  314  fi.  For  the  ancient 
cities  see  the  papers  of  K.  Biicher  and  G.  von  Mayr,  in  Die  Grossestadt,  pp.  125  #.;  Vor- 
tr'dge  und  Aufsatze  zur  Stadtcausstelltmg,  Dresden,  1903,  ed.  by  Zahn  and  Jaensch; 
Sombart,  op.  cit.,  I,  erste  Hillfte,  142  ff.,  131-133;  II,  zweite  Halfte,  623;  Henri  See,  Lcs 
engines  du  capitalisms  moderne,  Paris,  1926,  p.  17. 


192  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

parently  was  above  300,000;  according  to  some  historians  it  ap- 
proached a  million.  Populations  o£  other  ancient  and  medieval 
cities  were  approximately  as  follows:  800,000  to  1,200,000  in 
Rome;  about  600,000  in  Alexandria  and  in  Antioch;  about  400,000 
in  Cassarea  and  Carthage;  about  100,000  in  Athens,  Corinth, 
Ephesus,  Pergamus.10  Numbers  of  other  cities,  although  not  so 
large,  had  populations  of  many  thousands  of  individuals.  The 
medieval  cities  in  Europe  were  also  of  considerable  size.  About 
the  twelfth  century  "Palermo  numbered  about  half  a  million 
souls;  Florence  had  100,000;  Venice  and  Milan,  over  100,000; 
Asti,  60,000-80,000;  Paris,  100,000  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, and  perhaps  240,000  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth;  Douai, 
Lille,  Ypres,  Ghent,  Bruges,  each  had  nearly  80,000;  London, 
40,000-45,000,"  and  so  on.11  Constantinople  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury had  about  1,000,000.12  Regarding  the  populations  of  other 
Oriental  cities  of  the  past,  we  can  judge  from  the  size  of  the  site 
of  the  city  as  well  as  from  the  testimonies  of  contemporaries. 
Here  are  a  few  typical  descriptions. 

Roman  cities. — Alexandria  already  at  the  time  of  Diodorus,  accord- 
to  official  figures,  had  a  free  population  of  300,000  souls,  a  total  which, 
because  of  the  immense  foreign  and  slave  population,  was  decidedly 
lower  than  the  actual  population.  Moreover,  this  figure  applies  to 
a  time  (180.  Olymp.)  which  falls  previous  to  the  wonderful  growth  of 
Alexandria  beginning  with  the  Augustan  monarchy,  a  growth  as  a 
result  of  which  the  population  must  have  doubled  itself  in  the  two 
centuries  before  Herodian.  If  the  Carthage  of  that  time  could  rival  this 
city  in  greatness,  it  certainly  must  have  had  about  700,000  inhabitants 
at  least,  similar  to  the  ancient  Carthaginian  city  shortly  before  its 
downfall. 

Therewith  we  also  gain  knowledge  as  to  the  size  of  other  cities,  for 
example,  Antioch,  the  "metropolis  of  the  Orient,"  which  Josephus 
designates  as  the  third  city  of  the  empire — after  Rome  and  Alex- 
andria, while  later  Libanius  places  it  on  the  same  level  with  the  three 

10  See  the  summary  of  various  computations  of  Beloch,  Merival,  and  others  in  W.  S. 
Davis,  The  Influence  of  Wealth  in  Imperial  Rome,  pp.  45-47;  Cambridge  Ancient  His- 
tory, VII,  811-812;  R.  Pohlmann,  Die  Ubervolkerung  der  antigen  Grossestddte,  Leipzig, 
1884,  pp.  1-25;  J,  Beloch,  Die  Bevolfcmng  der  griechisch-romischen  Welt,  1886;  Otto 
Seeck,  "Die  Statistik  in  der  alten  Geschichte,"  Jahrbucher  /.  National  ofonomie  und  Sta- 
tistik.,  1897,  pp.  161-176;  see  in  the  same  volume  Beloch's  "Zur  Bevolkerungsgeschichte 
des  Altertums,"  pp.  321-343;  for  less  conservative  figures  see  Duruy,  Histoire  des  Grecs, 
II,  154;  Histoire  des  Romains,  I,  364,  414. 

11  P.  Boissonnade,  Life  and  Wor\  in  Medieval  Europe,  New  York,  1927,  p.  203.  For 
the  Arabian  cities  see  the  work  of  Ibn-Khaldun  previously  cited. 

"Pirenne,  op.  cit.,  p.  85. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  193 

greatest  cities  after  Rome  and  Constantinople,  which  are,  without 
doubt,  Alexandria,  Carthage,  and  Milan.  The  size  of  Milan  can  be 
estimated  by  the  fact  that,  according  to  the  report  of  Procop,  300,000 
adult  males  are  said  to  have  lost  their  lives  during  the  capture  and  de- 
struction of  the  city  by  King  Vitig  in  the  year  593.  Furthermore,  if  in 
the  East  a  city  of  third  rank  like  Caesarea  in  Cappadocia  had  about 
400,000  inhabitants  (in  the  third  century),  how  much  greater  must 
have  been  the  increase  of  the  population  of  the  new  world  capital  on 
the  Bosphorus,  where  every  imaginable  ingenious  means  and  the  ad- 
vantage of  an  incomparable  location  cooperated  to  produce  a  center  of 
culture  which  soon  outstripped  all  eastern  cities  and  finally  became 
equal  in  population  to  western  Rome  itself.  Finally,  besides  these  great 
cities  many  other  cities  developed  themselves  in  a  more  or  less  metro- 
politan manner — only  recall  Lyon  and  Treves,  Merida,  Tarraco,  Selen- 
cia,  Laodicea,  Smyrna,  Ephesus,  and  others — to  which  development  the 
provincial  history  and  the  magnificence  of  monumental  remains  offer 
eloquent  testimony. 

Taking  into  consideration  the  lack  of  records  and  statistics  of  popu- 
lation and  in  spite  of  their  problematical  worth,  let  the  circumference 
figures  of  the  most  important  cities  here  be  enumerated,  which  figures 
are  handed  down  to  us  by  chance.  At  the  time  of  Vespasian's  census 
in  the  year  74  Rome  had  a  circumference  of  13,200  paces,  while  the 
Aurelian  wall,  which  did  not  inclose  nearly  all  of  the  settled  area, 
together  with  the  unwalled  parts  of  Trastever,  already  measured  over 
17,000  paces.  Carthage  is  given  10,250  paces,  referring  it  seems  to  the 
earlier  times  of  emperors,  likewise  Alexandria,  which  at  the  time  of 
Diodorus  had  measured  a  little  over  80  long-measures — 10,000  paces — 
now  measured  16,360,  a  significant  symptom  of  the  growth  of  this  city. 
When  a  little  over  8,000  paces  are  ascribed  to  Antioch,  it  truly  is  much 
lower  than  the  highest  circumference  figure  of  that  city.  That  figure 
would  with  difficulty  be  kept  under  18,000  paces,  which  Constantinople 
actually  reached  at  the  time  of  its  greatest  expansion.13 

Babylon  (about  2250  B.  C.). — The  great  towered  encircling  walls  of 
Babylon  rise  sheer  from  the  plain,  in  their  outer  bastion  3.3  meters 
thick,  fronted  by  a  deep  fosse;  behind  this  bastion  lies  a  wall  of  burnt 
brick,  7.8  meters  thick,  and  at  an  interval  of  about  twelve  meters  an- 
other wall  of  crude  brick,  7  meters  thick.  The  space  between  the  two 
walls  is  filled  with  rubble,  so  that  a  road  leads  along  the  top  of  the 
walls  broad  enough  for  a  four-horse  chariot,  as  also  do  the  classical 
travelers  aver.  To  the  northeast  the  frontage  is  4.4  kilometers  long,  and 
not  quite  half  that  length  on  the  southeastern  side.  The  circuit  of  the 
city  was  about  eighteen  kilometers;  Herodotus  says  eighty-six  and 

"Pohlmann,  op.  cit,t  pp,  18-20, 


194  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Ctesias  sixty-five.  .  .  .  Leaving  the  central  mound,  the  way  southeast- 
wards  leads  to  the  populous  quarter  where  the  burghers  of  Babylon 
had  their  homes,  .  .  .  The  houses  are  closely  crowded  in,  but  with 
never  a  window  looking  on  the  street,  the  narrow  streets  like  any 
eastern  town  today,  their  walls  stoutly  built  of  mud  and  brick,  good 
brick  their  flooring,  and  the  water-supply  obtained  from  numerous 
circular  wells.14 

The  Chinese  city  of  Kanbalu,  the  capital  of  Kublai  Khan  (thirteenth 
century  A.  D.).— The  new  (part)  of  the  city  is  of  a  form  perfectly 
square,  and  twenty-four  miles  in  extent,  each  of  its  sides  being  six 
miles.  It  is  enclosed  with  walls  of  earth,  that  at  the  base  are  about  ten 
paces  thick.  .  .  .  The  streets  in  general  are  so  straight  that  when  a  per- 
son ascends  the  wall  over  one  of  the  gates,  and  looks  right  forward,  he 
can  see  the  gates  opposite  to  him  on  the  other  side  of  the  city.  In  the 
public  streets  there  are,  on  each  side,  booths  and  shops  of  every  descrip- 
tion. .  .  .  The  wall  of  the  city  has  twelve  gates.  .  .  .  Outside  of  each 
gate  is  a  suburb  so  wide  that  it  reaches  to  and  unites  with  those  of  the 
other  nearest  gates  on  both  sides,  and  in  length  extends  to  the  distance 
of  three  or  four  miles,  so  that  the  number  of  inhabitants  in  these  sub- 
urbs exceeds  that  of  the  city  itself.  .  .  .  Within  each  suburb  there  are 
at  intervals  many  hotels,  or  caravanserais  in  which  the  merchants  ar- 
riving from  various  parts  take  up  abode.  The  number  of  public  women 
who  prostitute  themselves  for  money  is  twenty-five  thousand.  .  .  .  The 
multitude  of  inhabitants,  and  the  number  of  houses  in  the  city  of  Kan- 
balu ...  is  greater  thaa  the  mind  can  comprehend.  The  suburbs  are 
even  more  populous  than  the  city.15 

The  Hindu  city  of  Pdtali-putra  (302  B.  C.)  according  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  Megasthenes. — The  city  was  encompassed  all  round  by  a  ditch, 
600  feet  in  breadth  and  30  cubits  in  depth.  In  the  inhabited  quarters, 
Pataliputra  stretched  to  an  extreme  length  on  each  side  of  80  stadia 
(about  9  miles).  Its  breadth  was  15  stadia  (about  1%  miles).  And  it 
was  of  the  shape  of  a  parallelogram.  The  total  circuit  was  therefore 
about  21%  miles,  i.e.,  slightly  above  the  double  of  that  of  Aurelian's 
Rome.16 

The  city  of  Kinsai  (thirteenth  century). — This  city  is  an  hundred 
miles  in  circuit.  The  number  of  bridges  (in  it)  amounts  to  twelve 
thousand.  .  .  .  The  whole  city  must  have  contained  one  million  six 
hundred  thousand  families.17 

14  Cambridge  Ancient  History,  I,  505-508. 

™The  Travels  of  Marco  Polo,  New  York,  1926,  pp.  132-152.  See  there  similar  de- 
scriptions of  many  other  cities  of  China,  India,  and  other  Oriental  countries. 

16  Benoy  Kumar  Sarkar,  The  Political  Institutions  and  Theories  of  the  Hindus,  Leip- 
zig, 1922,  p.  65. 

17  The  Travels  of  Marco  Polo,  pp.  232,  248. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  195 

The  city  of  Dur-Sarginu,  a  royal  residence  of  ancient  Assyria. — Dur- 
Sarginu  being  built  at  once  (according  to  the  decision  of  the  great 
king,  Sargon)  has  none  of  the  irregularities  observed  in  older  cities. 
The  streets  retain  in  every  direction  the  width  of  the  road  they  con- 
tinue. .  .  .  The  city,  erected  upon  a  regular  plan,  formed  an  almost 
perfect  square  of  about  seven  hundred  acres.  .  .  .  Toward  the  center  of 
the  town  the  houses  become  richer  and  more  beautiful,  the  traffic  in- 
creases, luxurious  chariots  are  seen  amongst  the  crowd  of  pedestrians. 
The  center  of  such  a  city  is  the  palaces  of  the  sovereign.  .  .  .  Thou- 
sands of  persons  are  attached  to  the  sovereign's  household  and  to  the 
administration  of  his  business:  some  as  chamberlains,  treasurers, 
scribes,  eunuchs,  military  chiefs;  others  as  soldiers,  footmen,  and  cooks. 
There  is  a  perpetual  movement  of  the  detachments,  couriers,  officials; 
files  of  donkeys  bring  provisions;  morning  and  evening  hundreds  of 
male  and  female  slaves  descend  in  processions  to  draw  the  water  re- 
quired for  such  an  immense  number  of  people.  .  .  .  Merchants,  trades- 
men of  every  kind,  supplicants,  and  even  mere  sight-seers,  enter  (the 
gate  of  the  city)  without  the  least  difficulty.  .  .  .  The  peasants  enter 
every  morning,  pushing  their  cattle  before  them  or  driving  carts 
heavily  loaded  with  vegetables  and  fruit.18 

The  proportion  of  the  population  of  the  cities  of  the  past  that 
was  engaged  in  agriculture  was  considerable  in  the  earliest  and 
simplest  forms  of  cities  and  at  the  initial  stages  of  the  urban-rural 
differentiation.  However,  it  has  been  decreasing  with  the  growth 
of  the  differentiation  and  the  urbanization  of  the  cities.  In  other 
words,  the  negative  correlation  discussed  holds  in  regard  to  the 
past  and  to  various  societies.  The  following  quotations  give  the 
essentials  of  the  situation. 

The  earliest  undiflf erentiated  type  of  the  city-village  was  marked 
by  a  preponderance  of  the  agricultural  over  the  industrial  and  com- 
mercial functions.  Cattle-breeding  was  extensively  practiced  in  many 
ancient  cities.  There  were  common  pasture  lands  in  ancient  cities  and 
especially  in  the  ancient  medieval  cities  of  France,  England,  Germany, 
Italy,  and  in  American  cities.  Sometimes  the  herd  itself  was  a  com- 
munal property.  .  .  .  The  agricultural  function  properly  was  still  more 
important  in  this  type  of  the  city.  Generally,  agriculture  was  an  im- 
portant occupation  of  the  urbanites.  The  city  contained  a  large  number 
of  individuals  engaged  in  agriculture  and  living  from  it;  this  was  the 
general  character  of  the  ancient  cities;  often,  the  same  situation  was 
found  in  the  medieval  cities  of  England,  France,  Germany,  and  in  the 
contemporary  cities  of  the  non-European  civilization.  Finally,  even  in 

18  G.  Maspero,  Life  in  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria,  New  York,  1914,  pp,  195-205. 


196  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  cities  where  various  trades  were  developed,  the  artisans  themselves 
were  often  actively  engaged  in  cultivation  of  some  soil.  Close  ties  ex- 
isted between  the  city  and  the  village.  Often,  in  the  time  of  harvest, 
the  inhabitants  of  the  city  emigrated  to  the  neighboring  villages;  some- 
times they  were  even  obliged  to  do  so.  The  city  itself  possessed  the 
lands  for  a  communal  cultivation.  .  .  .  The  land  within  the  cities  it- 
self was  cultivated  in  a  considerable  part. 

Correspondingly,  such  a  city  was  very  much  like  the  village  in 
other  respects.  "Urban  and  the  rural  law  were  of  the  same  nature. 
The  law  of  urban  property  was  but  a  prolongation  of  rural 
tenure."  The  processual  and  the  criminal  laws  of  the  city  and  the 
village  were  similar,,  and  the  state  of  the  rural-urban  collective 
rnind  was  identical.19 

Such  was  the  situation  at  the  early  stages  of  the  city.  However, 
even  then,  the  cities  contained  a  somewhat  smaller  proportion 
of  agriculturists  than  the  rural  parts,  and  the  proportion  of  the 
nonagricultural  population — rulers,  officials,  clergy,  artisans,  mer- 
chants, artificers,  etc. — was  somewhat  greater  in  the  cities.  As 
soon  as  the  rural-urban  differentiation  made  further  progress, 
the  proportion  of  the  agriculturists  tended  to  decrease  more  and 
more  in  the  cities,  while  the  proportion  of  the  nonagricultural 
population  tended  to  increase.  "The  city,  since  its  early  stages, 
tended  to  become,  as  much  as  possible,  the  ecclesiastical,  political, 
military  and  commercial  center  of  the  surrounding  villages."  20 
"Ancient  oriental  cities  (Babylon  and  others)  were  principally 
organs  of  refuge  and  domination;  economically  they  were  purely 
consumptive  bodies  which  added  almost  nothing  to  the  produc- 
tion of  the  commodities  of  the  nation."21 

19  R.  Maunier,  L'origine  et  la  jonction  cconomique  des  miles,  pp.  72-86.  See  in  the 
preceding  chapter  Sombart's  statements  and  data.  See  also  Liebenam,  St'ddteverwaltung 
in  romischen  Kaiserreiche,  pp.  14-15,  28-29;  MagofEn,  Topography  of  Praeneste,  Johns 
Hopkins  University  Studies,  1908,  XXVI,  22-23;  Trapenard,  Uager  scripturanus ,  1908, 
pp.  lOff.;  Gomme,  The  Village  Community,  p.  273;  Vinogradoff,  English  Society  in  the 
Eleventh  Century,  p.  258;  Domesday  Book.,  I,  154;  Karl  Hegel,  Entstehtmg  des  deut- 
schen  Stadtewesens,  p.  102  ff.;  G.  von  Below,  Entstehung  der  deutschen  Stadtgemeinde, 
p.  35;  Roberti,   "Dei  beni  appartenenti  alle  citta  dell  'Italia  settentrionale,"  Archivio 
guiridico,  1906,  pp.  53-55;  Andrews,  The  River  Towns  of  Connecticut,  Johns  Hopkins 
University  Studies,  VII,  68  £F.;  Haussoullier,  Vie  municipale  en  Attique,  p.  69;  Houdoy, 
Condition  et  administration  des  villes  chez  Remains,  pp.  414rf.;  other  references  are 
given  in  Maunier's  work  cited  above,  pp.  72-80. 

20  G.  Schmoller,  "La  division  du  travail,"  Revue  d' economic  politique,  1890,  p.  144; 
Max  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  pp.  317  ff.;  Biicher's  paper  in  Die  Grossestadt. 
See  also  Sombart's  data  in  the  preceding  chapter. 

21 K.  Biicher,  "Die  Grossestadte  in  Gegenwart  und  Vergangenheit,"  in  Die  Crosse- 
stadt,  p.  13. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  197 

In  ancient  Egypt,  in  addition  to  priests,  officials,  soldiers,  and 
merchants,  "the  townsmen  were  artificers  and  mechanics."22  In 
the  Bible  we  are  told  that  the  cities  were  given  to  the  Levites 
(clergy) :  "And  the  cities  shall  they  have  to  dwell  in.  ...  And 
the  suburbs  of  the  cities,  which  ye  shall  give  unto  the  Levites, 
shall  be  from  the  wall  of  the  city  and  outward  a  thousand  cubits 
round  about."23  The  Levites  had  some  agricultural  functions,  but 
only  as  a  by-occupation.  The  same  is  true  of  Roman,  Greek,  and 
other  cities.  At  a  relatively  early  stage  their  occupational  popula- 
tion consisted,  in  considerable  degree,  of  the  officials,  clergy, 
merchants,  bankers,  professionals,  soldiers,  artificers,  donkey  driv- 
ers, porters,  dyers,  fullers,  dealers  in  dry  goods,  in  drugs,  and  in 
fruits,  bakers,  hotel-keepers,  barbers,  goldsmiths,  physicians,  teach- 
ers, servants,  and  so  on.24 

Similar  was  the  situation  in  the  relatively  early  medieval  towns 
of  Europe.  In  Nottingham  the  Domesday  census  computed  214 
houses  of  which  only  19  were  the  houses  of  the  villani.  In  Nor- 
vich  1,238  burghers  had  only  80  acres  of  land;  in  Strasbourg  in 
1473,  of  26,198  inhabitants  only  5,476  were  Landleutc;  in  Ham- 
burg in  1376  the  agriculturists  composed  only  a  part  of  its  popu- 
lation; similar  was  the  situation  in  other  medieval  cities.25 

In  the  European  cities  of  the  ninth  century  the  bulk  of  the 
population  consisted  of  the  clergy,  monks,  students,  artificers,  and 
officials.26  In  the  cities  of  the  later  centuries  the  large  class  of 
merchants,  commercial  people,  and  artisans  was  added  and  com- 
posed the  bulk  of  the  population.27  The  same  was  true  of  the 
relatively  early  Arabian,  Chinese,  Hindu,  Persian,  and  other  non- 
European  cities.  "Their  inhabitants  in  general  live  on  commerce 
and  manual  arts."28 

22  Petrie,  op.  cit.,  p.  20. 

^Numbers  35. 

54  See  L.  Friedlander,  Town  Life  in  Ancient  Italy,  New  York,  1902,  pp.  6,  942  and 
passim. 

25  See  Maunier,  op.  cit.,  pp.  78-79;  Ellis,  Introduction  to  Domesday,  II,  476;  Ballard, 
Domesday  Boroughs,  pp.  60-61;  K.  Biicher,  "Zur  mittelalterischen  Bevblkerungsstat.,"  in 
Zeitschrift  f.  die  ges.  Staatswisscnsch.,  1882,  pp.  115-116;  Eheberg,  "Strassburg's  Be- 
volkerungszahV  in  Conrad's  Jahrbucher,  1883,  p.  308;  Maitland,  Township  and 
Borough,  See  also  Henri  Se*e,  Les  origines  du  capitalisms  moderne,  Paris,  1926,  pp.  16  flf. 

28  See  Pirenne,  op.  cit.f  pp.  66  ff. 

21 Ibid.,  chaps,  iv,  v.  See  Sombart's  analysis  of  the  builders  and  the  fillers  of  the  city 
given  in  the  preceding  chapter. 

28  The  Travels  of  Marco  Polo,  pp.  178  and  passim;  also  Ibn-Khaldun,  Prottgo- 
m&nes,  cited  above,  Sec.  IV;  Bucher,  op.  cit.,  pp.  9  £f. 


198  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

With  a  further  development  of  the  cities  the  negative  correla- 
tion between  the  size  and  urbanity  of  the  city  and  the  proportion 
of  the  agriculturists  in  its  population  became  still  more  conspicu- 
ous. It  manifested  itself  first  in  a  division  of  the  city  into  two 
principal  parts:  the  castrum,  a  fortress,  inhabited  by  rulers  and 
armed  forces  and  partly  by  agriculturists,  and  the  portus,  inhab- 
ited by  artisans,  merchants,  and  other  nonagricultural  popula- 
tion; second,  in  a  more  rapid  growth  of  this  second  part  and  in  a 
decrease  of  the  agricultural  population  in  the  first  part.  All  this 
led  to  a  continual  decrease  of  the  agricultural  population  in  the 
cities.29  At  this  stage  of  the  differentiated  city, 
the  city  instead  o£  being  as  before  but  a  rural  district  of  a  restricted 
dimension  becomes  a  proper  abode  of  the  industrial  and  commercial 
functions;  this  fact  finds  its  reflection  in  the  law,  in  the  form  of  en- 
forcement on  the  part  of  the  city  (Stadtzwang)  of  the  obligatory  rule 
that  commerce  and  industry  must  be  carried  on  only  within  the  abode 
of  the  city  and  in  the  form  of  the  similar  constraint  concerning  the 
market  (Marfytztvang),  The  practice  of  specialized  handicrafts  is  pro- 
hibited outside  of  the  city  or  of  a  limited  circle  around  it;  an  obligatory 
division  of  labor  tends  to  be  established  between  the  city  and  the  rural 
parts.30 

The  above  survey  is  sufficient  for  us  to  contend  that  the  nega- 
tive correlation  discussed  has  appeared  since  the  beginning  of  the 
rural-urban  differentiation  and  has  grown  parallel  with  the 
growth  of  this  differentiation;  in  this  sense,  it  is  a  constant  and 
general  differential  characteristic  of  the  rural  and  urban  worlds. 
IV.  DIFFERENCES  IN  DENSITY  OF  POPULATION 

The  fourth  principal  difference  between  the  rural  community 
and  the  nonrural,  particularly  the  urban  community,  has  been 
the  negative  correlation  between  the  density  of  population  and 
rurality,  and  the  positive  relationship  between  density  and  ur- 
banity. As  a  rule  communities  of  cultivators  have  a  lower  density 
of  population  than  urban  communities.  This  difference  is  also 
causally  connected  with  the  nature  of  cultivation.  As  yet,  it  is  not 
possible  either  for  thousands  of  people  to  secure  the  means  of 
subsistence  from  a  few  acres  or  to  carry  on  the  cultivation  of  the 
land  by  families  who  live  at  a  far  distance.  Sufficient  evidences 

M  See  the  details  and  the  literature  in  Maunier's  work  cited,  pp.  142  ff. 
80Maunier,  op.  cit.,  p.  160;  see  there  the  literature  and  the  details. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  199 

of  this  are  given  in  the  Principles  (pp.  20-22).  A  few  additional 
ones  follow. 

In  Italy  in  1921  in  cities  of  100,000  and  more  population  there 
were  the  following  persons  per  hectare 81: 


CITY 

DENSITY  IN  THE 
MUNICIPALITY 
AS  A  WHOLE 

DENSITY  IN  THE 
TERRITORY  OF 
THE  Ci  TY  CENTER 

Torino 

38.6 

87.4 

Milano 

39.5 

95.0 

Venezia 

5.5 

238.0 

Ferrara 

2.8 

49.3 

Bologna          ... 
Roma 

.      18.1 
.       ...           3.3 

115.7 

128.7 

Bari 

15.6 

304.4 

In  1926  the  density  of  the  population  of  the  principal  cities  of 
Europe  per  one  square  hectare  was  from  21  (Reval)  to  333 
(Paris);  in  South  America,  from  10  to  103;  in  Africa  and  Asia, 
from  64  to  78;  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  from  10  to  22. 
(Annuaire  statistique  des  grandes  miles,  1927,  p.  218.)  All  these 
figures  are  far  above  the  densities  of  the  rural  parts. 

Not  only  is  the  urban  population  more  dense  in  relation  to  the 
number  of  persons  per  unit  of  territory,  but  it  also  has  a  greater 
density  in  the  sense  that  a  lower  percentage  of  its  total  number  of 
households  or  families  have  "a  structurally  separate  dwelling"  (a 
house,  flat,  or  room  having  separate  access  either  to  the  street  or  to 
a  common  landing  or  staircase).32  The  urban  households  or  fami- 
lies are  considerably  less  separated  or  isolated  from  other  fami- 
lies even  in  their  dwelling  places.  Such  a  situation  represents  one 
of  the  forms  of  greater  density  or  greater  crowding  or  overcrowd- 
ing in  urban  communities.  Such,  for  instance,  is  the  situation  in 
England  and  Wales  as  shown  by  the  following  figures.33 

81Ugx>  Giusti,  Le  grandi  dtta  italiane,  Florence,  1925,  p.  9. 

32  See  a  good  definition  in  the  Census  of  England  and  Wales,  1921,  General  Report, 
pp.  34-35. 

33  Census  of  England  and  Wales,  1921,  General  Report,  pp.  45-46.  See  also  A,  News- 
holme,  Vital  Statistics,  1924,  chap,  xxvi.  In  so  far  as  known,  in  other  countries  the  situa- 
tion is  either  similar  or  the  rural  population  has  a  number  of  rooms  per  person  not  gen- 
erally lower  than  the  urban. 


200  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

DISTRIBUTION  OF  PRIVATE  FAMILIES  BY  NUMBER 
OF  ROOMS  OCCUPIED 


PLACE  OF 

NUMBER  OF  ROOMS  OCCUPIED 

Av.No. 

OF 

ROOMS 

_     PER 

FAMILY 

AV.NO. 

OF 

ROOMS 

PER 

PERSON 

RESIDENCE 

1 

2 

3 

4       5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

1CH 

London 
County  boroughs 
Other  urban 
areas     .    . 
Rural  districts 

132 

34 

20 
7 

211 
108 

88 
62 

235 
163 

132 
133 

180    90 
253  213 

249  234 
268  227 

61 

136 

148 
128 

32 

44 

57 
62 

22 
24 

31 
44 

11 
11 

16 
23 

26 
14 

25 

46 

3.62 
4.39 

4.74 
5.09 

0.96 
1.04 

1.13 

1.22 

In  other  countries  the  form  of  density  under  discussion  mani- 
fests itself  in  a  lower  percentage  of  urban  families  in  "a  struc- 
turally separate  dwelling"  or  in  a  higher  number  of  families  or 
persons  who  dwell  in  one  building  or  dwelling  place.  In  the 
United  States,  for  instance,  in  1920,  there  were  4.6  persons  per 
dwelling  in  rural  communities,  and  5.7  persons  per  dwelling  in 
urban  communities.34  If  we  take  big  cities  the  difference  is  still 
greater.  In  1890  the  number  of  persons  per  dwelling  in  the  big 
cities  and  their  states  was  as  follows 35  : 


CITY 

STATE 

New  York  
Chicago       

18.5 
8.6 

6.7 

5.7 

Philadelphia   .... 

5.6 

5.2 

Brooklyn  

9.8 

6.7 

St.  Louis  

7.4 

55 

In  Norway  (1920),  for  each  100  dwelling  places  in  the  five  largest 
cities  there  were  only  1.5  separate  houses  (logements  particulier)  \ 
in  the  cities  of  over  5,000  population  (excepting  the  five  largest 
cities)  the  number  rises  to  12.4;  and  in  the  rural  communities 
to  76.36  In  Poland  (1921)  the  average  number  of  persons  per 

M  Abstract  of  the  fourteenth  Census,  p.  463. 

35  Weber,  op.  at.,  p.  416. 

*  Stttistisk  Arsbok,  1924,  Oslo,  1925,  pp.   178-180. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  201 

dwelling  building  (par  bailment)  was  14.08  in  the  cities,  and  6.2 
in  the  rural  communities. 

At  the  same  time  among  the  dwelling  buildings  in  the  rural 
communities,  more  than  90  per  cent  had  only  one  logement  (that 
is,  were  separate  houses  for  one  family),  while  in  the  cities  only 
about  47  per  cent  of  all  inhabited  buildings  were  separate  houses. 
The  remaining  were  buildings  with  several  apartments,  flats,  or 
structurally  separate  dwellings  (buildings  with  more  than  one 
logement. Y1  In  Switzerland  the  average  number  of  persons  per 
house  in  the  cities  in  1920  was  13.8  (that  is,  several  families  dwelt 
in  one  building),  while  in  the  rural  parts  the  system  of  one  house 
for  a  family  was  more  predominant.38  In  Canada  (1921)  in  the 
urban  area  there  were  1.14  families  and  5.16  persons  per  dwelling 
and  in  rural  areas  1.02  families  and  4.79  persons.39  In  Belgium  per 
100  houses  there  were  217  separate  dwellings  (logements)  in  the 
four  biggest  cities,  119  in  other  cities  of  10,000  and  over,  and  109 
in  the  communities  with  less  than  10,000  population.40  The  situa- 
tion is  similar  in  other  countries.41 

Finally  the  same  fact  is  shown  by  the  statistics  of  the  number 
of  persons  per  building  (bailments)  in  the  large  cities  of  Europe. 
Of  all  inhabited  buildings,  the  proportion  with  1  to  10  inhabitants 
per  building  is  relatively  insignificant;  more  than  50  per  cent  of 
the  buildings  are  inhabited  by  11  and  more  persons;  in  many 
large  cities  buildings  with  more  than  100  dwellers  compose  from 
10  to  30  per  cent  of  all  dwellings  of  the  city.42  Such  a  situation 
generally  does  not  exist  in  the  rural  parts. 

Without  other  evidence,  we  may  safely  conclude  that  the  densi- 
ty of  population,  measured  either  by  the  number  of  individuals 
per  unit  of  territory,  by  the  number  of  families  per  one  dwelling 
or  building,  or  by  the  number  of  families  or  individuals  per  one 
structurally  separated  dwelling  is  positively  correlated  with  ur- 
banity and  with  the  size  of  urban  community  and  negatively  with 

87  Annuaire  statistique  de  la  repttblique  polonaise,  1924,  Varsovie,  1925,  pp.   18-19. 

38  Statistische s  Jahrbuch  der  Schtvciz,  1925,  p.  41. 

™The  Canada  Year  Book,  1925,  p.  98. 

^  Annuaire  statistique  de  la  Belgiqtie,  1924-1925,  p.  xxi, 

41  See  for  instance,  Statistis^  Aarbog,  1927,  p.  29. 

42  See  Annuaire  statistique  des  grandes  villes,  1927,  pp.  24-25;  this  makes  compre- 
hensible the  predominance  of  the  many-storied  buildings  in  the  city  in  contrast  to  one- 
or  two-storied  houses  in  the  rural  parts.  See  the  data,  ibid.,  pp.  22-23.  See  there  also  the 
data  concerning  the  number  of  persons  per  room,  pp.  28  ff. 


202  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rurality  and  the  smallness  in  size  of  the  community.  This  rule 
holds  not  only  in  regard  to  the  present  but  to  the  past  also. 
To  each  stage  of  economic  civilization  there  is  a  corresponding  specific 
density  of  the  population.  In  a  state  of  savagery,  where  man  does  not 
cultivate  the  land  and  lives  by  hunting,  fishing,  and  collecting  the  gifts 
of  nature,  a  vast  piece  of  land  is  necessary  to  obtain  subsistence  for 
a  family.  Among  the  Eskimos,  who  live  in  a  cold  climate,  we  find 
scarcely  2  persons  per  100  square  kilometers.  But  even  in  a  warm  cli- 
mate the  Indians  of  Amazon  do  not  have  more  than  3  persons  per 
square  kilometer.  In  the  pastoral  stage  man  cultivates  land  but  little.  In 
the  steppes  of  Turkestan  ...  the  density  of  the  population  fluctuates 
from  less  than  1  to  2.7  inhabitants  per  square  kilometer.  In  the  agri- 
cultural stage  the  density  becomes  much  greater.  It  fluctuates  from  10 
to  40  inhabitants  per  square  kilometer,  according  to  the  natural  fer- 
tility of  the  soil  and  the  degree  of  art  with  which  it  is  cultivated.  In  the 
industrial  stage  .  .  .  the  density  increases  still  more.  The  populations 
of  the  cities  grow.  Finally,  in  the  industrial  and  commercial  stage  .  .  . 
density  does  not  have  any  limits  or,  at  least,  its  limits  are  always  ex- 
tensible. 

In  the  industrial  regions  of  northern  France  in  1906  the  density 
was  about  328,  while  in  the  agricultural  regions  of  the  lower  Alps 
it  was  only  about  16.  In  industrial  Lancashire  the  density  was 
844,  in  the  province  of  Archangel  it  was  only  O.5.43 

Thus  since  earliest  times  a  fundamental  characteristic  of  the 
city  was  its  greater  density.  "The  city  is  a  complex  society  whose 
geographical  basis  is  particularly  restrained  in  proportion  to  the 
size  of  its  population."  Such  is  the  definition  of  the  city  developed 
by  Maunier  and  by  many  others.44  Since  the  initial  period,  this  dif- 
ferential trait  remains  and  is  further  accentuated  with  the  growth 
of  the  cities.  If  some  of  the  half-agricultural  cities  of  the  past  (in 
Babylon,  Egypt,  Assyria)  did  not  suffer  much  from  real  over- 
crowding, nevertheless  the  density  of  their  populations  was  far 
greater  than  in  the  rural  parts  of  those  countries.  Other  large  cities 
of  the  past,  like  some  Roman  and  Greek  cities,  were  greatly  over- 
crowded and,  hence,  suffered  a  great  deal.45  When  the  cities  as- 

43  E.  Levasseur,  "La  repartition  de  la  race  humaine,"  'Bulletin  de  Vlnstitut  International 
de  Statistlque,  Tome  XVIII,  2e  Livraison,  pp.  55,  61-62.  See  also  in  the  same  volume, 
P.  Meuriot,  "De  la  mesure  des  agglomerations  urbaines,"  pp.  82-95;  F.  Carli,  L'equilibrio 
delle  nazioni,  Bologna,  1919,  pp.  9 6  if. 

44  See  Maunier's  paper  in  the  preceding  chapter. 

45  See  the  data  and  analysis  in  the  quoted  works  of  Pohlmann,  Beloch,  Seeck,  Ibn- 
Khaldun,  and  others. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  203 

sumed  a  conspicuous  industrial  and  commercial  character,  their 
densities  increased  more  and,  as  Levasseur  says,  became  poten- 
tially unlimited. 

V.  DIFFERENCES  IN  THE  HOMOGENEITY  AND  THE  HETERO- 
GENEITY OF  POPULATIONS 

The  fifth  permanent  difference  between  rural  and  urban  com- 
munities is  that  the  population  of  the  rural  communities  tends  to 
be  more  homogeneous  in  Its  socio-psychical  characteristics  than 
that  of  the  urban  communities.  By  homogeneity  is  meant,  in  the 
first  place,  similarity  in  acquired,  socio-psychical  characteristics, 
such  as  language,  beliefs,  opinions,  mores,  patterns  of  behavior, 
and  so  on.  Whether  the  rural  population  is  more  homogeneous 
racially  than  the  urban  will  be  discussed  later.  It  is  sufficient  at 
this  time  to  stress  the  socio-psychical  homogeneity.  City  popula- 
tions in  this  respect  have  always  been  "a  melting  pot"  in  which 
have  been  thrown  together  individuals  of  different  nationality, 
religion,  culture,  mores,  customs,  conduct,  and  taste.  In  the  course 
of  this  book  we  shall  see  that  the  city  is  a  community  in  which 
coexist  the  most  opposite  and  contrasting  types  of  human  beings: 
geniuses  and  idiots;  whites  and  Negroes;  healthiest  and  the  un- 
healthiest;  multimillionaires  and  paupers;  emperors  and  slaves; 
saints  and  criminals;  atheists  and  ardent  believers;  radical  reac- 
tionaries and  radical  revolutionaries.  In  all  these  and  other  re- 
spects, the  city  is  a  co-dwelling  of  the  most  heterogeneous  and 
contrasting  types  of  human  personalities,  while  the  country  com- 
munity contains  more  "flat,"  homogeneous,  and  uniform  types. 
Two  principal  factors  are  responsible  for  this.  First,  the  urban 
population  is  recruited  to  a  much  greater  degree  out  of  migrants 
from  widely  differing  areas  with  different  standards,  mores,  man- 
ners, beliefs,  etc.  Second,  as  we  shall  see,  there  is  a  greater  division 
of  labor,  greater  social  differentiation  and  stratification,  and 
greater  contrasts  in  standards  of  living  and  environment  which 
surround  the  various  members  in  the  urban  communities  com- 
pared with  the  rural.  Since  the  members  of  urban  communities 
are  surrounded  by  much  more  differentiated,  stratified,  and  dis- 
similar conditions  than  those  in  the  country,  naturally  they  will 
differ  from  one  another  more  than  the  members  of  the  rural  com- 
munity with  its  less  differentiated,  stratified,  and  more  "even" 
environment.  These  two  reasons  are  sufficient  to  make  the  propo- 


204  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

sition  comprehensible  and  valid.  The  following  few  representa- 
tive data  show  that  the  urban  population  is  really  recruited  out  of 
migrants  from  wider  areas  than  the  rural. 

In  the  United  States  the  proportion  of  native-born  of  native 
parents  systematically  decreases  and  that  of  foreign-born  sys- 
tematically increases  as  one  passes  from  the  open  farms  to  larger 
and  larger  urban  communities.  In  1920  the  situation  was  as  fol- 
lows46: 


CLASSES  OF 

PERCENTAGE  DISTRIBUTION 

WHITE  POPULATION 

Farms 

Villages 

Cities 

U.S.A. 

Native  parentage 

66.6 

64.6 

45.2 

55.3 

Foreign  parentage 

7.4 

10.5 

20.8     . 

14.8 

Mixed   parentage 

4.7 

5.7 

8.1 

6.6 

Foreign-born               .    . 

4.7 

9.6 

19.1 

13.0 

In  another  form,  the  same  positive  correlation  of  the  percentage 
of  foreigners  with  increase  in  the  size  of  the  cities  may  be  seen 
from  the  following  figures.47 


PERCENTAGE  DISTRIBUTION  IN 

COMMUNITIES  WITH 

CLASSES  OF 

POPULATIONS 

OF 

POPULATION 

Below 

2,500- 

25,000- 

100,000- 

500,000 

2,500 

25,000 

100,000 

500,000 

and  Over 

Native  parentage  . 

65.9 

58.1 

49.3 

45.7 

29.3 

Native  white  of  foreign 

or 

mixed    parentage  .    . 

.  .     13.6 

22.3 

26.5 

28.2 

37.6 

Foreign-born 

.  .  .      6.5 

12.5 

16.9 

17.2 

28.4 

Total  white 

86.0 

92.9 

92.8 

91.1 

95.3 

As  the  remaining  (Negro  and  Indian)  population  is  native  also, 
the  figures  show  the  correlation  clearly. 
The  situation  is  similar  in  England.48 

46  Farm  Population  of  the  U.  S.,  Census  Monograph  VI,  96. 

"Immigrants  and  Their  Children,  1920,  Census  Monograph  VII,  22-23. 

48  See  Sorokin  and  Zimmerman,  Principles,  p.  24;  Census  of  England  and  Wales, 
1921,  General  Report,  p.  151.  For  the  previous  period  of  1871-1881  see  an  excellent 
analysis  and  the  data  in  E.  G.  Ravenstein's  "The  Laws  of  Migration,"  Journal  of  Rural 
Stat.  Soc.f  June,  1885,  Vol.  XL VIII.  While  for  the  whole  of  England  and  Wales  the 
percentage  of  the  people  residing  in  the  county  of  birth  was  74.60,  for  London  it  was 
62.9,  and  for  the  seven  Scotch  cities,  52.4,  Ibid.,  pp.  174-176. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES 


205 


Switzerland  (1920)  and  Sweden  (1910)  show  this  correlation 
in  the  number  of  persons  out  of  each  thousand  in  the  country  and 
in  the  city  who  were  born  out  of  the  community. 


BORN  IN  THE 
COMMUNITY 

OF 

RESIDENCE 

IN  OTHER 
COMMUNITIES 
OF  THE  SAME 
CANTON  OR 
DEPARTMENT 

IN  OTHER 
CANTONS  OR 
DEPARTMENTS 

FOREIGN- 
BORN 

OR 

ABROAD 

Switzerland* 

472 

251 

185 

92 

Urban  communities 

344 

478 

178 

Swedent 
Stockholm 

411 

566 

23 

Cities              ,    .    .    . 

422 

230 

332 

16 

Rural  parts 

608 

264 

122 

6 

If  the  confrontation  had  been  made  between  the  urban  and  the 
rural  communities  the  difference  would  have  been  still  greater. 

The  situation  is  similar  for  other  countries.49  The  statistics  of 
the  countries  from  which  the  foreign-born  population  of  the  large 
cities  is  recruited  shows  that  the  foreigners  come  from  literally 
all  parts  of  the  world.  The  mere  enumeration  of  the  principal 
countries  from  which  the  foreigners  came  to  each  large  city 
amounts  to  fifty  and  more  countries  scattered  over  all  continents 
of  this  planet.50 

Such  a  heterogeneous  origin  of  urban  population  naturally 
leads  to  a  greater  heterogeneity  in  socio-psychical  traits  compared 
with  the  rural  population. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  religious  or  the  national  (according  to 
the  native  language)  composition  of  the  rural  and  urban  popula- 

*  Statistisches  Jahrbttch  der  Schwdz,  1926,  pp.  26-27. 
•^Statistisk  Arsbo^  for  Sverige,  1919,  p.  45. 

49  See  the  data  for  Norway  m  Annumre  statistique  de  la  Norvege,  1924,  Oslo,  1925, 
p.  19;  for  France,  Germany,  and  other  countries  the  data  for  previous  years  are  in  G.  von 
Mayr,  op.  tit.,  II,  121  ff.;  C.  Biicher,  Industrial  Evolution,  chap,  x;  Levasseur,  op.  tit.   II, 
xvii,  319  ff.;  P.  Sorokin,  Social  Mobility,  chap,  xvi;  Weber,  op.  tit,,  pp.  259  fi.  For  recent 
Germany,  JMuller,  Deutsche  Bevdlfyrungsstatistilt,  Jena,  1926,  pp,  69  ff.  Also  consult 
the  statistical  yearbooks  of  various  countries.  For  all  principal  cities  see  Annumre  des 
grandes^  villes,  1927,  pp.  152-154.  In  a  great  majority  of  the  cities  of  all  continents  the 
proportion  of  the  people  born  in  the  city  of  residence  is  from  30  to  40  per  cent  of  the 
residing  population  of  the  city,  while  the  proportion  of  the  foreigners,  foreign-born,  and 
born  m  other  parts  of  the  country  composes  from  70  to  60  per  cent  of  the  residents  of 

50  See  Annuaire  des  grandes  villes,  1927,  pp.  154/T. 


206  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tions.  While,  as  a  rule,  in  the  majority  of  the  village  communities 
the  inhabitants  have  the  same  religion  and  are  of  the  same 
nationality,  the  city  population  in  these  respects  gives  a  very  com- 
plex picture.  In  the  large  cities,  such  as  Berlin,  Leipzig,  Budapest, 
Moscow,  and  others,  there  are  living  side  by  side  more  than  20 
different  nationalities;  the  statistics — which  do  not  include  all 
small  language  groups— show  for  Berlin  at  least  26  nationalities; 
in  Leipzig,  the  number  is  20;  in  Budapest,  34;  in  Moscow,  more 
than  50;  and  so  on.  Moreover,  these  nationalities  show  a  congre- 
gation of  people  in  one  city  from  all  parts  of  the  world  with  quite 
different  culture  complexes  and  psychology  (German,  English, 
Arabian,  Armenian,  Bulgarian,  Chinese,  Japanese,  Turkish,  Per- 
sian, French,  Italian,  Serbian,  Russian,  Greek,  Albanian,  Spanish, 
Finnish,  Czech,  Croatian,  Tartar,  Jewish,  etc.).51 

Similar  is  the  picture  given  by  the  religious  affiliation  of  the 
urban  population.  Christians  of  all  denominations,  Mohamme- 
dans, Buddhists,  Confucianists,  Jainists,  Hindus,  Hebrews,  athe- 
ists, and  so  on,  are  living  side  by  side.52 

The  same  may  be  said  of  other  psycho-social  traits  of  the  urban 
population. 

Similar  results  are  shown  by  the  statistics  of  the  percentage  of 
foreigners  in  various  occupations.  As  a  rule  the  ratio  of  foreign- 
born  persons  in  the  agricultural  class  to  the  total  occupational 
population  of  the  class  is  less  than  the  ratio  of  the  agricultural 
population  to  the  total  occupational  population  of  the  country. 
For  instance,  in  the  United  States  (1920)  of  100  per  cent  of  the 
agricultural  population,  the  foreign-born  composed  only  9.2  per 
cent.  Other  occupations  had  much  higher  percentages:  34.8  in 
mining;  28.6  in  manufacturing;  18.2  in  transportation;  20.6  in 
trade;  16.8  in  public  service;  10.9  in  professional  service;  and  22.9 
in  domestic  and  personal  service.  Only  clerical  occupations  had 
a  proportion  of  foreign-born  as  low  as  in  agriculture  (8.6  per 
cent).53 

In  France  (1906)  the  percentage  of  foreigners  among  various 
strata  of  principal  occupations  was  as  follows  (French  citizens  in 
each  group  are  taken  as  100) 54 : 

51  See  the  data  in  the  Annuaire  des  grandes  miles,  1927,  pp.  177ff. 

B2See*'6zW,  Table  18. 

58  Immigrants  and  Their  Children,  1920,  pp.  272-273. 

54  Annuaire  statistique  (de  la  France) ,  1910,  pp.  12-15. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  207 


AGRICULTURE, 
FORESTRY, 
FISHERY 

INDUSTRY 

COMMERCE 

PROFES- 
SIONAL 
SERVICE 

DOMESTIC 
SERVICE 

Employers                           0.5 

3.8 

43 

1.4 

Employes  and  laborers       1.4 

6.7 

5.8 

0.4 

4.0 

Working  on  own  account    1  .6 

5.9 

4.9 

6.1 

A  somewhat  similar  picture  is  given  by  other  countries. 

Shall  it  be  wondered  that  in  the  same  city  factory,  office,  or 
other  institution  are  found  persons  gathered  together  from  the 
most  different,  and  sometimes  most  remote,  places? 55  People  re- 
cruited from  the  widest  and  most  different  areas,  with  different 
populations,  are  "put  in  one  bed"  in  the  city.  They  live,  dwell, 
work,  and  interact  side  by  side.  In  the  rural  communities  such 
"putting  into  one  bed"  of  strangers  drawn  from  widely  separated 
areas  and  groups  takes  place  in  a  much  lower  degree.  As  a  rule, 
this  degree  is  less,  the  smaller  and  the  more  agricultural  is  the 
community. 

Greater  homogeneity  of  the  agricultural  class  is  evidenced  also 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  the  one  class  more  than  any  other  big  occupa- 
tional class  that  is  closed  to  the  infiltration  of  members  of  other 
occupations;  it  is  recruited  from  the  children  of  farmers  and 
peasants  to  a  higher  degree  than  the  population  of  any  big  occu- 
pation is  recruited  from  the  children  of  fathers  in  the  same  occu- 
pation. In  this  sense,  agriculture  is  factually  the  most  caste-like 
occupational  class.  It  is  true  that  in  connection  with  the  rural 
"exodus"  a  part  of  the  children  of  farmers  and  peasants  shift  to 
other  occupations.  In  this  sense  the  doors  of  the  agricultural  occu- 
pation are  open  for  emergence,  but  they  are  practically  closed  for 
entrance  to  almost  all  whose  fathers  are  in  other  than  the  agricul- 
tural occupations.  Thus  from  generation  to  generation  the  farm 
population  is  filled  with  the  children  of  farmers  and  husbandmen 
to  a  much  higher  degree  than  any  other  big  occupational  class. 
A  few  figures  may  illustrate  the  statement.  Studies  of  the  occu- 
pations of  the  fathers  of  farmers,  tenants,  and  farm  laborers  in  the 
United  States  have  shown  that  the  following  proportions  of  the 
fathers  were  in  agricultural  pursuits.56 

M  See  the  proofs  in  Sorokin  and  Zimmerman,  Principles,  pp.  25-26,  and  in  P.  Sorokin, 
Social  Mobility,  pp.  386  ff. 

06  W.  F.  Kumlien,   What  Farmers  Thinly  of  Farming,  So.  Dakota  Agric.  Exper. 


208  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

OCCUPATIONS  OF  THE  FATHERS  AND  FATHERS-IN-LAW  OP  FARMERS, 
TENANTS,  AND  AGRICULTURAL  LABORERS 

PERCENTAGE  ENGAGED  IN  PERCENTAGE  ENGAGED  IN 
AGRICULTURE  OTHER  OCCUPATIONS 


.PLACE 

AUTHOR 

Fathers 

Fathers- 
in-law 

Fathers 

Fathers- 
in-law 

S.  Dakota 

W.  F.  Kumlien 

89.3 

10.7 

Minnesota 

C.  C.  Zimmerman 

88.5 

82.5 

11.5 

17.5 

Ohio 

Cooper's  study 

94  to  92 

6  to  8 

N.  Y.  State 

E.  C.  Young 

82 

73 

18 

27 

N.  Y.  State 

R.  L.  Gillett 

84 

16 

11  counties 
in  Wales 
Monmouth 

IA.  W.  Ashby 
f  &  J.  M.  Jones 

85.6 
87.4 

14.5 
12.6 

Numerous  studies,  the  details  of  which  are  given  in  Sorokin's 
Social  Mobility,  show  that  among  the  nonagricultural  occupa- 
tions there  was  not  a  single  occupational  class  whose  members 
were  recruited  from  the  children  of  fathers  in  the  same  occupa- 
tion in  80  per  cent  of  the  cases.  The  highest  were  a  few  instances 
of  60  per  cent  either  in  America  or  in  various  European  countries. 
The  majority  of  the  occupations  give  proportions  much  lower — 
from  2.7  to  40  per  cent.57  These  figures  do  not  even  remotely  ap- 
proach the  above  proportions  of  fathers  of  farmers  who  were 
farmers.  Although  the  above  data  are  fragmentary,  nevertheless 
their  consistency  in  that  all  have  yielded  a  very  high  proportion 
of  recruits  of  the  agricultural  class  from  the  children  of  that  class, 
and  the  same  for  their  wives,  gives  the  conclusions  drawn  a  high 
probability.  This  means  that  the  agricultural  class  is  more  homo-  • 
geneous  even  from  an  occupational  standpoint  than  any  other 
occupational  class. 

Station  Bulletin  223,  April,  1927,  p.  11;  C.  C.  Zimmerman,  "The  Migration  to  Towns 
and  Cities,"  Amer.  Journ.  Sociology,  XXXII,  451;  cited  Report  No.  3  of  the  Ohio  State 
University,  p.  17;  E.  C.  Young,  The  Movement  of  Farm  Population,  Cornell  University 
Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bulletin  426,  pp.  88-89;  R.  L.  Gillett,  A  Study  of  Farm  Labor 
in  Seneca  County,  N.  Y.,  Bulletin  164,  p.  59.  Among  those  who  go  from  the  city  back 
to  farms  the  percentage  who  had  previous  experience  in  farming  or  were  brought  up  on 
farms  and  in  rural  communities  is  also  high;  a  study  by  the  United  States  Department 
of  Agriculture  shows  that  out  of  1,166  persons  of  this  type  only  155  or  13.3  per  cent 
had  never  had  previous  farm  experience  (U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  Analysis  of 
Migration  of  Population  to  and  from  Farms,  Washington,  1927,  p.  9). 

CT  See  the  data  and  tables  m  Social  Mobility,  pp.  428-440.  This  reference  covers  prac- 
tically all  studies  in  this  field;  for  the  sake  of  brevity  the  table  and  figures  are  not  repro- 
duced here. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  209 

Concerning  the  greater  heterogeneity  of  the  city  population  due 
to  greater  heterogeneity  of  the  various  parts  of  the  city  environ- 
ment which  surrounds  the  various  strata  and  groups  of  the  urban 
population,  we  shall  speak  later.  For  the  present,  the  above  con- 
siderations and  data  seem  quite  sufficient  as  proof  of  the  greater 
homegeneity  of  agriculturists  as  a  class  and  the  rural  population 
generally. 

This  correlation  holds  also  in  regard  to  the  past.  By  virtue  of 
the  same  factors,  the  cities  of  the  past  were  "melting  pots"  in  a 
much  greater  degree  than  the  rural  parts.  A  few  quotations  give 
the  typical  picture.  In  the  ancient  Assyrian  cities  of  the  past, 
the  common  people  and  the  burghers  are  of  many  different  types,  of 
various  origin  and  physiognomy.  The  Assyrian  conquerors  are  great 
movers  of  men.  They  pride  themselves  upon  transplanting  nations  like 
trees.  .  .  .  Sargon  filled  his  city  with  people  gathered  from  the  four 
quarters  of  the  world,  from  mountains  and  plains,  from  cities  and 
deserts;  then  he  set  over  them,  to  keep  them  all  in  check,  a  handful  of 
Assyrian  soldiers,  priests,  and  magistrates.  Now,  after  sixty  years  have 
passed,  .  .  .  they  might  be  taken  for  Assyrians  from  their  speech  and 
dress,  but  their  features  betray  their  foreign  extraction;  one  still  re- 
tains the  aquiline  profile  of  the  Hebrew  of  Samaria,  another  has  the 
fair  hair  and  blue  eyes  of  the  Aryan  Medes,  a  third  displays  the  purest 
Armenian  type,  and  many,  who  have  sprung  from  mixed  marriages, 
blend  the  characteristic  features  of  three  or  four  distinct  races.58 

"Like  Alexandria  and  like  the  other  cities  of  Syria,  Antioch  was 
made  up  of  many  nationalities."  59 

"Constantinople  showed  an  enormous  variety  of  types,  races, 
costumes,  occupations,  and  conditions.  With  the  merchants  from 
all  countries  were  mixed  the  natives  of  the  city,  Slavic  adven- 
turers, the  Scandinavians,  the  Armenians,  the  Khozars,  the  Ne- 
groes, the  Latins,  and  so  on."  60 

Marco  Polo  remarks  in  regard  to  many  Oriental  cities  visited 
by  him  that  they  have  "people  from  all  quarters."  61 

We  know  that  the  population  of  many  ancient  cities  was  com- 
posed in  a  great  proportion  of  slaves,  serfs,  and  so  on,  drawn 
together  from  all  parts  of  the  world.  Among  the  ancient  coun- 

58  G.  Maspero,  Life  in  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria,  pp,  195-205. 

59  M.  Rostovtzeff,  "Syria  and  the  East,"  Cambridge  Ancient  History,  VII,  185. 
80  Charles  Diehl,  Byzancc,  Paris,  1919,  pp.  118  if. 

w  The  Travels  of  Marco  Polo,  p.  152;  for  ancient  Arabian  cities  see  Ibn-Khaldun, 
ProUgomenes,  Notices  et  extraits,  XIX,  270  S. 


210  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tries,  cities  often  figured  as  places  of  refuge  for  criminals  who 
flocked  to  them  from  different  parts  of  the  country.  They  were 
also  places  of  refuge  for  foreigners.  The  Bible  gives  a  sample  of 
this.  "For  the  children  of  Israel,  and  for  the  stranger  and  for  the 
sojourner  among  them,  shall  these  six  cities  be  for  refuge;  that 
every  one  that  killeth  any  person  unwittingly  may  flee  thither."  62 
This  again  facilitated  the  heterogeneity  of  the  city  population. 

Add  to  this  that  the  cities  were  the  centers  of  attraction  for  the 
poets,  the  teachers,  the  philosophers,  and  the  adventurers  from 
various  countries.  Bear  in  mind  also  that  for  every  conqueror  the 
cities,  as  the  centers  of  wealth  and  political  power,  were  always 
the  principal  point  of  attraction.  After  having  taken  them,  the 
foreign  conquerors,  with  their  guard  and  army,  officials  and 
servants,  agents  and  priests,  settled  in  the  city  as  a  new  govern- 
ment and  in  this  way  again  facilitated  its  heterogeneity.  Finally, 
being  the  centers  of  trade  and  commerce,  art  and  culture,  the 
cities  always  attracted  a  great  number  of  people — merchants, 
artisans,  artists,  etc. — from  "all  quarters  of  the  world."  Under 
these  conditions  the  greater  heterogeneity  of  the  city  population 
in  the  past  can  scarcely  be  questioned.  The  following  description 
of  Pohlmann  gives  a  typical  picture  not  only  for  Rome  but  for 
the  cities  of  the  past  generally.63 

Since  the  consolidation  of  the  Roman  control,  we  find  numerous 
symptoms  of  regular  mass-emigration,  first  out  of  Italy,  then  the  prov- 
inces, which,  as  Friedlaender  correctly  states,  overflowed  the  city  in  a 
constantly  changing  but,  until  Constantino,  scarcely  diminishing  force, 
mixing  their  population  with  the  component  parts  of  all  old-world  na- 
tionalities.1 Cicero  calls  Rome  "a  congregation  fashioned  out  of  a 
union  of  nations"; 2  and  voices  from  the  time  of  the  emperors  cele- 
brate the  city  "which  turned  the  glances  of  Gods  and  men  upon 
itself,"  as  "meetingplace  of  the  globe," 3  as  a  "compendium  of  the 
world."  Assertions  which  forcibly  remind  us  of  Montchretien's  charac- 
teristic comment  on  Paris:  "Paris  pas  une  cit&,  mats  une  nation;  pas 

C2  Numbers  35:15. 

83  From  Robert  Pohlmann,  Die  flbervolfyrung  der  antigen  Grossestadte  im  Zusam- 
rnenhange  mit  der  <3esammtenttuicl$lung  stadtischer  Civilisation,  Leipzig,  1884,  pp.  17-18. 

1  Compare  what  Ammiamis  Marcellinus  relates  about  Emperor  Constantine:  stupebat, 
qua  edentate  omne  quod  ubique  est  hominum  genus  conftuxent  Roman,  XVI,  10,  5. 

2  De  pet.  cons.  14,  54.  Roma  est  civitas  ex  nationum  conventu  constituta. 

8  ]uli  Flori  epitome,  p,  XLI  Jahn:  in  illo  orbis  terrarum  conciliabulo.  As  late  as  the 
fourth  century  Symmachus  says  of  Rome  (IV,  28):  undique  gentium  convenitur. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  211 

une  nation,  mais  un  monde"  and  we  are  reminded  of  the  word  of 
a  modern  cultural  historian  which  terms  contemporary  world-cities 
gigantic  "encyclopediae"  of  the  universal  civilization.  In  fact  the  de- 
scriptions of  imperial  Rome  remind  us  throughout  of  the  picture  of 
a  modern  metropolis  with  its  intense  concentration  of  the  common  life 
of  its  peoples.  "Only  observe,"  Seneca  writes  his  mother,  "this  mass  of 
people  for  whom  there  are  scarcely  enough  houses  in  this  immeasur- 
able city.  The  greater  portion  of  this  swarm  lives  far  from  its  native 
home.  They  have  converged  from  the  municipal  and  colonial  com- 
munities, yea,  from  all  parts  of  the  globe.  Some  were  led  hither  because 
of  their  desire  for  glory,  others  by  the  need  of  some  public  office,  others 
because  of  their  rank  as  representatives,  others  because  of  revelry  which 
seeks  for  a  copious  arena  suitable  for  vice,  others  because  of  the  desire 
for  knowledge,  yet  others  by  the  colorful  games  and  spectacles.  These 
were  drawn  by  friendship  to  demonstrate  their  abilities,  those  by  indus- 
try which  here  finds  extended  material.  Some  offer  up  their  beauty, 
others  offer  their  eloquence.  There  we  find  no  types  of  men  which 
would  not  meet  in  this  capital  city,  where  great  rewards  beckon  virtues 
as  well  as  vices." 

Similar  is  the  picture  of  the  medieval  city  population.  The  me- 
dieval city  "is  inhabited  mostly  by  immigrants.  .  .  .  The  ma- 
jority are  engaged  in  commerce  (negotiator es).  They  are  adven- 
turers, men  on  the  margin  of  society,  particularly  energetic,  enter- 
prising, and  with  initiative,  who,  at  the  beginning  through  piracy 
and  later  on  through  commercial  operations,  accumulated  then- 
capitals.  .  .  .  The  city  is  for  them  nothing  but  ca  basis  of  opera- 
tion' ;  they  traverse  from  country  to  country  and  transport  their 
merchandise  from  place  to  place." 64 

In  the  early  Russian  cities,  "the  upper  class  therein — the  class 
which  the  Prince  employed  as  his  instrument  both  of  rule  and  de- 
fense— was  formed  of  his  retinue  and  divided  into  an  upper  and 
a  lower  grade."  This  and  the  mercantile  class  which  resided  in  the 
cities  "were  almost  wholly  Varangian  in  composition,  not  Sla- 
vonic ...  [in  the  tenth  century]"  and  "altogether  distinct  from 
the  native  lower  classes,  i.e.,  from  the  bulk  of  that  indigenous  Sla- 
vonic population  which  still  paid  a  dan  (tribute)  to  the  alien 
Varangian  element."  65 

More  than  that.  The  existing  data  show  that,  in  the  early  cities 

64  See,  op.  cit.,  p.  16. 

65  V.  A.  Kluchevsky,  History  of  Russia,  I,  90-92. 


212  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

where  there  still  existed  a  tangible  proportion  of  agriculturists, 
these  city  agriculturists  were  composed  of  the  homogeneous  popu- 
lation of  the  rural  parts  surrounding  the  city,  while  the  nonagri- 
cultural  population  of  the  cities  was  recruited  from  much  more 
remote  and  different  areas  and  was  much  more  heterogeneous. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  rural  section  of  the  cities  came  from  the 
environs  adjacent  to  the  cities  and  were  of  rural  origin;  the  merca- 
tores,  on  the  contrary,  in  their  bulk  came  from  remote  parts  and  were 
of  an  urban  origin.  The  origin  and  social  composition  of  these  two 
sections  of  the  city  were  thus  radically  different;  one  was  fed  by  the 
adjacent  rural  milieu,  while  the  other  was  the  product  of  much  wider 
urban  economic  system.66 

For  instance,  in  medieval  Koln  81  per  cent  of  the  inhabitants 
of  its  rural  sections  came  from  a  distance  less  than  75  kilometers 
and  only  40  per  cent  of  them  came  from  a  city.  In  the  commer- 
cial and  industrial  sections  of  the  city,  only  58  per  cent  of  the 
inhabitants  came  from  a  distance  less  than  75  kilometers.  All  told, 
68  per  cent  of  them  came  from  other  cities.67 

Similar  relationships  have  been  shown  by  the  data  of  some 
other  cities.  Thus,  in  Frankfurt  of  the  fifteenth  century,  of  the 
incoming  Jews  (nonagricultural  population),  90  per  cent;  of  the 
metal-workers,  79.3  per  cent;  and,  of  the  bookbinders,  up  to  97.5 
per  cent  came  from  other  cities.68  This  means  the  agriculturists  of 
the  rural  parts  in  the  past  were  more  homogeneous  than  the  city 
population.  Furthermore,  even  the  agriculturists  of  the  cities  were 
more  homogeneous  than  the  urban  nonagricultural  population. 
It  is  useless  to  pile  up  additional  evidences.  The  correlation  dis- 
cussed holds  not  only  in  regard  to  the  present  but  in  regard  to  the 
past. 

VI.  DIFFERENCES  IN  SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION,  STRATIFI- 
CATION, AND  COMPLEXITY 

The  sixth  relatively  constant  difference  between  the  urban  and 
rural  social  aggregates  is  that  the  urban  are  marked  (in  the  same 
country  and  at  the  same  period)  by  a  greater  complexity,  mani- 
fested in  a  greater  social  differentiation  and  stratification.  Speak- 

MMaunicr,  op.  cit.,  pp.  161-162. 

87  H.  Bunger,  Beitrage  zur  mittelalterischen  Topographic  und  Statist!^  der  Stadt  Koln, 
1896,  pp.  71-74. 

68  K.  Biicher,  Industrial  Evolution,  pp.  375  fF.;  see  also  A.  Doren,  Kaufmannsgilden  im 
Mittdalter,  p.  82;  Inama-Sternegg,  Deutsche  Wirtschajtsgeschichte,  III,  31;  Lamprecht, 
'Zur  Sozialstatistik  der  deutsche  Stadt  in  Mittelalter,"  Braun's  Archiv,  I,  528. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  213 

mg  figuratively,  the  city  represents  a  social  body  composed  of 
more  numerous  and  more  different  parts  with  specialized  func- 
tions, and  its  structure  is  much  more  differentiated  and  stratified 
or  pyramided,  than  the  body  and  structure  of  a  rural  aggregate. 
This  is  true  no  matter  what  criterion  of  complexity,  differentia- 
tion, and  stratification  is  taken.69  Let  us  begin  with  social  differ- 
entiation. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  city,  according  to  its  very  definition  and 
from  its  very  beginning,  was  "a  complex  society  formed  out  of 
multiplicity  of  secondary  groups.  The  city,  differing  from  a  vil- 
lage through  its  multiplicity,  could  develop  from  a  village  only 
through  agglomoration  of  several  villages  or  through  segmenta- 
tion and  differentiation  of  one  village  into  many  parts."  T0  This 
means  that  it  was,  from  its  beginning,  a  social  body  more  dif- 
ferentiated than  a  rural  village.  This  differentiation  appears  in 
a  territorial  segmentation  of  various  parts  of  the  city  each  with 
its  peculiar  and  pre-urban  or  tribal  peculiarities;  or  in  a  terri- 
torial localization  of  its  more  numerous  social  classes  and  occu- 
pations; or  in  an  increase  of  the  occupational  differentiation  and 
division  of  labor  among  the  city  population,  without  a  terri- 
torial localization  of  each  occupational  group  within  the  territory 
of  the  city;  or,  finally,  in  a  richer  diversity  of  the  mores,  traits, 
customs,  beliefs,  opinions,  tastes,  etc.  of  the  members  co-dwelling 
within  the  territory  of  the  same  city.  From  whatever  of  these 
bases  of  social  differentiation  we  compare  the  urban  and  the  rural 
aggregates,  the  city  appears  more  differentiated  than  the  latter. 

In  so  far  as  the  differentiation  or  heterogeneity  of  the  city  human 
material  is  concerned,  we  have  already  seen  that  the  urban  popu- 
lation is  more  heterogeneous  than  the  rural.  (See  the  preceding 
paragraph.)71  In  this  respect,  the  city  has  been  a  real  "coinddcn- 
tia  oppositorum" 

In  so  far  as  the  division  of  labor,  as  a  criteria  of  differentiation, 
is  concerned,  this  has  been  greater  in  the  city  than  in  the  agricul- 
tural aggregates,  first,  because  "the  more  primitive  is  a  society 
the  more  homogeneous  is  the  economic  life  within  a  group"  72 

08  About  forms  of  social  differentiation  and  stratification  in  rural  aggiegates  see  further 
special  chapters. 

70Maunier,  of.  tit.,  pp.  42,  86,  96  fT. 

"See  also  E.  Durkheim,  De  la  division  du  travail  social,  Paris,  1902,  chap.  iv. 

"Durkheim,  op.  cit,,  pp,  103  ff.;  G.  Schmoller,  "La  division  du  travail,"  Revue 
a" economic  politique,  1890,  p.  127. 


214  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  the  less  is  the  division  of  labor  among  its  members.  The 
cities  appeared  later  than  the  pre-urban  agricultural  settlements 
and  thus  had  to  have  a  greater  division  of  labor  than  the  latter. 
Second,  "in  economic  history  .  .  .  formation  of  trades  appears 
for  us  in  the  early  Middle  Ages.  The  chief  activity  of  specializa- 
tion is  coincident  with  the  prime  of  municipal  development.  Divi- 
sion of  production  begins  at  the  same  time."  7S  In  antiquity  as 
well  as  in  the  Middle  Ages  "the  cities  facilitated  the  development 
of  the  division  of  labor." 74  Such  was  the  situation  in  the  past  and 
such  it  is  in  the  present. 

To  comprehend  the  greater  division  of  labor  in  the  city  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  glance  at  a  table  of  occupational  statistics.  Even  contem- 
porary occupational  statistics  enumerate  only  about  ten  subdivi- 
sions of  agriculture,  forestry,  and  animal  husbandry.  At  the  same 
time,  they  contain  several  hundreds  of  subdivisions  for  the  other 
gainful  occupations,  which,  as  a  rule,  are  located  principally  in 
urban  communities.75  As  early  as  1890  there  were  at  least  557 
different  occupations  in  Leipzig.  These  in  their  turn  could  be  sub- 
divided into  a  series  of  subclasses.76  In  contemporary  large  cities 
and  in  manufacturing  and  other  urban  occupations,  the  division 
of  labor  had  progressed  still  more  than  in  Leipzig  by  1890  and 
led,  in  modern  industry,  science,  trade,  and  so  on,  to  an  excessive 
specialization. 

The  members  of  an  agricultural  class  may  still  be  compared  to 
an  encyclopedist,  who  talks  or  writes  about  everything  with  equal 
familiarity.  If  we  take  the  few  representatives  of  other  occupa- 
tions who  dwell  in  rural  communities,  they  also  are  much  less 
specialized  than  their  colleagues  in  the  city.  The  rural  teacher, 
physician,  minister,  and  shopkeeper  are  also  "encyclopedists"  in 
comparison  with  their  specialized  fellows  in  the  city. 

If  we  measure  the  degree  of  rural  and  urban  social  differentia- 
tion by  the  number  of  various  social  classes  and  the  differences 
between  them,  the  result  is  again  that  the  city  is  a  social  aggregate 
composed  out  of  more  numerous  and  different  social  classes  than 

78  Bucher,  op.  tit.,  p.  294. 

74  Schmoller,  op.  cit.t  p.  143.  See  also  H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  II,  2890. 
and  passim;  R.  Maunier,  "Vie  religieuse  et  economique,"  Revue  intern,  de  sociologie, 
1908. 

75  See,  for  instance,  Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1925,  pp.  48-56.  The  same 
is  true  of  any  classification  of  occupations  and  occupational  statistics. 

MO.  Petrenz,  Die  Entwickelung  der  Arbeitsteilung  in  leipziger  Getuerbe,  Leipzig, 
1901,  p.  89. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  215 

the  rural  aggregates.  The  city  has  always  been  the  place  of  the  co- 
dwelling  of  the  governmental,  ecclesiastical,  military,  professional, 
commercial,  artisan,  and  even  agricultural  classes,  each  of  them 
different  from  the  others.  In  the  city  the  ruler  is  a  ruler  only  and 
does  not  carry  on  other  functions;  the  merchant  is  a  merchant 
only;  the  soldier,  a  soldier;  the  priest,  a  priest.  In  the  rural  com- 
munity one  and  the  same  person  almost  always  fills  diverse 
functions.  A  farmer  may  be  partly  a  constable,  and  partly  a  mer- 
chant. And  in  so  far  as  each  carries  on  several  functions  in  this 
embryonic  form,  the  differences  between  the  individuals  is  not  so 
great  and  the  whole  aggregate  is  not  as  differentiated  as  the  urban 
aggregate.77 

The  same  was  true  even  of  the  initial  stages  of  the  city.  If  it  was 
composed  of  several  tribes  and  divisions  situated  together  within 
one  abode,  the  city  represented  a  complex  society  embracing  sev- 
eral different  social  groups  in  itself,  in  contrast  to  the  village, 
which  consisted  largely  of  one  of  these  groups,  and  for  this  rea- 
son was  simpler  and  less  differentiated  in  its  morphological  con- 
stitution. 

The  same  may  be  said  regarding  social  stratification  in  the  city 
and  the  rural  community.78  Urban  skyscrapers  compared  with 
the  flat,  one-  or  two-storied  rural  houses  symbolize  the  greater 
social  stratification  of  the  cities.  Whether  we  take  economic  strati- 
fication— the  distance  from  the  richest  to  the  poorest  measured  by 
the  amount  of  wealth  or  income;  or  occupational  inter-  and  intra- 
stratification — the  distance  from  the  president  of  a  big  corpora- 
tion to  its  office  boy  or  a  common  laborer;  or  the  distance  from 
the  highest  position  of  the  most  envied  occupation  to  the  lowest 
position  of  the  worst  or  most  undesirable  occupation;  or  socio- 
political stratification  measured  by  the  distance  from  the  highest 
socio-political  rank  of  a  king,  president,  pope,  dictator,  or  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  an  army,  to  the  lowest;  in  all  these  respects 
and  in  many  others,  the  urban  community  is  much  more  strati- 
fied and  exhibits  incomparably  greater  contrasts  than  the  rural 
community.  The  above  proposition  is  so  evident  that  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  present  evidence  for  its  corroboration.79 

"Besides  the  works  quoted  see  also  F.  Tonnies,  Gemtinschaft  und  Gesellschaft,  1887. 

78  See  the  concept,  forms,  and  analysis  of  social  stratification  in  Sorokin,  Social  Mo- 
bility, Part  I. 

79  See  the  Principles,  pp.  47-49, 


216  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Greater  economic  stratification  of  the  city  has  also  been  a  con- 
stant trait.  Since  their  appearance,  the  cities  have  been  storing 
places  of  the  concentrated  wealth  of  the  group,  very  unevenly  dis- 
tributed within  the  city  population.  In  the  above  paper  of  Petrie 
(see  the  preceding  chapter)  it  was  shown  that  accumulation  of 
wealth  was  one  of  the  important  conditions  of  the  existence  and 
development  of  the  cities.  Without  such  an  accumulation,  they 
could  not  grow  and  could  not  exert  the  influence  which  they  did. 
With  corresponding  modifications,  Marco  Polo's  statement  in  re- 
gard to  Kanbalu,  the  central  city  of  China  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, may  be  applied  to  the  cities  generally. 

To  this  city  everything  that  is  more  rare  and  valuable  in  all  parts  of 
the  world  finds  itsjway;  and  more  especially  does  this  apply  to  India, 
which  furnishes  precious  stones,  pearls,  and  various  drugs  and  spices. 
From  the  provinces  of  Cathay  [China]  itself,  as  well  as  from  the 
other  provinces  of  the  Empire,  whatever  there  is  of  value  is  brought 
here,  to  supply  the  demands  of  those  multitudes  who  are  induced  to 
establish  their  residence  in  the  vicinity  of  the  court.  The  quantity  of 
merchandise  sold  exceeds  also  the  traffic  of  any  other  place;  for  no 
fewer  than  a  thousand  carriages  and  pack  horses,  loaded  with  raw  silk, 
make  their  daily  entry;  and  gold  tissues  and  silks  of  various  kinds  are 
manufactured  to  an  immense  extent.80 

This  enormous  wealth  is  not  eyenly  distributed  in  the  city  but 
is  usually  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a  few  (the  kings,  nobles, 
captains  of  finance,  and  so  on)  who  live  side  by  side  with  people 
in  dire  poverty.  The  country  population  has  often  been  very  poor 
but  it  seldom  has  had  multimillionaires  distributed  among  it.  If 
the  bottom  of  the  economic  pyramid  in  the  rural  aggregates  has 
often  been  as  low  as  the  bottom  of  the  urban  aggregates,  its  top 
has  never  approached  even  remotely  the  upper  layers  of  the  eco- 
nomic pyramid  of  the  cities.  The  same  is  true  in  regard  to  occu- 
pational and  sociopolitical  stratification. 

The  reasons  for  a  greater  urban  social  differentiation  and  strati- 
fication are  evident.  The  nature  of  the  rural  agricultural  com- 
munity is, such  that  it  "does  not  keep"  and  "sends  out  to  the  city" 
the  individuals  who  become  excessively  rich,  or  excessively  poor, 
or  aspire  to  the  pleasures,  fame,  positions,  and  activities  which  the 
rural  community  cannot  provide.  In  the  section  devoted  to  migra- 

80  The  Travels  of  Marco  Polo,  p.  153. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  217 

tion  we  shall  see  that  the  poor  peasants  who  cannot  manage  their 
holdings  successfully,  in  order  to  secure  a  living,  usually  quit 
farming  and  go  to  the  city  and  become  city  proletarians.  In  this 
way,  the  rural  community  is  freed  from  a  large  poor  and  pau- 
per class.  On  the  other  hand,  the  farmers  or  peasants  who  become 
rich  and  ambitious,  and  whose  appetites  go  beyond  what  a  rural 
community  can  provide,  also  shift  to  the  city  and  become  mem- 
bers of  the  rich  or  well-to-do  urban  stratum.  In  this  way  the  rural 
community  is  "purified"  constantly  of  its  paupers,  prospective  mil- 
lionaires, and  men  with  great  ambition,  talent,  and  genius.  This 
elimination  of  the  extreme  economic,  psychological,  and  social 
layers  from  the  rural  population  has  been  going  on  incessantly. 
The  process  is  still  going  on.  It  has  automatically  flattened  the 
social  pyramid  of  the  rural  aggregate  and  hindered  an  appear- 
ance there  of  either  the  excessively  rich  or  excessively  poor,  the 
excessively  talented  or  excessively  untalented,  and  generally  the 
excessive  contrasts  in  social  stratification  and  inequality.  Most  of 
these  excessive  deviations  from  the  average  of  the  rural  communi- 
ty have  been  automatically  removed  to  the  city,  by  virtue  of 
the  urban  and  the  rural  nature. 
VII.  DIFFERENCES  IN  SOCIAL  MOBILITY 

The  next  relatively  constant  difference  between  the  urban  and 
rural  aggregates  is  that  the  urban  has  been  more  mobile  or  dy- 
namic than  the  rural  class.  On  the  average  the  urban  population 
shifts  more  from  place  to  place,  from  occupation  to  occupation, 
from  one  social  position  to  another,  from  poverty  to  riches  and 
vice  versa,  from  slaves  to  masters  and  vice  versa.  In  brief,  the 
urban  aggregate  has  a  greater  horizontal  and  vertical  mobility 
than  the  rural  population.81 

Territorial  mobility, — Let  us  first  discuss  territorial  mobility. 
The  greater  territorial  mobility  of  the  urban  compared  with  rural 
populations  is  manifested,  first,  in  that  on  the  average  per  head  of 
the  urban  population  there  is  a  greater  number  of  shifts  of  resi- 
dence—from room  to  room,  from  flat  to  flat,  from  apartment  to 
apartment,  from  house  to  house— within  the  city,  than  in  the 
rural  aggregates.  Second,  the  average  mileage  covered  by  the  city 
dwellers  per  head  of  population  in  a  given  unit  of  time  is  greater 

81  Concerning  the  concept  of  mobility,  its  forms  and  factors,  see  Sorokin,  Social  Mo- 
bility, chap,  vii  and  passim. 


218  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

than  that  for  the  rural  population.  Third,  the  pulsation  of  daily 
influx  and  outflux  of  the  population  of  the  cities  is  much  more 
intensive  than  in  rural  communities,  and  fourth,  at  any  given 
time  in  the  total  urban  population,  the  proportion  of  those  who 
are  born  in  and  stay  in  the  city  is  less  in  the  total  population  of 
the  city  than  a  similar  group  in  the  total  rural  population.  The 
first  three  categories  of  facts  represent  territorial  mobility  within 
the  community;  the  fourth,  between  the  communities. 

This  fourth  category  requires  further  specification.  Territorial 
mobility  between  communities  can  be  measured  either  by  the 
average  number  of  shifts  to  and  from  other  communities  per  head 
of  the  resident  population  (every  incoming  and  outcoming  shift 
counts)  or  by  the  average  number  of  shifts  one  way  only.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  these  two  forms  of  measurement  are  not  identical  and 
may  give  different  results.  Let  it  be  understood,  therefore,  that  in 
our  statement  we  mean  the  first  form  of  the  measurement  (every 
incoming  and  outgoing  individual),  because  the  equilibrium  or 
immobility  of  any  system  is  disturbed  not  only  by  the  streams  of 
exodus  from  it  but  also  by  the  influx  into  it.  In  regard  to  inter- 
community territorial  mobility  (understood  in  the  above  sense) 
we  contend  that  city  mobility  is  higher  than  rural  mobility.  In 
regard  to  territorial  mobility  measured  in  the  second  form  (only 
the  outgoing  stream)  we  are  less  sure  that  city  territorial  mobility 
is  higher  than  that  of  the  country;  nevertheless,  even  in  regard  to 
this  form  of  territorial  mobility  (the  outgoing  migration)  we  are 
inclined  to  think  that  it  is  greater  in  the  urban  than  in  the  rural 
aggregates.82  For  our  purposes,  however,  it  is  sufficient  to  have 
a  greater  inter-community  territorial  mobility  of  the  city  popula- 
tion in  the  first  meaning  (both  goers  and  comers  counted), 

82  The  only  serious  contention  contrary  to  this  of  which  we  know  has  been  made  by 
E.  G.  Ravenstein,  who  claimed  that  "the  natives  of  towns  are  less  migratory  than  those 
of  the  rural  parts  of  the  country."  However,  the  data  of  Ravenstein  do  not  support  his 
claim.  First,  Scotch  townsmen  who  lived  elsewhere  formed  27.9  per  cent  of  all  towns- 
men, but  all  Scotch  who  lived  elsewhere  formed  only  25.6  per  cent  of  all  Scotch.  Second, 
Berliners  who  lived  elsewhere  formed  16.7  per  cent  of  all  natives  of  Berlin,  whereas 
Germans  who  lived  elsewhere  formed  15.7  per  cent  of  all  Germans.  Further,  in  the  case 
of  the  cities,  he  takes  as  their  "native  population"  not  only  the  population  born  in  the 
city  but  also  in  its  county;  meanwhile,  in  his  confrontations  he  takes  all  the  migrants 
from  a  county  as  the  migrants  to  rural  places  only,  while  they  are,  in  a  great  proportion, 
located  in  the  cities.  In  brief,  the  above  conclusion  by  Ravenstein  is  not  proved.  In  his 
second  paper  he  also  gives  a  series  of  data  which  contradict  his  claim.  See  Ravenstein's 
papers  in  the  Journal  of  Royal  Stat.  Soc.  for  1885  and  1889, 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  219 

though  it  may  be  greater,  in  a  great  many  cases,  in  the  second 
meaning  also  (only  outgoing  counted). 

The  first  evidence  of  the  greater  territorial  mobility  of  the  popu- 
lation of  urban  communities  is  the  data  given  above  concerning 
the  proportion  of  migrants  and  of  natives  born  within  the  com- 
munity of  residence  in  the  rural  and  urban  districts.  It  has  been 
shown  that  urban  populations  have  much  higher  proportions  of 
persons  born  outside  of  the  city  or  community  and  much  lower 
proportions  born  within  the  city  or  community  than  rural  com- 
munities. In  addition,  it  has  been  shown  that  the  attraction  of  the 
migrants  by  cities  extends  over  much  wider  areas  than  for  rural 
communities.  These  data  are  a  direct  corroboration  of  the  state- 
ment that  urban  populations  have  greater  territorial  mobility. 
Furthermore,  they  are  corroborated  by  a  series  of  other  relevant 
data  given  in  the  Principles  (pp.  28-32).  To  those  we  add  here  a 
few  additional  ones.  The  place  of  birth  of  the  French  citizens  en- 
gaged in  various  occupations  gives  the  following  pictures.83 

This  table  shows  that  in  rural  communities  and  agricultural  oc- 
cupations much  greater  proportions  of  the  population  are  born  in 
the  division  of  residence.  Much  smaller  proportions  moved  to 
other  divisions  of  the  country  and  engaged  in  the  same  occupation 
or  stayed  in  rural  areas  and  correspondingly  a  much  smaller  per- 
centage of  the  rural  population  is  composed  of  newcomers  from 
other  divisions  of  the  country  or  from  abroad. 

A  similar  picture  is  given  by  the  statistics  of  emigration  and 
immigration  of  Belgium,  Sweden,  and  other  countries.84  A  series 
of  other  data  also  support  the  proposition.  Many  historians  have 
found  that  since  the  growth  of  the  cities  in  the  Middle  Ages 
the  city  people,  especially  those  of  the  commercial  class,  "were 
more  mobile  by  reason  of  the  exigencies  of  their  profession" 
than  the  rural  population.85  R.  Livi  found,  in  his  classical  study 
of  the  Italian  soldiers,  that  the  rural  population  is  the  most 
sedentary  in  comparison  with  the  professional,  commercial,  and 
other  big  urban  occupational  classes.86  E.  Huntington  found  that 

83  Computed  from  Annuaire  statistique  de  la  France,  1910,  pp.  11-13. 

84  See  the  Principles,  p.  30;  Annuaire  statistique  de  la  Belgique,  1924-1925,  Bruxelles, 
1927,  p.  xlvi;  Statistisk  Arsbo\,  1926,  p.  56.  The  data  are  similar  for  a  series  of  years, 
See  the  Arsbok  for  1927,  p.  75. 

85  P.  Boissonade,  Life  and  Work  in  Medieval  Europe,  New  York,  1927,  p.  192. 

86  See  R.  Livi,  Antropometria  mihtare,  Roma,  1896  and  1905,  I,  45-51;  II,  52  #.,  72  if, 
and  passim. 


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RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  221 

among  the  notables  in  the  American  Who's  Who  farmer-notables 
have  a  lower  index  of  migration  (.72)  than  the  notables  of  any 
other  occupation  (these  other  indices  range  from  1.09  to  1.74)  ,87 
On  the  other  hand,  studies  of  several  cities  have  shown  a  high 
degree  of  territorial  mobility  of  the  populations.88  A.  Joy's  study 
has  shown  again  that  in  his  sample  the  heads  of  agricultural 
families  move  less  than  those  of  any  other  occupation.  The  per- 
centage of  heads  of  the  family  who  had  never  moved  from  the 
place  in  which  they  were  at  the  time  of  marriage  is:  for  agricul- 
tural families  55.6;  for  professional  31.4;  for  trade  46.8;  for  manu- 
facturing 40.6;  for  clerical  44.4;  for  public  service  and  transporta- 
tion 33.3;  in  brief,  those  engaged  in  agriculture  moved  least.89 

Without  adding  more  data  of  the  above  type  we  may  safely 
conclude  that  a  greater  territorial  mobility  of  the  urban  popula- 
tions compared  with  rural  is  pretty  certain,  at  least  for  modern 
times.  However,  in  view  of  the  importance  of  this  thesis,  it  is  ad- 
visable to  present  briefly  a  series  of  other  evidences  which  show 
some  specific  sides  of  the  phenomenon  and  which,  besides,  are 
useful  for  an  analysis  of  several  other  important  problems  of 
rural-urban  sociology. 

The  first  evidence  arises  from  the  nature  of  the  work  of  the 
agriculturist  compared  with  the  urbanite.  The  agriculturist  does 
not  travel  long  distances.  Trips  to  neighboring  farms,  villages, 
or  towns,  and  rarely  to  distant  places,  are  all  his  business  requires 
and  permits.  Agricultural  laborers  are  more  migratory,  with  their 
trips  for  seasonal  work  to  other  places,  and  sometimes,  as  is  the 
case  in  Poland  and  Russia,  even  to  foreign  countries.  But  the  sea- 
son being  over,  they  return  to  their  permanent  place  of  residence. 
Besides,  only  an  insignificant  proportion  of  them  go  for  such  long 
distances.  Quite  different  are  the  occupations  of  professionals, 
salesmen,  tradesmen,  financiers,  insurance  agents,  employes  of 
transportation,  officials,  and  various  employes  and  laborers  of 
industry,  all  of  which  are  predominantly  urban.  The  very  nature 
of  their  occupation  requires  a  great  deal  of  territorial  mobility  or 
traveling.  An  incessant  mobility  is  necessary  for  success  in  their 
business  and  is  unavoidable. 

87  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Progress,  New  York,  1926,  chap.  in. 

88  R,  D.  McKenzie,  The  Neighborhood,  1923,  p.  160, 

89  A.  Joy,  "Note  on  the  Changes  of  Residence,"  Amer.  Journ.  Sociology,  XXXIII,  617. 


222  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

A  second  line  of  evidence,  which  is  at  the  same  time  an  ex- 
planation of  the  lower  territorial  mobility  of  the  rural  populations 
in  comparison  with  the  urban  ones,  is  suggested  by  the  nature  of 
the  agricultural  occupation  and  its  satellites.  It  ties  a  farmer  or 
peasant  to  the  land.  The  land  cannot  be  moved  or  taken  to  a  new 
place.  On  the  other  hand,  as  long  as  the  agriculturists  remain  agri- 
culturists they  cannot  easily  shift  from  place  to  place,  or  from 
farm  to  farm,  because  a  long  time  and  much  work  are  necessary 
to  start  a  new  farm,  to  prepare  and  organize  it,  and  to  learn  to 
manage  it  successfully.  If  not  juridically,  then  factually  they  "ad 
glebae  adscript!  sunt"  and  must  stay  for  life  or  many  years  on  the 
same  farm.  This  is  true  for  a  farmer-owner  as  well  as  for  a 
farmer-tenant.  On  the  other  hand,  the  nature  of  the  agricultural 
occupation  leads  to,  and  is  correlated  with,  the  fact  that  among 
agricultural  occupations  we  find  a  higher  -percentage  of  owners  of 
immovable  property  (land  and  houses)  and  independent  man- 
agers of  their  business  and  a  lower  percentage  without  such  prop- 
erty among  laborers  or  employes  and  laborers  generally  than 
among  the  manufacturing,  mechanical,  and  mining  pursuits, 
which  compose  the  bulk  of  the  urban  occupations,  or  among  the 
whole  occupational  population  of  a  country  (see  the  data  in 
chap.  xxi).  Other  urban  occupations,  such  as  trade,  clerical  serv- 
ice, domestic  service,  public  service,  and  professions,  may  have 
a  proportion  of  proprietors  or  independent  managers  of  their 
business  among  their  occupational  population  as  high  as  in  agri- 
culture. But  the  proprietors  in  these  cases  are  not  so  much  the 
owners  of  immovable  as  of  movable  property,  and  as  such  they 
are  not  tied  to  one  place  and  can  shift  from  place  to  place  more 
easily.  For  this  reason  they  are  not  adscripti  to  their  place  of  em- 
ployment and  can  shift  easily  to  new  places  or  communities.  If 
they  have  property,  as  a  rule  it  is  movable  (money,  bonds,  shares, 
and  so  on)  and  as  such  does  not  hinder  shifting  and  may  be  easily 
transferred  to  a  new  place. 

These  principles  also  remain  valid  in  the  cases  where  the  bulk 
of  the  agricultural  class,  as  in  Russia,  does  not  have  private  prop- 
erty rights  in  the  land  cultivated  but  has  community  ownership 
of  land  (obs china,  mir),  which  does  not  permit  the  selling  or  buy- 
ing of  the  land  by  an  individual  member  of  an  agricultural  com- 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  223 

munity.  This  ties  a  peasant  to  his  community  much  more  strongly 
than  in  the  case  of  individual  landowning.00 

These  factors — the  nature  of  the  agricultural  business,  which 
ties  a  man  to  his  land,  and  a  higher  percentage  of  owners  of  im- 
movable property  (lands  and  houses)  and  independent  managers 
of  their  business  among  the  agricultural  class  in  comparison  with 
the  bulk  of  the  urban  occupational  classes — make  the  lower  terri- 
torial mobility  of  the  rural  population  easily  comprehensible. 

In  the  above  analysis  we  have  been  dealing  principally  with  the 
intercommunity  territorial  mobility  of  the  populations  studied. 
Let  us  now  glance  at  the  territorial  shifting  of  the  population  of 
rural  and  urban  communities  within  the  community  itself  and  its 
adjacent  places.  No  statistics  are  necessary  to  prove  the  claim 
that  it  is  much  greater  in  urban  than  in  rural  communities.  Take, 
in  the  first  place,  changes  of  the  place  of  habitation.  An  enormous 
part  of  urban  population,  which  dwells  in  rented  rooms,  flats, 
apartments,  hotels,  and  houses,  is  in  a  state  of  incessant  shifting 
from  one  rented  room  to  another,  from  one  flat  to  another,  and 
from  one  hotel  to  another.  The  very  fact  that  furnished  rooms, 
flats,  or  hotel  rooms  in  cities  are  rented,  as  a  rule,  by  the  day  or 
week  testifies  to  the  fact  that  an  enormous  part  of  the  population 
stays  in  these  dwellings  for  short  periods  of  time — only  a  few 
days,  a  few  weeks,  a  few  months,  and  rarely  a  few  years.  Only  a 
i  datively  small  portion  of  the  urban  population  stays  at  the  same 
place  of  dwelling  for  several  years. 

In  rural  communities,  the  situation  is  rather  reversed.  As  a  rule, 
rural  families,  especially  in  Europe,  stay  in  the  same  community, 
often  in  the  same  house,  for  generations,  not  to  speak  in  terms  of 
days,  weeks,  months,  or  years.91  The  tenants  also  stay  for  years. 
There  is  more  shifting  among  the  farm  laborers.  But  again,  shifts 
by  farm  occupants  are,  as  a  rule,  from  one  farm  to  another  in  the 
same  community  or  for  a  very  short  distance.  This  is  providing 
they  do  not  migrate  to  town.  If  the  city  "home"  means  a  "park- 
ing place  over  night"  or  one  that  is  changed  after  a  few  nights  or 
weeks  to  another  "parking  place,"  in  the  rural  communities 
"home"  generally  means  a  permanent  place.  Sometimes  these  ru- 
ral homes  are  saturated  with  the  life  and  activities  of  several  gen- 
erations of  the  same  family. 

90  See  a  more  detailed  analysis  of  this  in  the  Principles,  pp.  3 1  ft. 

91  See  the  facts  in  the  Principles,  pp.  34-36. 


224  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  same  may  be  said  for  the  territorial,  short-distance,  daily 
movements  of  urban  and  rural  populations.  As  a  rule,  urban  popu- 
lations, especially  now,  dwell  in  the  sections  of  the  city  or  its  sub- 
urban areas  that  are  at  a  considerable  distance  from  the  place  of 
work.  Hence  the  incessant  "throbbing"  of  the  city  with  the  rush- 
ing crowd,  the  incessant  streams  of  thousands  of  people  moving 
by  cars,  street  cars,  taxies,  elevated  cars,  and  subways,  on,  over, 
and  under  the  ground  of  the  city.  Hence  the  pulsation  of  the  city 
with  ebbing  and  flowing  waves  of  the  population  by  day  and 
night.  Everything  and  everybody  is  in  a  state  of  movement  in  the 
city  all  the  time.92 

In  rural  communities,  there  is  nothing  even  remotely  similar 
to  that  "mad  rushing"  and  mad  mobility.  The  surroundings  of 
open  farms  and  the  streets  of  an  agricultural  village  are  quiet;  no 
rushing  crowds,  no  rushing  and  incessant  streams  of  people,  no 
hurry;  they  remind  one  again  of  the  quiet  pond  compared  to  the 
mad  waterfalls  of  a  city.  Besides  many  other  effects,  such  mad 
mobility  of  the  city  population  requires  from  its  members  special 
quick  adaptive  responses  if  they  are  not  to  be  crushed  in  the  mad 
currents  of  the  population.  In  a  rural  community  such  quickness 
of  self -protective  responses  is  unnecessary. 

The  totality  of  evidence  given  here  makes  it  probable  that  the 
territorial  inter-  and  intra-community  mobility  of  the  city  popu- 
lation has  been  and  is  incomparably  greater  than  that  of  the  rural 
and  agricultural  communities.  This  proposition  appears  to  be 
valid  for  the  present.  It  is  probable  that  the  difference  discussed 
existed  also  in  the  past,  once  agriculture  became  sedentary  (as 
contrasted  with  pastoral  life)  and  the  differentiation  of  the  coun- 
try and  the  city  developed.93 

The  reasons  for  such  a  phenomenon  were  indicated  above:  the 
agricultural  occupation  ties  the  cultivators  to  the  land  and  does 
not  permit  or  require  territorial  migration,  while  many  of  the  city 
groups—rulers  and  officials,  judges  and  priests,  merchants  and 
artisans,  and  so  on—are  and  were  required  by  the  nature  of  their 
business  to  be  more  migratory.  These  considerations  seem  to  be 

02  See  the  data  in  the  Principles,  p,  36.  See  also  Census  of  England  and  Wales,  1921, 
General  Report,  p.  193. 

98  Even  the  pastoral  organizations  did  not  migrate  much  inter-  or  intra-community. 
The  community  moved  but  it  did  not  mix  with  others  or  change  the  positions  of  its 
elements  relative  to  each  other. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  225 

supported  by  the  facts.  Historical  records  of  China,  India,  and 
some  other  countries  depict  the  agricultural  class  as  very  "seden- 
tary" or  "immobile."  Megasthenes,  Diodorus,  Strabo,  and  Arrian 
unanimously  describe  the  cultivator  of  ancient  India  as  the  caste 
which  "devotes  the  whole  of  its  time  to  tillage.  The  husbandmen 
themselves,  with  their  wives  and  children,  live  in  the  country  and 
entirely  avoid  going  into  towns."  94 

Even  at  the  present  moment  the  territorial  mobility  of  the  pre- 
dominantly agricultural  population  of  India  is  insignificant.  More 
than  nine-tenths  of  the  Indian  population  reside  in  the  districts 
where  they  were  born  (according  to  the  census  of  India).  Emigra- 
tion abroad  from  India  is  practically  nil.  Similar  is  the  picture  for 
China,  Tibet,  and  Russia,  when  they  are  in  normal  nonrevolu- 
tionary  or  noncatastrophic  conditions.05 

If  we  take  the  early  agricultural  communities  of  the  Teutons  or 
other  peoples  of  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages,  their  self- 
sufficing  "village  economy"  and  "mark-organization"  hindered 
and  did  not  require  any  territorial  shifting.  The  people  born  in 
the  mark  or  hundred  or  village  died  in  the  same  community, 
even  in  the  same  house  where  several  generations  of  their  fore- 
fathers died.  "Connecting  roads  between  the  villages  were  origi- 
nally quite  absent,  as  each  village  was  economically  independent 
and  had  no  need  of  connection  with  its  neighbors." 96  On  the 
other  hand  in  the  cities,  even  in  the  past,  "at  all  hours  you  see 
multitudes  of  people  passing  and  repassing  on  their  various  avo- 
cations." 97 

At  the  best,  a  small  proportion  of  the  surplus  population  of  the 
village  occasionally  left  and  went  to  the  city  or  to  other  places, 
but  through  this,  as  a  rule,  they  cut  themselves  off  from  the  rural 
community  and  entered  the  moving  streams  of  the  urban  popula- 
tion. Furthermore,  we  know  that  the  ancient  and  medieval  mer- 

MSee  the  translation  of  their  descriptions  in  F.  J.  Monahan,  The  Early  History  of 
Bengal,  Oxford,  1925,  pp.  141  fi. 

9tSee  The  Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India,  I,  4,  8,  497;  Stat.  Abstract  for  the  United 
Kingdom  Relating  to  British  India,  p.  203;  J,  A.  Baines,  "Distribution  and  Movements 
of  the  Population  in  India,"  Journal  of  Royal  Stat.  Soc.,  1893,  LVI,  1-43;  M.  Lee, 
Economic  History  of  China,  p.  50. 

0flM.  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  p.  4;  see  especially  G.  von  Maurer,  Geschichte 
der  Dorfverfassung,  1865-1867,  I,  39,  313-327;  see  also  Frank  Tannenbaum,  The  Mexi- 
can Agrarian  Revolution,  pp.  85  ff.,  for  details  as  to  poor  communication  between  the 
early  Indian  communities  even  in  1926. 

9T  Travels  of  Marco  Polo,  p.  236. 


226  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

chants,  handicraftsmen,  soldiers,  rulers,  and  other  urban  groups 
were  exceedingly  mobile.98  "The  city  was  for  them  only  a  'basis 
of  operation.'  They  ran  from  country  to  country  and  shifted 
their  merchandise  from  place  to  place."  05)  And  their  territorial 
migration  was  primarily  from  city  to  city  but  not  from  the  city  to 
the  country.  In  the  periods  of  compulsory  attachment  of  the  culti- 
vators to  the  land,  in  the  form  of  slavery,  or  serfdom,  or  colonus, 
conditions  did  not  permit  them  to  shift  (legally)  at  all  Under 
the  conditions  of  community  landownership,  they  were  attached 
to  their  abode  by  an  almost  indissoluble  tie,  especially  those  who 
remained  in  the  country  and  did  not  go  to  the  city.  Add  to  this, 
the  much  poorer  roads  and  means  of  transportation  of  the  rural 
communities  and  the  numerous  network  of  roads  and  more  ac- 
cessible means  of  transportation  for  the  cities.  These  naturally 
facilitated  the  territorial  mobility  of  the  city  people.100  When 
these  circumstances  and  the  historical  facts  like  the  above  are 
taken  into  consideration  the  lower  territorial  mobility  of  the  rural 
class  in  the  past  becomes  very  probable. 

Comparative  interoccupational  mobility. — A  mass  of  evidence 
also  suggests  that  the  same  correlation  is  true  and  valid  generally 
in  regard  to  shifting  of  the  populations  from  occupation  to  occu- 
pation. Although  the  data  for  this  point  are  not  as  plentiful  as  in 
the  case  of  territorial  mobility,  nevertheless  it  is  possible  to  claim 
that  agricultural  populations  remain  agricultural  longer  or  change 
jobs  on  the  average  less  frequently  than  the  bul\  of  the  urban 
population.  In  other  words,  on  the  average,  urban  populations  are 
less  "rooted"  to  an  occupation  than  the  population  engaged  in 
agriculture. 

Let  us  discuss  the  problem,  in  the  first  place,  in  the  aspect  of 
cf  inter  generational''  shifting  of  occupations  from  the  fathers  to 
their  children.  The  intensiveness  of  intergenerational  shifting  of 
occupations  may  be  measured  by  the  percentage  of  children  of 
a  given  occupational  class  who  follow  their  fathers'  occupation. 
The  higher  the  percentage  of  children  "inheriting"  the  father's 

98  See  Bucher,  op.  cit.,  pp.  372,  3750.;  Maunier,  op.  cit.,  pp.  162-163;  Lamnrecht's 
paper  cited,  Braun's  Archiv,  I,  528. 

80  See,  op.  cit.,  p.  16. 

100  See  the  works  of  Sir  John  B.  Phear  concerning  lack  of  roads  in  Indian  rural  com- 
munities as  recently  as  the  last  century.  See  A.  H.  Smith,  Village  Life  in  China; 
D.  H.  Kulp,  Country  Life  in  South  China;  and  I.  M.  Williams,  An  American  Town,  for 
further  studies  of  the  relationship  between  agencies  of  communication  and  the  low  terri- 
torial mobility  of  farmers  and  peasants,  See  also  Tannenbaum,  op,  cit.t  pp.  85  ff. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES 


227 


occupation,  the  lower  is  the  index  of  occupational  mobility  by 
generations.  In  so  far  as  that  part  of  the  agricultural  children  who 
remain  in  their  father's  occupation  is  concerned  or  the  part  which 
does  not  belong  to  the  surplus  of  the  rural  population  migrating 
to  the  city,  we  have  already  seen  (see  above,  p.  208)  that  inherit- 
ance of  the  fathers'  occupations  is  true  to  a  higher  degree  than 
with  any  other  large  occupational  group.  In  regard  to  this  part 
the  principle  seems  valid.  It  is  less  certain  in  regard  to  the  whole 
agricultural  population,  including  the  part  which  migrates  to  the 
cities.  Nevertheless,  as  far  as  existing  data  show,  the  proposition  is 
valid  even  in  this  aspect  of  the  agricultural  population.  In  other 
words,  in  spite  of  the  intensive  exodus  at  the  present  time  from 
the  agricultural  occupation,  the  percentage  of  the  children  who 
"inherit"  their  fathers  occupation  in  agriculture  is  one  of  the 
highest  among  all  the  large  occupational  classes. 

The  following  data  at  least  partly  support  the  proposition. 
A  series  of  studies  in  the  United  States  (1920-1926)  have  given  the 
following  proportions  of  children  who  "inherit"  their  fathers' 
occupations  in  various  occupational  classes.101 


PERCENTAGE  OF 
OCCUPATIONAL  GROUP                              TRANSMISSION  OF                AUTHOR 
STUDIED                                        OCCUPATION  FROM 
FATHER  TO  SON 

Students  of  University  o£  Minnesota 

26.1 

P.  Sorokin 

Business  men  of  Minneapolis 

22.5 

P.  Sorokin  and 

M.  Tanquist 

Alumni  of  University  of  Minnesota 

17.7 

O,  M.  Metms 

Prominent  naval  officers 

62.9 

Ch.  Davenport 

Employed  boys  of  N.  Y.  C.  (of  non- 

agricultural  fathers) 

2.7  to  49.5 

H.  C.  Burdge 

Farmers'  sons  of  N.  Y.  State 

70 

E.  C.  Young 

Farmers'  daughters  of  N.  Y.  State 

60 

E.  C.  Young 

Farmers'  sons 

69.3 

E.  C.  Young 

Farm  operators 

84.1 

R.  L.  Gillctt 

Farmers'  sons  and  daughters  (Min- 

nesota) 

63.7 

C.  C.  Zimmerman 

Farmers'  sons  and  daughters  (Ohio) 

50,  40 

C.  E.  Lively 

With  all  children 

80  to  85 

Farmers'  sons  and  daughters  (S.  Da- 

kota) 

69.1 

W.  F.  Kumlien 

101  P.  Sorokin,  Social  Mobility,  p.  416;  see  there  other  data  and  references;  Lively, 
Ohio  State  University  Mimeograph  No.  3,  cited  above,  pp.  17,  35. 


228  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Thus,  as  these  figures  show,  the  inheritance  of  the  agricultural 
occupation  from  fathers  by  sons  (or  interoccupational  mobility 
from  generation  to  generation)  is  higher  practically  than  in  any 
other  large  occupational  class.  And  this  is  in  spite  of  the  "rural 
exodus." 

Let  us  glance  now  at  the  intensity  of  interoccupational  shifting 
of  various  occupational  classes  within  the  life  of  one  generation. 
Do  the  members  of  the  agricultural  class  change  their  occupa- 
tions more  often  than  the  members  of  predominantly  urban  occu- 
pations? The  information  at  hand  rather  suggests  that  all  in  all 
the  agricultural  class  changes  its  occupation  more  rarely  than 
the  other  large  occupational  classes,  or  that  the  interoccupational 
shifting  in  the  life  span  of  one  generation  of  the  agricultural  class 
is  somewhat  lower  than  that  of  almost  all  other  large  occupational 
groups.102 

To  sum  up:  in  so  far  as  that  part  of  the  agricultural  population 
is  concerned  which  does  not  compose  "the  rural  exodus,"  it  is 
reasonably  certain  that  its  rate  of  occupational  shifting  in  the  life 
of  several  generations,  as  well  as  in  the  life  span  of  one  genera- 
tion, is  lower  than  that  of  almost  all  big  occupational  classes  of 
urban  population.  So  far  as  the  whole  agricultural  population  is 
concerned,  including  the  part  which  migrates  to  other  occupa- 
tions, it  is  also  probable,  though  not  so  certain,  that  its  occupa- 
tional mobility,  both  intergenerational  and  within  the  life  of  one 
generation,  is  less  than  that  of  almost  all  large  occupational  urban 
classes. 

Other  forms  of  mobility  of  the  urban  and  rural  populations. — 
Without  pretending  to  prove  the  proposition  here,  but  as  a  mere 
hypothesis,  it  is  possible  to  contend  that  in  respect  to  other  forms 
of  mobility — climbing  and  sinking  along  the  economic  ladder, 
from  poverty  to  riches  and  vice  versa;  promotion  and  demo- 
tion up  and  down  social  and  political  ranks,  from  slave  to  mas- 
ter and  vice  versa,  from  subordinate  to  governing  positions,  and 
vice  versa,  from  low  to  high  social  positions  and  vice  versa;  and  in 
all  forms  of  social  "ups"  and  "downs" — the  city  population  is 

102  See  the  data  and  literature  in  the  Principles,  pp.  38  ff.;  P.  F.  Brissenden  and 
E.  Frankel,  Labor  Turnover  in  Industry,  1922;  Don  Lescohier,  The  Labor  Market,  chap, 
iv;  J.  H.  Willitts,  "Steadying  Employment,"  Annals  of  Amer.  Academy  of  Political  and 
Social  Science,  May,  1916;  P.  Sorokin,  Social  Mobility,  pp.  394  ff.,  424  ff.  See  there  other 
sources. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  229 

more  mobile  than  the  population  of  the  rural  and  agricultural 
class.  The  principal  reasons  for  the  proposition  are  given  in  the 
Principles  (pp.  41  fL), 

Firstj  all  the  institutions  which  serve  as  channels  of  the  vertical 
circulation  (social  promotion  and  demotion)  of  individuals  in 
a  society,  the  universities,  churches,  centers  of  financial  and  eco- 
nomic power,  army  headquarters,  centers  of  political  power,  head- 
quarters of  arts,  sciences,  literature,  parliaments,  influential  news- 
papers,103 emperor's  courts,  and  other  "social  elevators"  are  lo- 
cated in  cities  but  not  in  the  country.  A  man  who  remains  in  a 
rural  community  and  does  not  go  for  a  time  at  least  to  the  city, 
practically  does  not  have  any  chance  to  become  prominent,  to 
climb  to  high  social  positions,  or  to  be  demoted  from  high  eco- 
nomic, political,  social,  artistic,  scientific,  or  literary  positions  to 
lower  ones. 

Even  if  in  a  few  cases  a  man,  while  staying  in  the  country,  has  suc- 
ceeded in  making  money  or  doing  something  prominent,  such  a  man, 
in  order  to  become  really  prominent  (famous,  influential,  noble),  has 
to  secure  the  sanction  of  the  city.  A  rich  peasant  is  still  only  peasant; 
a  wonderful  country  poet,  without  the  sanction  of  the  city  press  and 
the  city,  is  still  only  the  poet  of  "his  neighborhood"  and  not  known  to 
the  world.104 

Since  the  rural  community  does  not  have  these  "elevators"  of 
rapid  social  circulation,  it  is  natural  that  a  rural  dweller  cannot 
use  them,  as  long  as  he  stays  in  the  rural  locality. 

The  above  discussion  of  the  relative  amount  of  opportunity  for 
vertical  circulation  in  city  and  country  is  not  a  denial  that  rural 
districts  have  their  own  social  ladders.  The  agrarian  ladder,  from 
hired  man  to  tenant,  part  owner,  full  owner,  and  landlord,  as 
well  as  the  fluctuations  in  status  of  large  groups  of  agriculturists, 
functions  in  the  country.  A  farmer  or  peasant  may  climb  the 
agrarian  ladder  but  he  is  still  a  farmer  or  peasant  and  has  made 
relatively  little  progress  toward  climbing  the  urban  social  ladder. 
On  the  other  hand,  an  urbanite  who  successfully  climbs  the  urban 
social  ladder  has,  at  the  same  time,  climbed  the  rural  social  ladder. 
He  may  buy  an  estate  or  country  home  and  immediately  become 
an  absentee  landlord  or  full  owner  of  land.  Climbing  the  urban 

103  See  about  the  channels  and  machinery  of  social  circulation  of  individuals  in  Soro- 
kin's  Social  Mobility,  chaps,  viii,  ix,  and  pp.  494  £f. 
104  Ibid.,  p.  494. 


230  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

social  ladder  automatically  gives  one  a  position  on  the  rural  social 
ladder.  The  reverse  is  not  so  true  or  general.  A  second  reason  for 
the  less  intensive  vertical  mobility  of  the  rural  population  is  that 
the  social  pyramid  or  stratification  of  the  rural  community,  as  we 
shall  see  further,  is  much  lower  than  that  of  the  urban  com- 
munity. These  and  similar  considerations  given  in  the  Principles 
make  it  comprehensible  that  the  urban  population  must  be  and 
has  been  more  mobile  even  in  the  sense  of  vertical  circulation. 

The  above  totality  of  facts  and  considerations  makes  the  propo- 
sition of  a  more  intensive  territorial,  occupational,  economic,  and 
vertical  mobility  of  urban  populations  compared  with  rural  rather 
probable.  The  rural  community  is  similar  to  calm  water  in  a  pail, 
and  the  urban  community  to  boiling  water  in  a  kettle.  From 
country  to  country,  and  from  period  to  period  these  differences 
change  in  their  concrete  forms  and  in  their  tempo  and  force. 
But  in  spite  of  this,  the  relative  difference  in  mobility  seems  to 
remain  constant  between  typically  rural  and  urban  communities. 

If  the  process  of  urbanization  is  continued  and  the  present 
trend  toward  smaller  and  smaller  differences  between  the  city  and 
the  country  progresses,  the  difference  in  mobility,  like  all  other 
differences,  is  doomed  to  disappear  also.  But  when  this  happens, 
if  it  happens,  it  will  mean  only  that  the  very  division  of  communi- 
ties into  rural  and  urban  is  over  and  not  that  the  trait  studied  was 
wrongly  interpreted  as  a  differential  trait  between  the  city  and  the 
country. 
VIII.  DIFFERENCES  IN  THE  DIRECTION  OF  MIGRATION 

The  eighth  fairly  permanent  and  constant  difference  between 
rural  and  urban  communities  is  the  direction  of  the  rural-urban 
migration  of  the  population.  With  the  exception  of  catastrophic 
periods  in  the  life  history  of  the  country,  and  since  the  appearance 
of  rural-urban  differentiation,  the  currents  of  the  population  go- 
ing from  the  country  to  the  city  or  from  agricultural  occupations 
to  predominantly  urban  occupations  have  always  been  stronger 
and  carried  more  poptilation  to  the  city  than  the  migratory  cur- 
rents from  urban  to  rural  communities.  Like  water  which  flows 
naturally  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  level,  population  generally 
flows  naturally  from  rural  to  urban  centers  and  from  agriculture 
to  industries  and  other  urban  occupations.  Rural  communities 
have  been  the  centers  of  production  of  a  surplus  of  human  beings, 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  231 

and  the  urban  communities  the  centers  of  their  consumption.  This 
is  an  important  diagnostic  trait  which,  practically  speaking,  has 
been  permanent  in  the  history  of  mankind.  Only  when,  owing  to 
various  causes,  a  whole  country  entered  a  disastrous  and  catastro- 
phic period  of  economic,  political,  moral,  mental,  and  social  decay 
and  disorganization  has  there  been  a  termination  of  this  exodus 
from  country  to  the  city  and  from  agriculture  to  urban  occupa- 
tions or  a  greater  powerfulness  of  the  migratory  current  from  the 
city  to  rural  parts  and  from  urban  to  agricultural  occupations. 

The  end  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  beginning  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  the  years  from  1917  to  1922  in  Russia,  and  the  years  of 
great  catastrophic  revolutions  and  wars  in  various  countries  and 
at  various  times  are  examples  of  these  catastrophic  periods.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  years  of  the  Revolution,  from  1917  to  1922, 
in  Russia  were  followed  by  a  disastrous  economic  disorganization 
of  the  country.  Industry  was  reduced  to  10  or  12  per  cent  of  pre- 
revolutionary  production.  Agricultural  production  was  reduced 
one-half.  The  money  was  entirely  depreciated.  In  brief,  the  nation 
passed  through  one  of  the  greatest  catastrophes  from  any  stand- 
point. This  was  followed  by  a  great  disurbanization.  For  instance, 
the  population  of  Moscow  decreased  from  2,017,000  on  Febru- 
ary 1, 1917,  to  1,028,000  on  August  26,  1920.  Before  the  Revolution 
the  population  of  Petrograd  was  2,420,000;  in  1918  it  was  1,469,- 
000;  in  1920  only  740,000.  Altogether,  at  least  eight  millions,  net, 
left  the  towns  of  Russia  and  went  to  the  rural  parts  during  this 
period.105  Similar  things  happened  during  other  great  revolutions 
and  catastrophes.106 

The  following  description  gives  a  picture  of  the  disurbanization 
and  overwhelming  migration  from  the  city  to  the  country  at  the 
end  of  the  Western  Roman  Empire. 

The  miserable  populations  which  survived  took  refuge  in  the  fields 
and  the  great  domains,  which  were  protected  by  ditches  and  palisades, 
or  by  embankments  of  earth  and  stones,  or  else  in  the  shadow  of  the 
old  Roman  townships  (vici)>  which  could  serve  as  a  refuge  for  the 
small  cultivators.  Natural  economy  once  more  predominated,  and  life 
became  concentrated  and  localized  in  the  country  districts,  where  the 
barbarians  preferred  to  dwell. 

105  See  Statistical  Materials  for  Petrograd,  1922,  V,  19;  The  Red  Moscow,  1921;  Dur- 
ing Fife  Years,  1922,  p.  295.  (All  in  Russian.) 

100  See  Sorokin,  Sociology  of  Revolution,  chaps,  xii,  xiv. 


232  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Industrial  economy,  indeed,  received  its  death-blow  with  that  of  the 
towns,  which  had  been  the  home  o£  the  Graeco-Roman  civilization. 
The  barbarians  showed  a  peculiar  savagery  in  destroying  those  cities, 
in  which  the  most  flourishing  varieties  of  industry  and  corporations  of 
artisans  had  developed  and  still  survived.  Everywhere  the  conquerors 
dispersed  the  townsfolk  and  destroyed  everything  which  might  pre- 
serve the  memory  of  civilized  life — temples,  churches,  basilicas,  the- 
aters, circuses.  Buildings  and  monuments  alike  were  delivered  to  the 
flames,  and  throughout  both  West  and  East  numbers  of  still  flourish- 
ing towns  disappeared,  never  to  rise  again.  .  .  .  The  population  fled 
in  terror  into  the  islands  and  forests  and  mountains.  "He  may  call 
himself  a  rich  man  now  who  has  bread,"  wrote  a  contemporary,  and 
the  relics  of  the  old  population,  which  crept  back  to  dwell  among  the 
ruins,  had  wild  beasts  for  company.  Rome  itself,  thrice  sacked  in  the 
fifth  century  and  five  times  taken  by  assault  in  the  sixth,  was  only  the 
shadow  of  the  superb  imperial  city,  and  in  the  time  of  Gregory  the 
Great  (600)  numbered  only  50,000  inhabitants,  a  bare  twentieth  of  her 
former  population.  Within  the  crumbling  walls  of  these  ghostly  towns 
and  in  their  half-deserted  streets  a  few  miserable  artisans  still  vegetated, 
all  that  was  left  of  the  flourishing  crafts  of  the  past.  Ploughed  fields  and 
gardens  occupied  the  greater  part  of  the  open  spaces,  destitute  of  houses 
and  of  inhabitants.  Industrial  activity  disappeared,  and  the  very  tradi- 
tions of  the  ancient  industry  were  lost.  The  West  fell  back  again  into 
the  elementary  economic  life  of  primitive  peoples. 

In  the  midst  of  the  universal  disorganization  trade  was  reduced  to 
a  simple  traffic  in  foodstuffs  or  in  manufactures  of  primary  necessity, 
and  its  range  of  circulation  was  very  narrow.  The  great  home  and 
foreign  commerce,  which  had  developed  so  brilliantly  under  the  em- 
pire, was  no  longer  possible.  Everything  that  was  necessary  to  promote 
and  to  facilitate  business  was  lacking.  Land  was  now  once  more  the 
sole  capital,  and  natural  products  served  as  a  medium  of  exchange. 
Trade  by  barter,  the  primitive  method  in  use  among  the  Germans, 
reappeared  in  the  ancient  Roman  Empire,  where  money  became  rare 
and  credit  disappeared.  The  fine  Roman  roads,  no  longer  kept  in 
repair,  deteriorated,  the  bridges  fell  down,  the  imperial  post  ceased, 
there  were  no  more  relays.  All  rapid  movement  became  impossible. 
Everywhere  insecurity  reigned;  brigands  fell  upon  travelers  and  mer- 
chants on  the  edge  of  the  woods  and  at  the  fords  across  rivers  and 
marshes.  Armed  bands  prowled  about  the  country,  and  journeys  be- 
came perilous  expeditions,  undertaken  only  in  caravans  and  with 
armed  escorts.  The  ports  declined,  the  seas  were  infested  with  pirates, 
maritime  trade  became  as  uncertain  as  land  commerce.  The  great  trans- 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  233 

port  companies  had  for  the  most  part  broken  up,  and  the  shipbuilders 
were  ruined.  "He  who  once  fitted  out  six  great  vessels,"  says  a  writer 
of  the  fifth  century,  "is  happy  now  if  he  owns  but  one  little  boat."107 

Details  of  this  process  will  be  given  further;  here  it  is  necessary 
to  stress  only  the  very  fact  of  the  prevalent  direction  of  migration 
toward  the  city  in  normal  or  particularly  prosperous  periods  of 
the  development  of  a  given  society. 

This  phenomenon  means  one-sidedness  of  population  migra- 
tion. It  means  that  normally  rural  communities  and  agriculture 
more  willingly  permit  their  members  to  leave  the  community  and 
the  occupation  than  they  permit  entrance  by  people  from  cities 
or  from  other  occupations.  In  this  sense,  the  positive  development 
of  a  society  is  associated  with  the  growth  of  urbanization  and  the 
prevalence  of  the  cityward  migration  over  the  reverse  situation; 
the  periods  of  social  catastrophes  are  correlated  with  ruraliza- 
tion  and  a  greater  prevalence  of  the  countryward  migratory  cur- 
rent. In  subsequent  chapters  the  process  will  be  discussed  in  all 
substantial  phases. 

IX.  DIFFERENCES  IN  THE  SYSTEM  OF  SOCIAL  INTERACTION 
The  ninth  principal  and  constant  difference  between  the  aggre- 
gates studied  is  a  quantitative  and  qualitative  difference  in  the  sys- 
tem of  social  contact  or  interaction  of  the  members  of  both  com- 
munities. Since  the  rural  communities  are  less  voluminous  and 
less  densely  populated  and  the  population  is  less  mobile,  it  is  to  be 
expected  that  the  number  of  various  persons  whom  a  cultivator 
meets,  and  with  whom  he  enters  into  an  intentional  or  uninten- 
tional, long  or  short,  intensive  or  extensive  contact  and  the  num- 
ber of  the  contacts  per  individual  must  be  much  below  that  of  an 
urbanite.  This  means  that  the  city  is  a  more  dynamic  world  than 
the  country,  not  only  in  that  the  urban  population  is  more  mobile, 
but  also  in  that  the  system  of  its  interaction  is  more  complex,  dy- 
namic, and  intensive  than  is  the  system  of  interaction  of  the  rural 
population.  In  a  city  one  cannot  avoid  the  multitude  of  people 
with  whom  he  has  to  rub  shoulders  every  day  in  the  streets,  ele- 
vators, subways,  offices,  apartment  houses,  theaters,  factories— 
everywhere.  There  is  no  place  for  solitude. 
A  cultivator,  especially  when  he  lives  on  an  open  farm,  meets 

107  P.  Boissonnade,  Life  and  Wor%  in  Medieval  Europe,  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  New  York, 
1927,  pp.  26-28. 


234  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

a  very  limited  number  of  people  daily  or  annually.  He  works 
mostly  alone  or  in  the  company  of  the  members  of  his  house- 
hold. In  the  city,  to  be  amidst  a  crowd  is  something  normal  and 
unavoidable;  on  an  open  farm  or  even  in  a  community  of  agri- 
culturists, to  be  amidst  a  crowd  is  something  exceptional.  In  ad- 
dition, the  crowds  in  rural  communities,  as  a  rule,  are  much 
smaller  than  the  crowds  of  a  city  community.  The  number  of 
letters  received  and  sent  by  a  farmer  or  peasant,  the  number  of 
magazines  and  newspapers  read,  the  number  of  telegrams  and 
telephone  messages  received  and  sent,  the  number  of  theaters, 
movies,  and  plays  visited,  these  and  other  indirect  contacts  are,  in 
all  probability,  less  numerous  per  capita  in  a  rural  than  in  an 
urban  population.  Although  no  valid  statistical  data  can  be  given 
in  corroboration  of  the  above  statement,  on  account  of  the  non- 
existence  of  such  data,108  nevertheless  the  authors  contend  that 
the  number  of  face-to-face  and  indirect  contacts  per  individual  in 
a  certain  unit  of  time  (day,  week,  year)  is  much  greater  in  the 
city  than  in  a  rural  community. 

Other  than  this  quantitative  aspect,  the  system  of  contacts  or 
interactions  in  rural  and  urban  communities  has  a  series  of  quali- 
tative differences. 

1.  The  area  of  the  contact  system  of  a  member  of  a  rural  com- 
munity, as  well  as  that  of  the  rural  community  as  a  whole,  is  spa- 
cially  more  narrow  and  limited  than  the  area  of  a  member  of 
an  urban  community  and  of  the  urban  community  as  a  whole. 
By  the  area  of  a  contact  system  is  meant  the  extent  of  the  territory 
in  which  are  located  the  individuals  and  institutions  with  whom 
an  individual  or  a  community  is  in  contact.  The  larger  the  terri- 
tory the  larger  is  the  social  area  of  the  contact  system.  Notwith- 

108  Some  indirect  evidence  is  in  tts  favor.  For  instance,  the  number  of  letters  per  capita 
of  population  is  much  greater  in  industrialized  countries  than  in  predominantly  agricul- 
tural ones.  While  in  1913  in  England,  Belgium,  Germany,  and  the  United  States,  the 
number  of  letters  per  capita  was  from  95.9  to  38.9,  in  predominantly  agricultural  coun- 
tries, British  India,  Egypt,  Russia,  it  was  only  from  2.9  to  8.4.  The  number  of  objects 
mailed  per  capita  in  the  first  group  of  countries  was  from  164.1  to  104.9.  In  the  second 
group  it  was  only  from  3.3  to  11.5.  Further,  in  all  urbanized  countries,  the  number 
increases  rapidly  parallel  to  an  increase  of  urbanization.  See  the  detailed  figures  in 
Annuaire  intern,  de  statistique,  1920,  VII,  130-131.  Furthermore,  there  aie  few,  if  any, 
rural  communities  which  are  passed  daily  by  210,000  individuals  or  even  by  a  tenth 
part  of  this  number.  Meanwhile,  in  Chicago  during  16.5  hours,  such  a  number  daily 
passes  the  corner  of  State  and  Madison  streets.  A  series  of  similar  evidences  indirectly 
makes  the  contention  reasonably  certain.  A  few  direct  evidences  lead  to  the  same  con- 
clusion See  H.  J.  Burt,  Contacts  in  a  Rural  Community,  Univ.  of  Missouri  Agric  Exper 
Station  Bull.  No.  125,  1929. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  235 

standing  the  individual  exceptions,  as  a  rule  an  inhabitant  of  a 
city  has,  on  the  average,  a  conspicuously  larger  area  of  contact 
system  than  a  rural  dweller  (see  the  reasons  in  the  Principles, 

pp.79£E.). 

Since  urban  communities  originated  through  trade  and  ex- 
change, and  since  they  never  have  been  self-sufficing  and  always 
have  needed  to  exchange  with  other  communities,  "exchange, 
trade,  and  interaction"  are  the  very  soul  of  the  city  and  cause  the 
bulk  of  its  population  to  interact  with  individuals  and  groups 
scattered  over  a  very  vast  area  and  in  the  most  various  localities. 
Although  it  is  hard  to  prove  this  statistically  on  account  of  the 
lack  of  evidence,  yet  one  feels  justified  in  saying  dogmatically 
that  the  area  of  the  interaction  system  of  one  merchant  company, 
political  group,  or  newspaper  and  magazine  editorial  staff,  in  a 
contemporary  city,  is  incomparably  wider  than  that  of  several 
rural  communities  and  their  populations.  In  predominantly  rural 
countries,  such  as  Russia,  India,  China,  the  area  of  the  contact  sys- 
tem of  the  bulk  of  their  rural  population  seldom  exceeds  a  few 
dozen  miles  from  their  place  of  birth  and  habitat.  In  contempo- 
rary big  cities,  there  are  very  few  of  the  population  who  are  not 
iii  contact  with  at  least  one  person  in  a  foreign  country,  not  to 
mention  many  people  in  the  remotest  parts  of  the  same  country. 

If  a  rural  community  or  a  city  be  taken  as  a  unit,  then  the  cir- 
cles of  interaction  of  each  of  such  units,  absolutely  and  relatively  in 
proportion  to  the  population,  are  almost  incomparable.  Look  at 
the  maps  of  the  railways,  waterways,  lines  of  telegraphs  and  tele- 
phones. They  all  tend  to  center  around  the  city.  Look  at  the 
map  of  the  readers  and  subscribers  of  city  publications,  newspa- 
pers, books,  magazines;  at  the  map  of  consumers  of  manufactured 
values  of  the  city  industry;  at  the  map  of  the  migration  lines  of 
the  city  "errand"  agents,  salesmen,  preachers,  teachers,  lecturers, 
instructors,  actors,  players,  artisans,  officials,  engineers,  organizers, 
bankers,  and  so  on.  Any  contemporary  city  of  even  moderate  size, 
not  to  mention  the  large  cities,  is  connected  factually  with  the 
whole  world. 

2.  If  the  totality  of  the  relations  that  compose  the  network  of 
the  interaction  system  of  an  urbanite  and  of  a  ruralist  be  divided 
into  two  parts,  face-to-face,  or  primary,  relations  and  indirect,  or 
secondary,  relations,  then  it  is  probable  that  face-to-face  relations 


236  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

occupy  a  smaller  proportion  of  the  whole  interaction  system  of  an 
urbanite  than  of  a  rural  individual.  Readers  of  a  city  newspaper, 
book,  or  publication;  listeners  to  the  city  radio  speaker  or  singer; 
clients,  buyers,  and  customers  of  city  business  enterprises  or  com- 
mercial houses;  taxpayers  and  subjects  of  the  government  located 
in  the  city;  members  of  religious  organizations  whose  headquar- 
ters and  authorities  are  in  the  city;  millions  of  individuals  with 
whom  the  city  institutions,  agencies,  and  individuals  are  in  con- 
tact: these  rarely  are  seen,  touched,  heard,  have  shaken  hands,  or 
have  had  direct  interaction  with  the  other  corresponding  units  of 
social  contact.  They  are  the  "anonymous"  public,  whose  reactions 
are  felt  only  indirectly  by  the  urban  population.  Only  an  infini- 
tesimal part  of  the  persons  with  whom  an  urban  individual  inter- 
acts are  personally  known  to  him.  The  greater  part  of  them  are 
only  "numbers,"  "addresses,"  "clients,"  "customers,"  "patients," 
"readers,"  "laborers,"  or  "employes."  They  remain  for  him  "hu- 
man abstractions,"  or  mere  special  agencies  for  definite  kinds  of 
interactions.  Their  whole  Gestalt,  or  personality,  remains  un- 
known. Hence,  the  extraordinarily  large  place  in  the  urbanite 
system  of  interaction  occupied  by  the  totality  of  indirect  relations. 

Somewhat  different  are  the  same  aspects  of  the  interaction  sys- 
tem of  the  typical  rural  individual.  He  has  a  relatively  narrow  area 
for  his  system  of  interaction;  a  limited  number  of  individuals 
with  whom  he  interacts;  and  a  smaller  number  of  indirect  com- 
munications. All  these  lead  to  the  fact  that  face-to-face  relations 
(with  his  family,  minister,  teacher,  neighbors,  etc.)  compose  a 
much  larger  part  of  his  whole  system  of  interaction  than  of  that 
of  a  typical  urbanite.  The  human  beings  with  whom  he  interacts 
are  concrete  in  body  and  flesh.  He  touches,  smells,  sees,  and  hears 
them.  For  this  reason,  they  are,  in  a  less  degree,  abstractions  for 
him  than  for  an  urbanite.  And  the  whole  living  personalities  or 
Gestalten  of  those  with  whom  he  interacts  are  known  more  thor- 
oughly to  him  than  is  the  case  with  the  urbanite. 

3.  A  slightly  different  aspect  of  the  above  means  that  the  inter- 
action system  of  an  urbanite  is  woven,  to  a  greater  proportion 
than  in  the  case  of  a  rural  individual,  out  of  impersonal  and  to  a 
less  degree  out  of  personal  relations.  Hundreds  of  persons  met  by 
the  city  dweller  in  subways  or  elevateds  are  only  "passengers"  to 
him  and  unknown  beyond  this  trait;  the  same  is  true  for  hun- 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  237 

dreds  o£  persons  who  eat  in  the  same  cafes;  for  hundreds  who  at- 
tend the  same  religious  services,  theaters,  political  meetings,  scien- 
tific lectures,  exhibitions,  department  stores,  factories,  offices,  and 
so  on.  He  knows  little,  if  anything,  regarding  the  personalities 
and  biographies  of  the  clerks  in  the  shops  he  attends,  the  girls 
who  connect  his  telephone  lines,  the  post-office  clerks,  icemen, 
milkmen,  taxi  drivers,  delivery  men,  "bosses,"  and  employes, 
and  workers.  The  very  multitude  of  partners  to  urban  interac- 
tions and  the  constant  mobility  and  shifting  makes  it  impossible 
for  him  to  know  their  personalities,  their  lives,  or  their  whole  hu- 
man Gestalten. 

In  a  rural  community  the  situation  is  different.  The  partners  of 
interaction  are  limited  in  number,  and  there  is  a  prevalence  of 
face-to-face  contacts  and  less  mobility  of  individuals.  All  these 
condition  the  prevalence  of  "personal"  relationships  in  the  inter- 
action systems  of  the  member  of  a  rural  community.  The  whole 
system  of  rural  interaction,  its  threads  and  network,  are  colored 
there  by  the  daubs  of  "personal  touch,"  "intimacy,"  and  concrete- 
ness.  This  makes  it  comprehensible  why,  in  the  systems  of  inter- 
action of  rural  populations,  human  beings  are  functioning  as  hu- 
man beings,  and  their  relations  involve,  to  a  greater  degree,  moral 
evaluations,  emotionality,  and  positive  or  negative  attitudes,  not 
only  because  of  the  good  or  poor  performance  of  the  occupational 
function  of  a  robot,  but  because  of  his  whole  personality  and  the 
totality  of  his  actions  as  a  man. 

4.  In  a  similar  manner,  it  is  possible  to  claim  that  in  the  totality 
of  relations  which  compose  the  network  of  the  interaction  system 
of  an  urban  individual,  the  part  composed  of  casual,  superficial, 
and  short-lived  relations,  in  contrast  to  permanent,  strong,  and 
durable  relations,  occupies  a  much  more  conspicuous  place  than 
in  the  interaction  system  of  a  rural  dweller.  One  cannot  remem- 
ber, or  seldom  even  wishes  to  continue  contact  with  hundreds  of 
the  persons  with  whom  elbows  are  rubbed  in  subways  and  streets, 
or  with  the  druggists,  shop  clerks,  servants,  and  other  human  ob- 
jects of  daily  interaction  in  cities.  Thousands  of  contacts  arise  in 
this  way  and  die  or  are  forgotten  in  a  few  moments  or  seconds. 

Different  is  the  situation  in  a  rural  community.  Since  its  popu- 
lation is  more  or  less  constant,  and  remains  there  for  life  or  for 
many  years,  the  bulk  of  relations  which  compose  the  interaction 


238  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

system  of  a  farmer  are  durable,  long-lived,  substantial,  and  solid. 
They  may  be  friendly  or  inimical,  good  or  bad,  ugly  or  beautiful, 
but  they  stay,  exist  for  a  long  time,  and  do  not  evaporate  quickly 
as  do  similar  city  relations.  For  this  reason,  they  are  deeper,  less 
superficial,  and  involve  the  whole  personalities  of  the  interactors 
and  the  interacted  persons. 

5.  Since  the  area  of  the  interaction  system  of  an  urbanite  is 
larger,  the  number  of  contacts  is  more  numerous,  the  people  with 
whom  he  interacts  are  more  heterogeneous,  the  relations  are  more  * 
flexible,  less  durable,  and  more  impersonal;  the  whole  network 
of  his  system  of  interaction  is  to  be  marked  by  greater  complexity, 
greater  plasticity,  differentiation,  manifoldness,  and  at  the  same 
time  by  greater  superficiality,  "standardization/5  and  mechaniza- 
tion than  the  network  of  the  interaction  system  of  a  rural  dweller. 

The  greater  complexity,  manifoldness,  and  plasticity  of  the  in- 
teraction system  of  an  urbanite  follows  from  what  has  been  said 
before.  Being  amidst  an  incessantly  changing,  highly  variable, 
and  heterogeneous  "human  river,"  an  urbanite  must  be  able  to 
change  his  actions  at  any  moment  according  to  the  circumstances. 
He  cannot  afford  to  be  inflexible  or  rigid  in  his  actions  and  reac- 
tions in  regard  to  these  heterogeneous  people  with  whom  he  has 
to  interact;  on  the  contrary,  such  an  attitude  would  doom  him  to 
failure. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  impersonal,  undurable,  and  superficial 
character  of  urban  contacts  makes  it  impossible  for  the  above 
variability,  specialization,  and  manifoldness  to  be  real,  deep,  or 
"organic."  Hence,  the  necessity  for  "standards"  and  standardized, 
half-mechanical,  ready-made  patterns  in  the  processes  of  urban 
interaction.  An  urbanite  treats  differently  his  iceman  and  his 
minister,  his  physician  and  his  grocer,  his  landlord  and  his 
workers.  But  this  difference  is  that  of  ready-made  standards  and 
not  a  personal  modification  of  behavior  thought  over  and  in- 
vented. An  urbanite,  in  his  variations  of  actions  and  reactions, 
may  be  compared  to  a  phonograph;  he  simply  and  half -mechani- 
cally changes  one  standard  for  another  (like  one  record  for  an- 
other). The  standards  generally  do  not  touch  the  individuality. 
Otherwise  they  would  not  be  standards.  All  they  touch  is  the  to- 
tality of  the  most  superficial,  exterior,  and  impersonal  traits.  For 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  239 

this  reason,  the  "yes>  sir"  of  a  hired  man  in  the  city  does  not  mean 
at  all  any  particular  respect  of  the  addressor  to  the  addressed.  It 
is  merely  a  standard  address  for  the  particular  circumstances. 
In  this  sense  the  interaction  system  of  an  urbanite  is  superficial 
and  quite  mechanical  It  misses  the  most  important  thing,  human 
personality  and  individuality,  or  man's  "heart  and  soul."  The 
rural  interaction  system  is  less  diversified  outwardly  and  has  a 
smaller  number  of  standards  in  application  to  various  classes  of 
people.  But  it  is  more  individualized  in  regard  to  various  individ- 
uals. It  is  more  filled  by  an  undetached  emotional  attitude  called 
forth  by  the  peculiarities  of  the  individual  interacted  with.  It  goes 
beyond  the  "social  dress"  of  a  man  and  comes  closer  to  his  heart, 
soul,  or  personality.  The  subsequent  readings  from  G.  Simmel 
and  O.  Spengler  develop  the  above  characteristics  of  the  rural 
and  urban  systems  of  social  interaction.  In  addition,  they  particu- 
larly stress  many  psycho-social  traits  of  the  city  which  are  corre- 
lated with  its  fundamental  variables  and  which,  for  the  present, 
are  not  touched  in  our  analysis.  The  descriptions  of  the  "city- 
soul"  by  Simmel  and  Spengler  excellently  supplement  the  above 
"framework"  of  the  city  and  the  country  worlds.  A  detailed  analy- 
sis of  this  "city-soul"  will  be  given  further,  in  subsequent  parts  of 
this  work. 

C.    SUMMARY 

The  above  does  not  exhaust  the  differences  between  the  urban 
and  rural  worlds  but  it  is  sufficient  to  serve  as  a  starting  com- 
pound concept  for  further  analysis.  Let  us  sum  up  the  above  im- 
portant relatively  constant,  and  causally  connected,  qualitative 
and  quantitative  characteristics  of  the  urban  and  rural  worlds. 

RURAL  WORLD  URBAN  WORLD 

OCCUPATION          Totality  of  cultivators  and  Totality  of  people  engaged 

their  families,  In  the  com-  principally  in  manufactur- 

munity  are  usually  a  few  ing,    mechanical    pursuits, 

representatives    of    several  trade,    commerce,    profes- 

nonagricultural    pursuits,  sions,  governing,  and  other 

They,    however,    do    not  nonagricultural  occupa- 

compose  the  proper  object  tions. 
of  rural  sociology. 


240 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


ENVIRONMENT 


RURAL  WORLD 

Predominance  o£  nature 
over  anthropo-social  envi- 
ronment. Direct  relation- 
ship to  nature. 


URBAN  WORLD 

Greater  isolation  from  na- 
ture. Predominance  of 
man-made  environment 
over  natural.  Poorer  air. 
Stone  and  iron. 


SIZE  OF  Open  farms  or  small  com- 

COMMUNITY  munities,  "agriculturalism" 
and  size  of  community  are 
negatively  correlated. 


As  a  rule  in  the  same 
country  and  at  the  same 
period,  the  size  of  the  ur- 
ban community  is  much 
larger  than  the  rural  com- 
munity. In  other  words, 
urbanization  and  size  of 
community  are  positively 
correlated. 


DENSITY  OF  In  the  same  country  and  at 

POPULATION  the  same  period  the  density 

is  lower  than  in  the  urban 
community.  Generally  den- 
sity and  rurality  are  nega- 
tively correlated. 


Greater  than  in  rural  com- 
munities. Urbanity  and 
density  are  positively  cor- 
related. 


HETEROGENEITY 
AND  HOMO- 
GENEITY OF  THE 
POPULATION 


Compared  with  urban 
populations  the  populations 
of  rural  communities  are 
more  homogeneous  in  ra- 
cial and  psycho-social  traits. 
(Negative  correlation  with 
heterogeneity.) 


More  heterogeneous  than 
rural  communities  (in  the 
same  country  and  at  the 
same  time).  Urbanity  and 
heterogeneity  are  positively 
correlated. 


SOCIAL  DIFFER- 
ENTIATION AND 
STRATIFICATION 


Rural  differentiation  and 
stratification  less  than  ur- 
ban. 


Differentiation  and  strati- 
fication show  positive  corre- 
lation with  urbanity. 


MOBILITY  Territorial,  occupational, 

and  other  forms  of  social 
mobility  of  the  population 
are  comparatively  less  in- 
tensive. Normally  the  mi- 
gration current  carries 
more  individuals  from  the 
country  to  the  city. 


More  intensive.  Urbanity 
and  mobility  are  positively 
correlated.  Only  in  the  pe- 
riods of  social  catastrophe 
is  the  migration  from  the 
city  to  the  country  greater 
than  from  the  country  to 
the  city. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  241 

RURAL  WORLD  URBAN  WORLD 

SYSTEM  OF             Less  numerous  contacts  per  More    numerous    contacts. 

INTERACTION  man.  Narrower  area  of  the  Wider  area  o£  interaction 
interaction  system  of  its  system  per  man  and  per 
members  and  the  whole  ag-  aggregate.  Predominance  of 
gregate.  More  prominent  secondary  contacts.  Pre- 
part  is  occupied  by  primary  dominance  of  impersonal, 
contacts.  Predominance  of  casual,  and  short-lived  rela- 
personal  and  relatively  dur-  tions.  Greater  complexity, 
able  relations.  Comparative  manifoldness,  superficial- 
simplicity  and  sincerity  of  ity,  and  standardized  for- 
relations.  "Man  is  interact-  mality  of  relations.  Man  is 
ed  as  a  human  person."  interacted  as  a  "number" 

and  "address." 

These  fundamental  characteristics,  as  has  been  shown,  are  all 
causally  connected,  or  interrelated.  As  soon  as  one  takes  the  agri- 
cultural occupation  and  the  people  engaged  in  it,  he  finds  the 
other  differences  enumerated.  The  first  "variable,"  so  to  speak, 
carries  the  others  with  it.  In  their  totality,  they  compose  the  typi- 
cal and  constant  "cradle"  or  "framework"  within  which  rural  and 
urban  phenomena  carry  on.  In  some  of  the  cities  one  group  of 
these  variables  is  more  conspicuous,  and  in  other  cities  another 
group.  But,  all  in  all,  the  totality  of  the  above  variables,  to  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  belongs  to  all  cities.  Since  we  now  under- 
stand this  typical  urban  and  rural  "framework,"  we  may  turn 
our  attention  to  the  typical  "pictures"  inclosed  in  each  of  these 
"frames."  Our  task  now  is  to  find  out  what  are  the  relatively  con- 
stant differences  between,  and  typical  characteristics  of,  "the  pic- 
ture" inclosed  by  the  above  "rural  framework"  and  that  in  "the 
urban  framework."  What  social  phenomena  are  correlated  with 
the  above  urban  and  rural  variables  ?  This  means  that  after  rural 
sociology  finds  "the  framework"  of  the  world,  its  tasks  consist  in 
a  study  of  the  sociologically  relevant  phenomena  constantly  and 
typically  associated  with  the  variables  out  of  which  this  "rural 
framework"  is  composed. 

These  tasks,  in  so  far  as  they  are  concentrated  on  typical  and 
constant  differences,  their  correlation  with  the  variables  which 
compose  the  framework  of  the  rural  world,  and  the  intercorre- 
lation  of  these  social  phenomena  with  one  another,  are  exactly 
identical  with  the  tasks  of  sociology  generally  and  rural  sociology 
particularly. 


242  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Since  the  urban  and  rural  worlds  are  now  separated,  and  since 
our  object  of  study  is  the  rural  world  (a  consideration  of  the 
urban  world  being  necessary  only  to  make  the  peculiarities  of  the 
rural  world  more  conspicuous),  from  now  on  we  shall  concen- 
trate our  attention  on  the  rural  world. 

38.  GEORG  SIMMEL:  LARGE  CITIES  AND  MENTAL  LIFE* 

The  psychological  basis  on  which  the  type  of  urban  individualities 
is  developed  is  the  increase  of  nervous  life  which  arises  from  the  rapid 
and  uninterrupted  change  of  internal  and  external  impressions.  Man 
is  a  differentiating  being,  i.e.,  his  consciousness  is  aroused  through  the 
difference  between  the  impression  of  the  moment  and  that  of  the  mo- 
ment before.  Persisting  impressions,  small  differences  between  them, 
and  their  habitually  regular  maturation  and  contrasts  require,  so  to 
speak,  less  consciousness  than  the  rapid  forcing  together  of  changing 
pictures,  the  abrupt  contrasts  that  are  found  within  the  material  cov- 
ered by  one  glance,  the  unexpectedness  of  impressions  that  force  them- 
selves upon  one.  In  so  far  as  the  urban  center  creates  these  psycholog- 
ical conditions,  it  creates  a  marked  contrast  to  village  and  rural  life  in 
both  the  sensory  foundations  of  mental  life  and  in  the  quantity  of  con- 
sciousness which  it  requires  of  us  as  differentiating  beings. 

The  rhythm  of  sensory-mental  life  is  slower,  more  habitual,  and 
more  uniform  in  village  and  rural  districts  than  in  the  city.  This 
contrast  explains,  above  all,  the  intellectudistic  character  of  urban 
mental  life,  as  contrasted  with  that  of  the  village,  which  is  based  more 
on  feelings  and  emotional  relationships.  These  latter  are  rooted  in  the 
unconscious  portions  of  the  mind  and  develop  most  readily  under  the 
quiet  equanimity  of  undisturbed  habits.  The  intellect,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  rooted  in  the  transparent,  conscious  upper  levels  of  the  mind, 
and  is  the  most  adaptable  of  our  inner  powers.  In  order  to  adapt  itself 
to  the  change  and  contrasts  of  phenomena,  it  does  not  require  the 
upheavals  and  the  inner  disturbances  which  are  the  only  means 
whereby  the  conservative  mind  can  adapt  itself  to  a  different  rhythm 
of  occurrences. 

Thus  the  urban  type,  though,  of  course,  subject  to  thousands  of 
modifications,  develops  a  protective  organ  against  the  uprooting  with 
which  the  tendencies  and  discrepancies  of  the  external  milieu  threaten 
him.  He  reacts  primarily  with  the  intellect  rather  than  with  the  emo- 
tions, for  he  achieves  a  mental  prerogative  by  the  increased  conscious- 

*  Adapted  from  Georg  Simmel,  "Die  Grossestadte  und  das  Geistesleben,"  published 
in  Die  Grossestadt,  lectures  and  papers  for  the  Metropolitan  Exposition,  von  Zahn  & 
Jaensch,  Dresden,  1903,  pp.  187-206. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  243 

ness,  which  also  created  this  prerogative.  Thus  in  the  city  the  reactions 
to  the  phenomena  of  daily  life  are  transferred  to  the  mental  organ, 
which  is  least  sensitive  and  furthest  removed  from  the  depths  of  the 
personality.  Intellectualism,  recognized  thus  as  a  preventive  against 
the  city's  oppression  of  our  subjective  life,  branches  out  into  many  and 
varied  individual  phenomena.  Great  cities  have  always  been  the  seats 
of  money  economy,  because  the  many-sidedness  and  the  concentra- 
tion of  economic  exchange  have  given  the  medium  of  exchange  an 
importance  that  it  could  hardly  have  attained  in  the  sparsity  of  rural 
exchange.  But  money  economy  and  domination  by  the  intellect  are 
most  intimately  related.  They  both  possess  the  purely  objective  treat- 
ment of  men  and  things  in  which  formal  justice  is  often  paired  with 
a  most  inconsiderate  hardness. 

The  purely  intellectualistic  man  is  entirely  indifferent  to  everything 
that  is  personal,  for  personality  is  characterized  by  relationships  and 
reactions  that  cannot  be  exhausted  with  the  purely  logical  intellect; 
neither  does  the  individuality  of  the  occurrence  enter  into  the  money 
principle.  Money  is  concerned  only  with  that  which  is  common  to  all, 
that  is,  with  the  exchange  value,  which  reduces  all  quality  and  unique- 
ness to  the  question  of  mere  quantity.  While  all  emotional  relation- 
ships between  persons  are  based  on  individuality,  the  intellectual 
relationships  reckon  with  men  merely  as  with  figures,  or  with  indif- 
ferent elements  that  are  of  interest  only  because  of  their  performance, 
which  may  be  objectively  evaluated.  This  type  of  relationship  exists 
between  the  urban  resident  and  his  wholesaler,  as  well  as  his  customer, 
his  employe,  and,  frequently,  the  persons  with  whom  he  carries  on 
the  required  social  intercourse.  In  contrast  to  this  we  find  the  char- 
acter of  the  smaller  circle,  in  which  the  unavoidable  knowledge  of 
individualities  creates  an  unavoidably  stronger  emotional  tone  of  be- 
havior, far  removed  from  the  mere  objective  evaluation  of  disburse- 
ments and  receipts. 

In  more  primitive  circumstances,  production  is  for  the  consumer 
who  orders  the  goods,  so  that  producer  and  consumer  know  each  other. 
The  modern  city,  however,  is  supported  almost  entirely  by  production 
for  the  market,  i.e.,  for  entirely  unknown  consumers,  who  will  never 
enter  into  the  circle  of  those  whom  the  producer  actually  knows.  Thus 
the  interest  of  both  parties  acquires  an  unmerciful  objectivity;  their 
intellectually  calculating  economic  egoism  does  not  need  to  fear  any 
diversion  from  the  subject  in  hand  through  the  imponderables  of  per- 
sonal relationships.  The  money  economy  has  forced  the  last  remnants 
of  individual  production  and  immediate  barter  out  of  existence  and 
daily  reduces  the  amount  of  labor  that  is  done  directly  for  the  customer. 


244  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

It  and  the  impersonal  relationship,  mentioned  above,  stand  in  such 
close  relationship  to  each  other  that  no  one  is  able  to  say  whether  the 
mental,  intellectualistic  attitude  influenced  the  money  economy,  or  vice 
versa.  It  is  certain  only  that  life  in  the  metropolis  is  the  most  fertile 
ground  for  this  interrelationship,  a  fact  which  is  well  illustrated  by  the 
words  of  the  most  important  English  constitutional  historian: 
"Through  the  history  of  England,  London  has  never  acted  as  its  heart, 
but  often  as  its  intellect  and  always  as  its  purse!" 

The  same  mental  tendencies  are  united  with  a  seemingly  unimpor- 
tant characteristic  at  the  surface  o£  life.  The  modern  spirit  has  become 
more  and  more  a  calculating  one.  Corresponding  to  the  aim  of  nat- 
ural science  to  transform  the  world  into  a  mathematical  problem  and 
to  describe  in  a  mathematical  formula  every  portion  of  it,  we  have 
the  calculating  exactness  of  practical  life  which  the  money  economy 
has  brought  with  it.  First,  it  has  filled  the  day  of  so  many  persons  with 
balancing,  calculating,  and  enumerating  activity,  and  with  the  reduc- 
tion of  qualitative  values  to  quantitative  terms.  Through  the  calcula- 
tion of  monetary  values  there  has  entered  into  the  relations  of  the 
elements  of  life  a  precision,  a  certainty  in  the  determination  of  equali- 
ties and  differences,  an  unambiguity  in  appointments  and  agreements, 
similar  to  that  which  is  mediated  externally  through  the  general  dif- 
fusion of  watches.  The  conditions  of  the  metropolis  are  both  cause  and 
effect  of  this  characteristic.  The  relationships  and  affairs  of  the  typical 
urban  resident  are  so  manifold  and  so  complicated,  and,  above  all, 
urban  relationships  and  activities  are  interwoven  into  an  organism  of 
so  many  parts  through  the  agglomeration  of  so  many  persons  with 
such  differentiated  interests,  that  the  whole  would  break  down  into  an 
inextricable  chaos  without  the  most  exact  punctuality  in  promises  and 
performances.  The  punctuality,  computabilityf  and  precision  which 
the  complicated  and  expanded  nature  of  metropolitan  life  forces  upon 
the  urban  resident  stand  in  the  most  intimate  relationship  with  its 
monetary  and  intellectualistic  character;  they  also  color  the  content 
of  life  and  favor  the  exclusion  of  those  irrational,  instinctive,  sovereign 
traits  and  impulses  which  want  to  determine  the  form  of  life  from 
within  rather  than  to  receive  it  from  an  external  source  as  a  general, 
schematically  precise  form. 

The  same  factors  which  have  been  combined  into  a  picture  of  the 
greatest  impersonality  in  the  exactness  and  minute  precision  of  life, 
on  the  other  hand,  influence  a  most  personal  phenomenon.  There  is 
probably  no  mental  phenomenon  which  is  so  entirely  reserved  for  the 
metropolis  as  sophistication.  It  is,  first  of  all,  the  result  of  those  rapidly 
changing  and  contrasting  concentrated  nervous  stimuli  which  seemed 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  245 

to  be  the  cause  of  urban  intellectualism.  Stupid  and  mentally  inactive 
persons  do  not  care,  as  a  rule,  to  be  sophisticated. 

In  addition  to  the  physiological  source  of  urban  sophistication  we 
have  another,  which  is  found  in  the  money  economy.  The  essence  of 
sophistication  is  a  dullness  toward  the  differences  in  objects,  not  in  the 
sense  of  failing  to  perceive  them,  as  in  the  case  of  the  feeble-minded, 
but  rather,  perceiving  them  so  that  the  meaning  and  the  importance 
of  the  differences  between  objects,  and  thus  of  the  objects  themselves, 
is  experienced  as  unimportant.  To  the  sophisticated  individual  all 
objects  appear  under  a  uniform  weak  and  gray  tone,  no  one  worthy  of 
being  preferred  to  any  other.  This  mental  attitude  is  the  correct  sub- 
jective reflex  of  the  completely  developed  money  economy,  for  money 
evaluates  the  multiplicity  of  objects  uniformly  and  expresses  all  their 
qualitative  differences  in  quantitative  terms  only.  And,  in  so  far  as 
money,  with  its  lack  of  color  and  its  indifference,  asserts  itself  as  the 
evaluator  of  all  values,  it  becomes  the  most  fearful  leveler,  for  it  robs 
them  of  their  essence,  their  uniqueness,  their  specific  value,  their 
imcomparability.  They  all  float  about  in  the  constantly  moving  money 
stream  with  the  same  specific  gravity,  lie  on  the  same  plane,  and  are 
differentiated  only  by  the  size  of  the  parts  of  it  which  they  cover. 

The  mental  behavior  of  the  urban  residents  toward  each  othet  may, 
in  a  formal  respect,  be  designated  as  reserved.  If  the  ceaseless  external 
contacts  with  countless  persons  should  arouse  so  many  inner  reactions 
as  in  the  small  town,  in  which  one  knows  nearly  every  person  one 
meets  and  has  a  positive  relationship  to  him,  one  would  entirely  exhaust 
oneself  internally  and  get  into  a  mental  state  that  is  simply  unthink- 
able. This  psychological  circumstance,  as  well  as  the  justifiable  sus- 
picion which  we  have  toward  the  persons  whom  we  meet  in  fleeting 
contacts  in  the  large  city,  forces  us  into  that  reserve  which  has  as  one 
result  our  frequent  failing  to  know  the  next-door  neighbor  by  sight, 
even  though  he  has  been  there  for  years,  a  situation  which  makes  the 
residents  of  villages  consider  us  cold  and  without  any  feeling. 

This  reserve,  with  its  overtone  of  hidden  aversion,  again  seems  to 
me  a  form  or  cloak  of  a  much  more  general  mental  trait  of  the  metro- 
politan resident.  It  grants  the  individual  a  kind  and  measure  of  per- 
sonal freedom  which  has  no  analogy  in  other  circumstances.  Thus  it 
goes  back  to  one  of  the  great  developmental  tendencies  in  social  life 
as  such,  one  of  the  few  for  which  a  somewhat  generally  valid  formula 
can  be  found.  The  earliest  stage  o£  social  organization,  which  may  be 
found  in  historical  as  well  as  in  contemporaneous  primitive  societies, 
is  a  relatively  small  circle,  firmly  differentiated  from  neighboring, 
strange,  or  in  any  way  antagonistic  circles,  but  so  much  the  more 


246  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

firmly  closed  within  itself.  It  permits  the  individual  member  only  little 
leeway  for  the  development  of  unique  qualities  and  free  movements, 
for  which  he  shall  be  responsible  only  to  himself.  .  .  . 

Social  evolution  proceeds  from  this  stage  in  two  different,  but  cor- 
responding, directions.  In  the  measure  in  which  the  group  grows — 
numerically,  spatially,  in  importance,  and  in  the  content  of  its  life- 
it  loosens  its  immediate  internal  unity.  The  clearness  of  the  original 
demarcation  from  others  is  attenuated  through  interrelationships  and 
connections  with  them.  At  the  same  time  the  individual  secures  free- 
dom of  movement,  much  beyond  the  original  jealous  limitation,  and 
a  peculiarity  and  uniqueness,  which  is  made  possible  and  required  by 
the  division  of  labor  in  the  growing  group.  State  and  Christianity, 
guilds  and  political  parties  have  developed  according  to  this  formula; 
of  course,  with  the  modifications  which  the  special  circumstances  and 
powers  of  each  have  imposed  upon  the  general  scheme.  But  it  seems  to 
be  clearly  recognizable  in  the  development  of  individuality  within 
urban  life.  Village  life,  in  antiquity  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  imposed 
limitations  of  movement  and  relationships,  externally;  of  independence 
and  differentiation,  internally;  limitations  under  which  modern  man 
could  not  exist.  Even  today,  the  urban  resident,  when  transplanted  to 
the  small  town,  feels  a  similar  restraint.  The  smaller  the  social  circle 
that  forms  our  environment,  the  more  limited  are  the  relationships  to 
others  which  might  erase  the  circle's  boundaries;  the  more  carefully 
it  watches  over  the  performances,  manner  of  life,  and  attitudes  of  its 
individual  members;  and  the  more  clearly  its  quantitative  and  quali- 
tative peculiarities  mark  the  boundaries  of  such  a  circle,  as  a  whole. 
The  Polls  of  antiquity  seems  to  have  had  exactly  the  character  of  the 
small  town  in  this  respect. 

Today  the  metropolitan  resident  is  "free,"  in  contrast  to  the  trifles 
and  prejudices  which  restrain  the  resident  of  the  small  town.  For 
mutual  reserve  and  indifference,  the  mental  condition  of  life  in  large 
circles,  are  never  felt  more  strongly  as  related  to  the  independence  of 
the  individual  than  in  the  densest  crowd  of  the  metropolis,  where  the 
bodily  nearness  and  closeness  does  not  decrease  but  makes  the  mental 
distance  all  the  more  noticeable.  The  fact  that  one  may  never  feel  so 
alone  and  forsaken  as,  at  times,  in  the  crowds  of  a  big  city  is  evidently 
only  the  converse  of  this  freedom.  For,  here,  as  generally,  it  is  not  at 
all  necessary  that  the  freedom  of  the  individual  be  reflected  in  his 
emotional  life  as  pleasurable. 

The  sphere  of  life  of  the  small  town  is,  in  the  main,  a  unity  within 
itself.  It  is  a  characteristic  of  the  large  city  that  its  internal  life  extends 
wavelike  over  a  large  national  or  international  region.  The  most  im- 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  247 

portant  nature  of  the  metropolis  lies  in  this  functional  largeness,  beyond 
its  physical  boundaries;  and  this  effectiveness  of  the  city  acts  reflexively, 
giving  its  life  weight,  importance,  and  responsibility.  Cities  are,  further, 
the  seats  of  the  greatest  division  of  labor;  they  produce  extreme  forms 
of  this.  Urban  life  has  transformed  the  struggle  with  nature  for  exist- 
ence into  a  struggle  with  man.  In  the  city  the  gain  sought  as  a  result 
of  the  struggle  is  granted  not  by  nature,  but  by  man  himself.  In  this 
we  find  the  indicated  source  of  specialization,  as  well  as  a  deeper  one, 
for  the  producer  must  constantly  seek  to  arouse  new  and  peculiar 
needs.  The  necessity  of  specializing  performance  in  order  to  find  a  not 
yet  exhausted  source  of  income,  a  not  easily  replaced  function,  forces 
differentiation,  improvement,  increasing  the  needs  of  the  public;  all 
this  must  obviously  lead  to  growing  personal  differences  within  this 
public. 

And  this  leads  to  the  more  narrow  individualization  of  mental  char- 
acteristics to  which  the  city  gives  rise  in  proportion  to  its  size.  A  series 
of  causes  are  apparent.  First  of  all,  there  is  the  difficulty  of  making 
their  own  personality  count  in  the  dimensions  of  metropolitan  life. 
Where  the  quantitative  increase  of  importance  and  energy  reaches  its 
limits,  a  person  attempts  qualitative  differentiations,  in  order  to  gain 
social  recognition  in  some  manner,  and  especially  through  the  arousal 
of  the  sensibility  to  differences.  This  leads  to  the  most  astounding 
peculiarities,  to  the  specifically  urban  extravagances  of  uniqueness, 
caprice,  and  pettiness,  whose  meanings  are  not  found  in  the  content 
of  the  behavior  but  in  the  form  of  being  unique,  of  setting  oneself 
apart  and  thus  becoming  noticeable.  For  many  persons  this  method  of 
impressing  the  consciousness  of  others  is  the  only  means  of  preserving 
some  self-respect  and  sense  of  importance.  Another  circumstance,  not 
noticeable  in  itself,  but,  nevertheless,  cumulative  in  its  effects,  acts  in 
the  same  manner:  the  shortness  and  infrequency  of  the  meetings  (of 
the  same  individual  with  the  same  persons)  urge  an  urbanite  to  im- 
press as  unambiguous,  clear-cut,  and  sharp  a  picture  of  his  personality 
on  the  other  person  as  possible. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  most  important  reason  why  it  is  the  metropo- 
lis that  stresses  the  drive  to  the  most  individualistic  personal  existence — 
no  matter  whether  always  justifiably  or  always  successfully — is  as  fol- 
lows. The  development  of  modern  culture  is  characterized  by  a  pre- 
ponderance of  that  which  is  called  the  objective  impersonal  spirit 
(Geist)  over  the  subjective  (individual  or  personal).  Thus  in  language, 
as  in  law,  in  the  technique  of  production  as  in  art,  in  science  as  in  the 
objects  of  our  domestic  surroundings,  there  is  embodied  a  spirit  whose 
daily  growth  is  followed  by  the  mental  development  of  individuals 


248  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

only  imperfectly  and  with  a  constantly  increasing  lag.  The  big  cities 
are  the  true  scenes  of  this  objective  culture.  It  grows  beyond,  and  dif- 
ferently from,  everything  personal.  Here  we  find  in  buildings  and  in 
institutions  of  learning,  in  the  wonders  and  comforts  of  a  space-con- 
quering technique,  in  the  formations  of  common  life,  and  in  the  visible 
institutions  of  the  state,  such  an  enormous  and  so  overwhelming  a 
mass  of  crystallized  impersonal  spirit  that  the  personality  cannot,  so  to 
speak,  maintain  itself  as  distinct  and  counts  less  and  less. 

On  the  one  hand,  urban  life  is  endlessly  simplified,  for  stimuli,  inter- 
ests, means  of  filling  out  time  and  consciousness  are  offered  from  every 
side  and  carry  the  personality  along  as  in  a  stream,  in  which  swim- 
ming movements  are  hardly  required.  On  the  other  hand,  life  is  more 
and  more  composed  of  these  impersonal  contents  and  offerings,  which 
tend  to  supplant  the  truly  personal  colorings  and  unique  qualities. 
Thus,  if  the  personality  would  preserve  itself,  it  must  offer  the  most 
extreme  forms  of  uniqueness  and  peculiarity,  it  must  exaggerate  these 
in  order  to  become  at  all  audible,  even  for  itself.  The  atrophy  of  the 
individual  through  the  hypertrophy  of  objective  culture  is  one  reason 
for  the  fierce  hatred  which  the  exponents  of  individualism,  following 
Nietzsche,  have  for  the  big  city.  But  it  is  also  the  reason  why  they  are 
so  passionately  admired  in  the  big  cities.  The  resident  of  the  big  city 
is  the  person  to  whom  they  appear  as  the  prophets  and  saviors  of  his 
unsatisfied  longings. 

When  we  trace  these  two  forms  of  individualism,  which  are  nour- 
ished by  the  quantitative  circumstances  of  the  big  city — i.e.,  individual 
independence  and  the  development  of  personal  uniqueness — the  big 
city  gains  an  entirely  new  value  in  the  universal  history  of  the  mind. 

39.  OSWALD  SPENGLER:  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  CITY* 

Primeval  man  is  a  ranging  animal,  a  being  whose  waking  conscious- 
ness restlessly  feels  its  way  through  life,  all  microcosm,  under  no  servi- 
tude of  place  or  home,  keen  and  anxious  in  its  senses,  ever  alert  to  drive 
off  some  element  of  hostile  Nature.  A  deep  transformation  sets  in  first 
with  agriculture— for  that  is  something  artificial,  with  which  hunter 
and  shepherd  have  no  touch.  He  who  digs  and  ploughs  is  seeking  not 
to  plunder,  but  to  alter  Nature.  To  plant  implies,  not  to  take  some- 
thing, but  to  produce  something.  But  with  this  man  himself  becomes 
plant— mmdy,  a  peasant.  He  roots  in  the  earth  that  he  tends,  the  soul 
of  man  discovers  a  soul  in  the  countryside,  and  a  new  earthboundness 
of  being,  a  new  feeling,  pronounces  itself.  Hostile  Nature  becomes  the 

*  Reprinted  from  TA*  Decline  of  the  West,  Vol.  II,  by  Oswald  Spengler,  by  special 
arrangement  with  Alfred  A,  Knopf,  Inc.,  authorized  publishers. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  249 

friend;  earth  becomes  Mother  Earth.  Between  sowing  and  begetting, 
harvest  and  death,  the  child  and  the  grain,  a  profound  affinity  is  set  up. 
.  .  .  And  as  completed  expression  of  this  life-feeling,  we  find  every- 
where the  symbolic  shape  of  the  farmhouse,  which  in  the  disposition 
of  the  rooms  and  in  every  line  of  external  form  tells  us  about  the  blood 
of  its  inhabitants.  The  peasant's  dwelling  is  the  great  symbol  of  settled- 
ness.  It  is  itself  a  plant,  thrusts  its  roots  deep  into  its  "own"  soil.  It  is 
property  in  the  most  sacred  sense  of  the  word.  The  kindly  spirits  of 
hearth  and  door,  floor  and  chamber — Vesta,  Janus,  Lares  and  Penates — 
are  as  firmly  fixed  in  it  as  the  man  himself. 

This  is  the  condition  precedent  of  every  Culture,  which  itself  in  turn 
grows  up  out  of  a  mother  landscape  and  renews  and  intensifies  the 
intimacy  of  man  and  soil.  What  his  cottage  is  to  the  peasant,  that  the 
town  is  to  the  Cultureman.  As  each  individual  house  has  its  kindly 
spirits,  so  each  town  has  its  tutelary  god  or  saint.  The  town,  too,  is  a 
planthke  being,  as  far  removed  as  a  peasantry  is  from  nomadism  and 
the  purely  microcosmic.  Hence  the  development  of  a  high  form- 
language  is  linked  always  to  a  landscape.  Neither  an  art  nor  a  religion 
can  alter  the  site  of  its  growth;  only  in  the  Civilization  *  with  its  giant 
cities  do  we  come  again  to  despise  and  disengage  ourselves  from  these 
roots.  Man  as  civilized,  as  intellectual  nomad,  is  again  wholly  micro- 
cosmic,  wholly  homeless,  as  free  intellectually  as  hunter  and  herdsman 
were  free  sensually.  "Ubi  bene,  ibi  patria"  is  valid  before  as  well  as 
after  a  Culture.  In  the  not-yet-spring  of  the  Migrations  it  was  a  Ger- 
manic yearning— virginal,  yet  already  maternal — that  searched  the 
South  for  a  home  in  which  to  nest  its  future  Culture.  Today,  at  the 
end  of  this  Culture,  the  rootless  intellect  ranges  over  all  landscapes  and 
all  possibilities  of  thought.  But  between  these  limits  lies  the  time  in 
which  a  man  held  a  bit  of  soil  to  be  something  worth  dying  for. 

It  is  a  conclusive  fact — yet  one  hitherto  never  appreciated — that  all 
great  Cultures  are  town  Cultures.  Higher  man  of  the  Second  Age  is 
a  town-tied  animal.  Here  is  the  real  criterion  of  "world  history"  that 
differentiates  it  with  utter  sharpness  from  man's  history — world  history 
is  the  history  of  civic  man.  Peoples,  states,  politics,  religion,  all  arts, 
and  all  sciences  rest  upon  one  prime  phenomenon  of  human  being,  the 
town.  As  all  thinkers  of  all  Cultures  themselves  live  in  the  town  (even 
though  they  may  reside  bodily  in  the  country),  they  are  perfectly  una- 
ware of  what  a  bizarre  thing  a  town  is.  To  feel  this  we  have  to  put 
ourselves  unreservedly  in  the  place  of  the  wonder-struck  primitive  who 
for  the  first  time  sees  this  mass  of  stone  and  wood  set  in  the  landscape, 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE, — Spengler  sharply  distinguishes  Culture  from  Civilization :  Civiliza* 
tion  is  the  declining  stage  o£  Culture,  or  Culture  whose  soul  is  already  dead  or  dying. 
Civilization  represents  only  the  empty,  though  polished,  shell  of  the  living  Culture. 


250  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

with  its  stone-enclosed  streets  and  its  stone-paved  squares— a  domicile, 
truly,  of  strange  form  and  strangely  teeming  with  men! 

But  the  real  miracle  is  the  birth  of  the  soul  of  a  town.  A  mass-soul 
of  a  wholly  new  kind— whose  last  foundations  will  remain  hidden 
from  us  for  ever— suddenly  buds  off  from  the  general  spirituality  of 
its  Culture.  As  soon  as  it  is  awake,  it  forms  for  itself  a  visible  body. 
Out  of  the  rustic  of  farms  and  cottages,  each  of  which  has  its  own 
history,  arises  a  totality.  And  the  whole  lives,  breathes,  grows,  and 
acquires  a  face  and  an  inner  form  and  history.  .  .  . 

It  goes  without  saying  that  what  distinguishes  a  town  from  a  village 
is  not  size,  but  the  presence  of  a  soul.  .  .  .  We  have  to  go  back  and 
sense  accurately  what  it  means  when  out  of  a  primitive  Egyptian  or 
Chinese  or  Germanic  village—a  little  spot  in  a  wide  land—a  city  comes 
into  being.  It  is  quite  possibly  not  differentiated  in  any  outward  fea- 
ture, but  spiritually  it  is  a  place  from  which  the  countryside  is  hence- 
forth  regarded,  felt,  and  experienced  as  "environs,"  as  something  dif- 
ferent and  subordinate.  From  now  on  there  are  two  lives,  that  of  the 
inside  and  that  of  the  outside,  and  the  peasant  understands  this  just 
as  clearly  as  the  townsman.  The  village  smith  and  the  smith  in  the  city, 
the  village  headman  and  the  burgomaster,  live  in  two  different  worlds. 
The  man  of  the  land  and  the  man  of  the  city  are  different  essences. 
First  of  all  they  feel  the  difference,  then  they  are  dominated  by  it,  and 
at  last  they  cease  to  understand  each  other  at  all.  To-day  a  Branden- 
burg peasant  is  closer  to  a  Sicilian  peasant  than  he  is  to  a  Berliner.  .  .  . 

[In  the  city],  separated  from  the  power  of  the  land — cut  off  from  it, 
even  by  the  pavement  underfoot — Being  becomes  more  and  more 
languid,  sensation  and  reason  more  and  more  powerful.  Man  becomes 
intellect,  "free"  like  the  nomads,  whom  he  comes  to  resemble,  but 
narrower  and  colder  than  they.  "Intellect,"  "Geist,"  "esprit,"  is  the 
specific  urban  form  of  the  understanding  waking-consciousness.  All 
art,  all  religion  and  science,  become  slowly  intellectualized,  alien  to 
the  land,  incomprehensible  to  the  peasant  of  the  soil.  With  the  Civiliza- 
tion sets  in  the  climacteric.  The  immemorially  old  roots  of  Being  are 
dried  up  in  the  stone  masses  of  its  cities.  And  the  free  intellect— fateful 
word— appears  like  a  flame,  mounts  splendid  into  the  air,  and  pitiably 
dies.  .  .  . 

In  the  earliest  times  the  landscape  figure  alone  dominates  man's  eyes. 
It  gives  form  to  his  soul  and  vibrates  in  tune  therewith.  Feelings  and 
woodland  rustlings  beat  together;  the  meadows  and  the  copses  adapt 
themselves  to  its  shape,  to  its  course,  even  to  its  dress.  The  village, 
with  its  quiet  hillocky  roofs,  its  evening  smoke,  its  wells,  its  hedges, 
and  its  beasts,  lies  completely  fused  and  embedded  in  the  landscape. 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  251 

The  country  town  confirms  the  country,  is  an  intensification  of  the 
picture  of  the  country.  It  is  the  Late  city  that  first  defies  the  land,  con- 
tradicts Nature  in  the  lines  of  its  silhouette,  denies  all  Nature.  It  wants 
to  be  something  different  from  and  higher  than  Nature.  These  high- 
pitched  gables,  these  Baroque  cupolas,  spires,  and  pinnacles,  neither 
are,  nor  desire  to  be,  related  with  anything  in  Nature.  And  then  begins 
the  gigantic  megalopolis,  the  city -as-world,  which  suffers  nothing  be- 
side itself  and  sets  about  annihilating  the  country  picture.  .  .  .  Extra 
muros,  chaussees  and  woods  and  pastures  become  a  park,  mountains 
become  tourists'  viewpoints;  and  intra  muros  arises  an  imitation 
Nature,  fountains  in  lieu  of  springs,  flower-beds,  formal  pools,  and 
clipped  hedges  in  lieu  of  meadows  and  ponds  and  bushes.  In  a  village 
the  thatched  roof  is  still  hill-like  and  the  street  is  of  the  same  nature 
as  the  baulk  of  earth  between  fields.  But  here  the  picture  is  of  deep, 
long  gorges  between  high,  stony  houses  filled  with  coloured  dust  and 
strange  uproar,  and  men  dwell  in  these  houses,  the  like  of  which  no 
nature-being  has  ever  conceived.  Costumes,  even  faces,  are  adjusted 
to  a  background  of  stone.  By  day  there  is  a  street  traffic  of  strange 
colours  and  tones,  and  by  night  a  new  light  that  outshines  the  moon. 
And  the  yokel  stands  helpless  on  the  pavement,  understanding  nothing 
and  understood  by  nobody,  tolerated  as  a  useful  type  in  farce  and  pro- 
vider of  this  world's  daily  bread. 

It  follows,  however — and  this  is  the  most  essential  point  of  any — that 
we  cannot  comprehend  political  and  economic  history  at  all  unless  we 
realize  that  the  city,  with  its  gradual  detachment  from  and  final  bank- 
rupting of  the  country,  is  the  determinative  form  to  which  the  course 
and  sense  of  higher  history  generally  conforms.  World  history  is  city 
history.  ,  .  . 

We  find  in  every  Culture  (and  very  soon)  the  type  of  the  capital 
city.  This,  as  its  name  pointedly  indicates,  is  that  city  whose  spirit, 
with  its  methods,  aims,  and  decisions  of  policy  and  economics,  dom- 
inates the  land.  The  land  with  its  people  is  for  this  controlling  spirit 
a  tool  and  an  object.  The  land  does  not  understand  what  is  going  on, 
and  is  not  even  asked.  In  all  countries  of  Late  Cultures,  the  great  par- 
ties, the  revolutions,  the  Csesarisms,  the  democracies,  the  parliaments, 
are  the  form  in  which  the  spirit  of  the  capital  tells  the  country  what 
it  is  expected  to  desire  and,  if  called  upon,  to  die  for.  The  Classical 
forum,  the  Western  press,  are,  essentially,  intellectual  engines  of  the 
ruling  City.  Any  country-dweller  who  really  understands  the  meaning 
of  politics  in  such  periods,  and  feels  himself  on  their  level,  moves  into 
the  City,  not  perhaps  in  the  body,  but  certainly  in  the  spirit.  The 
sentiment  and  public  opinion  of  the  peasant's  countryside — so  far  as 


252  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

it  can  be  said  to  exist — is  prescribed  and  guided  by  the  print  and  speech 
of  the  city.  .  .  .  Caesar  might  campaign  in  Gaul,  his  slayers  in  Mace- 
donia, Antony  in  Egypt,  but,  whatever  happened  in  these  fields,  it  was 
from  their  relation  to  Rome  that  events  acquired  meaning. 

All  effectual  history  begins  with  the  primary  classes,  nobility  and 
priesthood,  forming  themselves  and  elevating  themselves  above  the 
peasantry  as  such.  The  opposition  of  greater  and  lesser  nobility,  be- 
tween king  and  vassal,  between  worldly  and  spiritual  power,  is  the 
basic  form  of  all  primitive  politics,  Homeric,  Chinese,  or  Gothic,  until 
with  the  coming  of  the  City,  the  burgher,  the  Tiers  £tat,  history 
changes  its  style.  But  it  is  exclusively  in  these  classes  as  such,  in  their 
class  consciousness,  that  the  whole  meaning  of  history  inheres.  The 
peasant  is  historyless.  The  village  stands  outside  world  history,  and  all 
evolution  from  the  "Trojan"  to  the  Mithridatic  War,  from  the  Saxon 
emperors  to  the  World  War  of  1914,  passes  by  these  little  points  on 
the  landscape,  occasionally  destroying  them  and  wasting  their  blood, 
but  never  in  the  least  touching  their  inwardness. 

The  peasant  is  the  eternal  man,  independent  of  every  Culture  that 
ensconces  itself  in  the  cities.  He  precedes  it,  he  outlives  it,  a  dumb 
creature  propagating  himself  from  generation  to  generation,  limited  to 
soil-bound  callings  and  aptitudes,  a  mystical  soul,  a  dry,  shrewd  under- 
standing that  sticks  to  practical  matters,  the  origin  and  the  ever-flowing 
source  of  the  blood  that  makes  world  history  in  the  cities. 

Whatever  the  Culture  up  there  in  the  city  conceives  in  the  way  of 
state  forms,  economic  customs,  articles  of  faith,  implements,  knowl- 
edge, art,  he  receives  mistrustfully  and  hesitatingly;  though  in  the  end 
he  may  accept  these  things,  never  is  he  altered  in  kind  thereby.  Thus 
the  West-European  peasant  outwardly  took  in  all  the  dogmas  of  the 
Councils  from  the  great  Lateran  to  that  of  Trent,  just  as  he  took  in  the 
products  of  mechanical  engineering  and  those  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion— but  he  remains  what  he  was,  what  he  already  was  in  Charle- 
magne's day.  The  present-day  piety  of  the  peasant  is  older  than  Christi- 
anity; his  gods  are  more  ancient  than  those  of  any  higher  religion. 
Remove  from  him  the  pressure  of  the  great  cities  and  he  will  revert  to 
the  state  of  nature  without  feeling  that  he  is  losing  anything.  His  real 
ethic,  his  real  metaphysic,  which  no  scholar  of  the  city  has  yet  thought 
it  worth  while  to  discover,  lie  outside  all  religious  and  spiritual  his- 
tory, have  in  fact  no  history  at  all. 

The  city  is  intellect.  The  Megalopolis  is  "free"  intellect.  It  is  in  resist- 
ance to  the  "feudal"  powers  of  blood  and  tradition  that  the  burgher- 
dom  or  bourgeoisie,  the  intellectual  class,  begins  to  be  conscious  of  its 
own  separate  existence.  It  upsets  thrones  and  limits  old  rights  in  the 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  253 

name  of  reason  and  above  all  in  the  name  of  "the  People,"  which 
henceforward  means  exclusively  the  people  of  the  city.  Democracy  is 
the  political  form  in  which  the  townsman's  outlook  upon  the  world  is 
demanded  of  the  peasantry  also.  The  urban  intellect  reforms  the  great 
religion  of  the  springtime  and  sets  up  by  the  side  of  the  old  religion  of 
noble  and  priest,  the  new  religion  of  the  Tiers  £tat,  liberal  science. 
The  city  assumes  the  lead  and  control  of  economic  history  in  replacing 
the  primitive  values  of  the  land,  which  are  forever  inseparable  from 
the  life  and  thought  of  the  rustic,  by  the  absolute  idea  of  money  as 
distinct  from  goods.  The  immemorial  country  word  for  exchange  of 
goods  is  "barter";  even  when  one  of  the  things  exchanged  is  precious 
metal,  the  underlying  idea  of  the  process  is  not  yet  monetary — i.e., 
it  does  not  involve  the  abstraction  of  value  from  things  and  its  fixation 
in  metallic  or  fictitious  quantities  intended  to  measure  things  qua 
"commodities."  .  .  .  The  City  means  not  only  intellect,  but  also 
money.  .  .  . 

[In  the  city]  the  notion  of  money  attains  to  full  abstractness.  It  no 
longer  merely  serves  for  the  understanding  of  economic  intercourse, 
but  subjects  the  exchange  of  goods  to  its  own  evolution.  It  values 
things,  no  longer  as  between  each  other,  but  with  reference  to  itself. 
.  .  .  Money  has  now  become  a  power  ...  a  power  that  makes  those 
concerned  with  it  just  as  dependent  upon  itself  as  the  peasant  was 
dependent  upon  the  soil.  There  is  monetary  thought,  just  as  there  is 
mathematical  or  juristic. 

But  the  earth  is  actual  and  natural,  and  money  is  abstract  and  arti- 
ficial, a  mere  "category" — like  "virtue"  in  the  imagination  of  the  Age 
of  Enlightenment.  .  .  .  This  is  the  reason,  too,  for  the  want  of  solidity, 
which  eventually  leads  to  its  losing  its  power  and  its  meaning,  so  that 
at  the  last,  as  in  Diocletian's  time,  it  disappears  from  the  thought  of 
the  closing  Civilization,  and  the  primary  values  of  the  soil  return  anew 
to  take  its  place. 

Finally,  there  arise  the  monstrous  symbol  and  vessel  of  the  completely 
emancipated  intellect,  the  world  city,  the  center  in  which  the  course  of 
a  world  history  ends  by  winding  itself  up.  .  .  .  There  are  no  longer 
noblesse  and  bourgeoisie,  freemen  and  slaves,  Hellenes  and  Barbarians, 
believers  and  unbelievers,  but  only  cosmopolitans  and  provincials*  All 
other  contrasts  pale  before  this  one,  which  dominates  all  events,  all 
habits  of  life,  all  views  of  the  world. 

The  earliest  of  all  world  cities  were  Babylon  and  the  Thebes  of  the 
New  Empire.  ...  In  the  Classical  the  first  example  is  Alexandria, 
which  reduced  old  Greece  at  one  stroke  to  the  provincial  level,  and 
which  even  Rome,  even  the  resettled  Carthage,  even  Byzantium,  could 


254  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

not  suppress.  In  India  the  giant  cities  of  Ujjaina,  Kanauj,  and  above 
all,  Pataliputra  were  renowned  even  in  China  and  Java,  and  everyone 
knows  the  fairy-tale  reputation  of  Baghdad  and  Granada  in  the  West. 
In  the  Mexican  world,  it  seems,  Uxmal  (founded  in  950)  was  the  first 
world  city  of  the  Maya  realms,  which,  however,  with  the  rise  of  the 
Toltec  world  cities  Tezcuco  and  Tenochtitlan  sank  to  the  level  of  the 
provinces.  .  .  . 

The  rise  of  New  York  to  the  position  of  world  city  during  the  Civil 
War  of  18614865  may  perhaps  prove  to  have  been  the  most  pregnant 
event  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  stone  Colossus  "Cosmopolis"  stands  at  the  end  of  the  life's 
course  of  every  great  Culture.  The  Culture-man  whom  the  land  has 
spiritually  formed  is  seized  and  possessed  by  his  own  creation,  the 
City,  and  is  made  into  its  creature,  its  executive  organ,  and  finally  its 
victim.  This  stony  mass  is  the  absolute  city.  .  .  . 

These  final  cities  are  wholly  intellect.  Their  houses  are  no  longer  .  .  . 
derivatives  of  the  old  peasant's  house.  .  .  .  They  are,  generally  speak- 
ing, no  longer  houses  in  which  Vesta  and  Janus,  Lares  and  Penates, 
have  any  sort  of  footing,  but  mere  premises  which  have  been  fashioned, 
not  by  blood  but  by  requirements,  not  by  feeling  but  by  the  spirit  of 
commercial  enterprise.  .  .  .  The  mass  of  tenants  and  bed-occupiers  in 
the  sea  of  houses  leads  a  vagrant  existence  from  shelter  to  shelter  like 
the  hunters  and  pastors  of  the  "pre"  time,  then  the  intellectual  nomad 
is  completely  developed.  This  city  is  a  world,  is  the  world.  Only  as  a 
whole,  as  a  human  dwelling  place,  has  it  meaning,  the  houses  being 
merely  the  stones  of  which  it  is  assembled. 

Now  the  old  mature  cities  with  their  Gothic  nucleus  of  cathedral, 
town  halls,  and  high-gabled  streets,  with  their  old  walls,  towers,  and 
gates,  ringed  about  by  the  Baroque  growth  of  brighter  and  more 
elegant  patricians'  houses,  palaces,  and  hall  churches,  begin  to  overflow 
in  all  directions  in  formless  masses,  to  eat  into  the  decaying  country- 
side with  their  multiplied  barrack-tenements  and  utility  buildings, 
and  to  destroy  the  noble  aspect  of  the  old  time  by  clearances  and 
rebuildings.  Looking  down  from  one  of  the  old  towers  upon  the  sea 
of  houses,  we  perceive  in  this  petrification  of  a  historic  being  the  exact 
epoch  that  marks  the  end  of  organic  growth  and  the  beginning  of  an 
inorganic  and  therefore  unrestrained  process  of  massing  without  limit. 
And  now,  too,  appears  that  artificial,  mathematical,  utterly  land-alien 
product  of  a  pure  intellectual  satisfaction  in  the  appropriate,  the  city  of 
the  city-architect.  In  all  Civilizations  alike,  these  cities  aim  at  the  chess- 
board form,  which  is  the  symbol  of  soullessness.  Regular  rectangle- 
blocks  astounded  Herodotus  in  Babylon  and  Cortez  in  Tenochtitlan, 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  255 

In  the  Classical  world  the  series  of  "abstract"  cities  begins  with  Thurii, 
which  was  "planned"  by  Hippodamus  of  Miletus  in  441.  Priene,  whose 
chessboard  scheme  entirely  ignores  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  site, 
Rhodes,  and  Alexandria  follow,  and  become  in  turn  models  for  in- 
numerable provincial  cities  of  the  Imperial  Age.  The  Islamic  archi- 
tects laid  out  Baghdad  from  762,  and  the  giant  city  of  Samarra  a  cen- 
tury later,  according  to  plan.1  In  the  West-European  and  American 
world  the  layout  of  Washington  in  1791  is  the  first  big  example.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  world  cities  of  the  Han  period  in  China  and 
the  Maurya  dynasty  in  India  possessed  this  same  geometrical  pattern. 
Even  now  the  world  cities  of  the  Western  Civilization  are  far  from 
having  reached  the  peak  of  their  development.  I  see,  long  after  A.D. 
2000,  cities  laid  out  for  ten  to  twenty  million  inhabitants,  spread  over 
enormous  areas  of  countryside,  with  buildings  that  will  dwarf  the 
biggest  of  today's  and  notions  of  traffic  and  communication  that  we 
should  regard  as  fantastic  to  the  point  of  madness.  .  .  . 

But  no  wretchedness,  no  compulsion,  not  even  a  clear  vision  of  the 
madness  of  this  development,  avails  to  neutralize  the  attractive  force 
of  these  daemonic  creations.  The  wheel  of  Destiny  rolls  on  to  its  end; 
the  birth  of  the  City  entails  its  death.  Beginning  and  end,  a  peasant 
cottage  and  a  tenement  block  are  related  to  one  another  as  soul  and 
intellect,  as  blood  and  stone.  But  "Time"  is  no  abstract  phase,  but 
a  name  for  the  actuality  of  Irreversibility.  Here  there  is  only  forward, 
never  back.  Long,  long  ago  the  country  bore  the  country  town  and 
nourished  it  with  her  best  blood.  Now  the  giant  city  sucks  the  country 
dry,  insatiably  and  incessantly  demanding  and  devouring  fresh  streams 
of  men,  till  it  wearies  and  dies  in  the  midst  of  an  almost  uninhabited 
waste  of  country.  Once  the  full  sinful  beauty  of  this  last  marvel  of  all 
history  has  captured  a  victim,  it  never  lets  him  go.  Primitive  folk  can 
loose  themselves  from  the  soil  and  wander,  but  the  intellectual  nomad 
never.  ...  He  would  sooner  die  upon  the  pavement  than  go  "back" 
to  the  land.  Even  disgust  at  this  pretentiousness,  weariness  of  the 
thousand-hued  glitter,  the  taedium  vitae  that  in  the  end  overcomes 
many,  does  not  set  them  free.  They  take  the  City  with  them  into  the 
mountains  or  on  the  sea.  They  have  lost  the  country  within  themselves 
and  will  never  regain  it  outside. 

1  Samarra  exhibits,  like  the  Imperial  Fora  of  Rome  and  the  ruins  of  Luxor,  truly 
American  proportions.  The  city  stretches  for  33  km.  (20  miles)  along  the  Tigris,  The 
Balkuwara  Palace,  which  the  Caliph  Mutawakil  built  for  one  of  his  sons,  forms  a  square 
of  1250  m,  (say,  three-quarters  of  a  mile)  on  each  side.  One  of  the  giant  mosques  meas- 
ures in  plan  260x180  m.  (858x594  ft.).  (Schwartz,  "Die  Abbaridenresidcnz  Samarra, 
1910;  Herzfeld,  Ausgrabungcn  von  Samarra,  1912,)  Pataliputra,  in  the  days  of  Chan- 
dragupta  and  Asoka,  measured  intret  muros  10  miles  x  2  miles  (equal  to  Manhattan 
Island  or  London  along  the  Thames  from  Greenwich  to  Richmond — TR,)« 


256  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

What  makes  the  man  of  the  world  cities  incapable  of  living  on  any 
but  this  artificial  footing, 'is  that  the  cosmic  beat  in  his  being  is  ever 
decreasing,  while  the  tensions  of  his  waking  consciousness  become 
more  and  more  dangerous.  .  .  .  Intelligence  is  the  replacement  of 
unconscious  living  by  exercise  in  thought,  masterly,  but  bloodless  and 
jejune.  The  intelligent  visage  is  similar  in  all  races— what  is  recessive 
in  them  is,  precisely,  race.  The  weaker  the  feeling  for  the  necessity  and 
self-evidence  of  Being,  the  more  the  habit  of  "elucidation"  grows,  the 
more  the  fear  in  the  waking-consciousness  comes  to  be  stilled  by  causal 
methods.  Hence  the  assimilation  of  knowledge  with  demonstrability, 
and  the  substitution  of  scientific  theory,  the  causal  myth,  for  the  relig- 
ious. Hence,  too,  money-in-the-abstract  as  the  pure  causality  of  eco- 
nomic life,  in  contrast  to  rustic  barter,  which  is  pulsation  and  not  a 
system  of  tensions. 

Tension,  when  it  has  become  intellectual,  knows  no  form  of  recrea- 
tion but  that  which  is  specific  to  the  world  city— namely,  detente, 
relaxation,  distraction.  Genuine  play,  joie  de  vivre,  pleasure,  inebriation, 
are  products  of  the  cosmic  beat  and  as  such  no  longer  comprehensible 
in  their  essence.  But  the  relief  of  hard,  intensive  brain  work  by  its 
opposite — conscious  and  practised  fooling — of  intellectual  tension  by 
the  bodily  tension  of  sport,  of  bodily  tension  by  the  sensual  straining 
after  "pleasure"  and  the  spiritual  straining  after  the  "excitements"  of 
betting  and  competitions,  of  the  pure  logic  of  the  day's  work  by  a  con- 
sciously enjoyed  mysticism— all  this  is  common  to  the  world  cities  of 
all  the  Civilizations.  Cinema,  Expressionism,  Theosophy,  boxing  con- 
tests, nigger  dances,  poker,  and  racing — one  can  find  it  all  in  Rome. 
Indeed,  the  connoisseur  might  extend  his  researches  to  the  Indian, 
Chinese,  and  Arabian  world  cities  as  well.  .  .  . 

And  then,  when  Being  is  sufficiently  uprooted  and  Waking-Being 
sufficiently  strained,  there  suddenly  emerges  into  the  bright  light  of 
history  a  phenomenon  that  has  long  been  preparing  itself  underground 
and  now  steps  forward  to  make  an  end  of  the  drama— the  sterility  of 
civilized  man.  This  is  not  something  that  can  be  grasped  as  a  plain 
matter  of  Causality  (as  modern  science  naturally  enough  has  tried  to 
grasp  it);  it  is  to  be  understood  as  an  essentially  metaphysical  turn 
towards  death.  The  last  man  of  the  world  city  no  longer  wants  to 
live—he  may  cling  to  life  as  an  individual,  but  as  a  type,  as  an  aggre- 
gate, no,  for  it  is  a  characteristic  of  this  collective  existence  that  it  elim- 
inates the  terror  of  death.  That  which  strikes  the  true  peasant  with 
a  deep  and  inexplicable  fear,  the  notion  that  the  family  and  the  name 
may  be  extinguished,  has  now  lost  its  meaning.  The  continuance  of  the 
blood  relation  in  the  visible  world  is  no  longer  a  duty  of  the  blood,  and 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  257 

the  destiny  of  being  the  last  of  the  line  is  no  longer  felt  as  a  doom. 
Children  do  not  happen,  not  because  children  have  become  impossible, 
but  principally  because  intelligence  at  the  peak  of  intensity  can  no 
longer  find  any  reason  for  their  existence.  Let  the  reader  try  to  merge 
himself  in  the  soul  of  the  peasant.  He  has  sat  on  his  glebe  from 
primeval  times,  or  has  fastened  his  clutch  in  it,  to  adhere  to  it  with  his 
blood.  He  is  rooted  in  it  as  the  descendant  of  his  forbears  and  as  the 
forbear  of  future  descendants.  His  house,  his  property,  means,  here, 
not  the  temporary  connexion  of  person  and  thing  for  a  brief  span  of 
years,  but  an  enduring  and  inward  union  of  eternal  land  and  eternal 
blood.  .  .  .  For  the  "last  men"  all  this  is  past  and  gone.  Intelligence  and 
sterility  are  allied  in  old  families,  old  peoples,  and  old  Cultures,  not 
merely  because  in  each  microcosm  the  overstrained  and  fettered  ani- 
mal element  is  eating  up  the  plant  element,  but  also  because  the  wak- 
ing consciousness  assumes  that  being  is  normally  regulated  by  causality. 
That  which  the  man  of  intelligence,  most  significantly  and  character- 
istically, labels  as  "natural  impulse"  or  "life  force"  he  not  only  knows, 
but  also  values,  causally,  giving  it  the  place  amongst  his  other  needs 
that  his  judgment  assigns  to  it.  When  the  ordinary  thought  of  a  highly 
cultivated  people  begins  to  regard  "having  children"  as  a  question  of 
pro's  and  con's,  the  great  turning  point  has  come.  For  Nature  knows 
nothing  of  pro  and  con.  Everywhere,  wherever  life  is  actual,  reigns  an 
inward  organic  logic,  an  "it,"  a  drive,  that  is  utterly  independent  of 
waking-being,  with  its  causal  linkages,  and  indeed  not  even  observed 
by  it.  The  abundant  proliferation  of  primitive  peoples  is  a  natural 
phenomenon,  which  is  not  even  thought  about,  still  less  judged  as  to 
its  utility  or  the  reverse.  When  reasons  have  to  be  put  forward  at  all 
in  a  question  of  life,  life  itself  has  become  questionable.  At  that  point 
begins  prudent  limitation  of  the  number  of  births.  In  the  Classical 
world  the  practice  was  deplored  by  Polybius  as  the  ruin  of  Greece,  and 
yet  even  at  his  date  it  had  long  been  established  in  the  great  cities; 
in  subsequent  Roman  times  it  became  appallingly  general.  At  first 
explained  by  the  economic  misery  of  the  times,  very  soon  it  ceased  to 
explain  itself  at  all.  And  at  that  point,  too,  in  Buddhist  India  as  in 
Babylon,  in  Rome  as  in  our  own  cities,  a  man's  choice  of  the  woman 
who  is  to  be,  not  mother  of  his  children  as  amongst  peasants  and 
primitives,  but  his  own  "companion  for  life,"  becomes  a  problem  of 
mentalities.  The  Ibsen  marriage  appears,  the  "higher  spiritual  affinity" 
in  which  both  parties  are  "free" — free,  that  is,  as  intelligences,  free  from 
the  plantlike  urge  of  the  blood  to  continue  itself,  and  it  becomes  pos- 
sible for  a  Shaw  to  say  "that  unless  Woman  repudiates  her  womanli- 
ness, her  duty  to  her  husband,  to  her  children,  to  society,  to  the  law, 


258  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  to  everyone  but  herself,  she  cannot  emancipate  herself."  The  pri- 
mary woman,  the  peasant  woman,  is  mother.  The  whole  vocation 
towards  which  she  has  yearned  from  childhood  is  included  in  that  one 
word.  But  now  emerges  the  Ibsen  woman,  the  comrade,  the  heroine  of 
a  whole  megalopolitan  literature  from  Northern  drama  to  Parisian 
novel  Instead  of  children,  she  has  soul  conflicts;  marriage  is  a  craft- 
art  for  the  achievement  of  "mutual  understanding."  It  is  all  the  same 
whether  the  case  against  children  is  the  American  lady's  who  would 
not  miss  a  season  for  anything,  or  the  Parisienne's  who  fears  that  her 
lover  would  leave  her,  or  an  Ibsen  heroine's  who  "belongs  to  herself—- 
they all  belong  to  themselves  and  they  are  all  unfruitful.  The  same  fact, 
in  conjunction  with  the  same  arguments,  is  to  be  found  in  the  Alex- 
andrian, in  the  Roman,  and,  as  a  matter  of  course,  in  every  other  civil- 
ized society — and  conspicuously  in  that  in  which  Buddha  grew  up. 
And  in  Hellenism  and  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  in  the  times  of 
Lao-Tzu  and  the  Charvaka  doctrine,  there  is  an  ethic  for  childless 
intelligences,  and  a  literature  about  the  inner  conflicts  of  Nora  and 
Nana.  The  "quiverful,"  which  was  still  an  honorable  enough  spectacle 
in  the  days  of  Werther,  becomes  something  rather  provincial.  The 
father  of  many  children  is  for  the  great  city  a  subject  for  caricature; 
Ibsen  did  not  fail  to  note  it,  and  presented  it  in  his  Loves  Comedy. 

At  this  level  all  Civilizations  enter  upon  a  stage,  which  lasts  for  cen- 
turies, of  appalling  depopulation.  The  whole  pyramid  of  cultural  man 
vanishes.  It  crumbles  from  the  summit,  first  the  world  cities,  then  the 
provincial  forms,  and  finally  the  land  itself,  whose  best  blood  has  incon- 
tinently poured  into  the  towns,  merely  to  bolster  them  up  awhile.  At 
the  last,  only  the  primitive  blood  remains,  alive,  but  robbed  of  its 
strongest  and  most  promising  elements.  This  residue  is  the  Fellah  type. 

If  anything  has  demonstrated  the  fact  that  Causality  has  nothing  to 
do  with  history,  it  is  the  familiar  "decline"  of  the  Classical,  which 
accomplished  itself  long  before  the  irruption  of  Germanic  migrants. 
The  Imperium  enjoyed  the  completest  peace;  it  was  rich  and  highly 
developed;  it  was  well  organized;  and  it  possessed  in  its  emperors  from 
Nerva  to  Marcus  Aurelius  a  series  of  rulers  such  as  the  Caesarism  of 
no  other  Civilization  can  show.  And  yet  the  population  dwindled, 
quickly  and  wholesale.  .  .  . 

The  historical  student  has  only  to  turn  his  attention  seriously  to  other 
Civilizations  to  find  the  same  phenomenon  everywhere.  Depopulation 
can  be  distinctly  traced  in  the  background  of  the  Egyptian  New  Em- 
pire, especially  from  the  XIX  dynasty  onwards.  .  .  .  The  same  tend- 
ency can  be  felt  in  the  history  of  political  Buddhism  after  the  Csesar 
Asoka.  If  the  Maya  population  literally  vanished  within  a  very  short 


RURAL-URBAN  DIFFERENCES  259 

time  after  the  Spanish  conquest,  and  their  great  empty  cities  were  reab- 
sorbed  by  the  jungle,  this  does  not  prove  merely  the  brutality  of  the 
conqueror  .  .  .  but  an  extinction  from  within  that  no  doubt  had  long 
been  in  progress.  And  if  we  turn  to  our  own  civilization,  we  find  that 
the  old  families  of  the  French  noblesse  were  not,  in  the  great  majority 
of  cases,  eradicated  in  the  Revolution,  but  have  died  out  since  1815,  and 
their  sterility  has  spread  to  the  bourgeoisie  and,  since  1870,  to  the 
peasantry  which  that  very  Revolution  almost  recreated.  In  England, 
and  still  more  in  the  United  States — particularly  in  the  east,  the  very 
states  where  the  stock  is  best  and  oldest — the  process  of  "race  suicide" 
denounced  by  Roosevelt  set  in  long  ago  on  the  largest  scale. 

Consequently,  we  find  everywhere  in  these  Civilizations  that  the 
provincial  cities  at  an  early  stage,  and  the  giant  cities  in  turn  at  the  end 
of  the  evolution,  stand  empty,  harbouring  in  their  stone  masses  a  small 
population  of  fellaheen  who  shelter  in  them  as  the  men  of  the  Stone 
Age  sheltered  in  caves  and  pile-dwellings.  .  .  . 

This,  then,  is  the  conclusion  of  the  city's  history;  growing  from 
primitive  barter  centre  to  Culture  city  and  at  last  to  world  city,  it  sacri- 
fices first  the  blood  and  soul  of  its  creators  to  the  needs  of  its  majestic 
evolution,  and  then  the  last  flower  of  that  growth  to  the  spirit  of  Civil- 
ization— and  so,  doomed,  moves  on  to  final  self-destruction. 


PART  TWO 

RURAL  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  IN  ITS 
ECOLOGICAL  AND  MORPHOLOGICAL 

ASPECTS 


CHAPTER  V 

ECOLOGY  OF  THE  RURAL  HABITAT 

Fundamental  aspects  of  rural  social  organization. — After  our 
previous  outline  of  the  fundamental  differences  between  the  rural 
and  urban  worlds,  we  may  proceed  to  a  more  intensive  study  of 
the  rural  world  and  its  population.  An  investigation  must  analyze 
this  complex  object  from  several  standpoints  in  order  to  grasp  it 
in  all  its  essential  aspects.  A  more  or  less  adequate  study  of  the 
social  organization  and  functioning  of  any  social  aggregate  must 
include  at  least  the  following  aspects:  (1)  the  ecological,  which 
shows  the  geographical  milieu  and  the  territorial  distribution  of 
the  habitats  of  the  members  of  the  group  studied;  (2)  the 
morphological,  which  shows  the  nature  and  forms  of  the  social 
ties  that  bind  the  members  of  the  group  into  a  real  collective  unity 
and  depicts  the  forms  of  social  differentiation,  stratification,  and 
mobility  of  the  rural  population;  (3)  the  institutional,  which  ex- 
hibits the  agencies  and  the  institutions  through  which  the  group 
satisfies  all  its  necessities  and  functions  as  a  living  unity  and 
which  furnishes  us  insight  into  the  functional  aspects  of  the 
group  studied,  for  we  obtain  a  knowledge  of  the  functioning  of 
the  group  as  a  whole  when  we  know  the  fundamental  functions 
of  each  of  the  principal  institutions  of  the  group  and  their  inter- 
relations with  one  another;  and  (4)  the  cultural,  which  depicts 
the  entire  Gestalt  or  psycho-social  physiognomy  of  the  group 
studied.  The  cultural  and  the  institutional  aspects  are  closely  in- 
terrelated and  will  be  studied  together  in  one  work.  These  four 
aspects,  studied  in  their  variations  in  space  and  in  time,  exhaust 
the  essential  aspects  of  the  study  of  the  social  organization  and 
functioning  of  any  group,  including  that  of  the  rural  social 
world.  In  accordance  with  this  outline  we  shall  commence  with 
the  ecological  aspect  of  rural  organization.  Then  we  shall  study 
it  in  its  morphological,  institutional,  and  cultural  aspects.  When 
this  is  done,  we  shall  go  beyond  the  rural  social  world  and  ex- 
amine more  closely  the  relationships  between  the  rural  and 

[263] 


264  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

urban  worlds  and  those  between  the  agricultural  and  nonagri- 
cultural  classes.  Let  us  turn  now  to  a  study  of  the  ecological  aspect 
of  rural  social  organization. 

Ecology  of  rural  habitat.— K  general  survey  and  an  excellent 
analysis  of  the  problem  is  given  in  the  paper  of  one  of  the  most 
prominent  social  geographers  of  our  time,  Dr.  A.  Demangeon. 
Though  we  present  his  study  in  a  slightly  abbreviated  form,  nev- 
ertheless its  breadth,  depth,  and  clearness  are  so  conspicuous  and 
the  literature  which  it  covers  is  so  complete  that  any  long  intro- 
duction on  our  part  is  unnecessary.  It  may  possibly  be  of  value 
here  to  stress  the  leading  principles  of  Dr.  Demangeon's  paper. 
It  emphasizes  several  points;  first,  that  both  fundamental  types  of 
the  rural  habitat— the  grouped  and  the  dispersed  forms— have 
been  and  are  still  widely  diffused  over  the  inhabited  portions  of 
this  planet;  second,  that  the  factors  that  have  shaped  either  of 
these  types  have  been  numerous  and  their  origin  and  existence 
are  the  result  of  multiple  causation  rather  than  of  the  exclusive 
influence  of  some  one  factor;  third,  that  neither  the  village  nor 
the  isolated  farm  type  can  be  regarded  as  the  original  while  the 
other  one  is  subsequent  in  time.  In  this  respect  Demangeon,  like 
many  other  competent  investigators  in  the  field,  takes  a  different 
position  from  the  widely  accepted  opinion  of  the  textbook  writers 
in  rural  sociology  who  maintain  that  the  evolution  of  the  rural 
habitat  has  consisted  in  a  transition  from  the  village  to  the  dis- 
persed or  isolated  farm  type.  The  factual  situation  has  been  more 
complex  than  a  mere  transition  from  one  to  the  other,  for  in  some 
places  and  among  some  people  the  original  type  of  the  rural  habi- 
tat was  the  dispersed  type  (the  isolated  farm  of  a  family  circle), 
which  later  on  was  replaced  by  the  grouped  or  village  type  of 
habitat,  while  among  other  people  and  in  other  regions  the  evo- 
lution has  been  reversed.  Our  present  knowledge  makes  this 
proposition  reasonably  certain.  It  illustrates,  once  more,  the  fallacy 
of  the  uniform — linear — theory  of  social  evolution,  which  assumes 
that  there  is  a  general  sequence  of  certain  stages  through  which 
all  peoples  pass  in  uniform  manner  and  in  a  definite  order.  The 
real  situation  in  this,  as  well  as  in  many  other  fields  of  social 
change,  has  been  more  complex,  less  uniform,  and  less  linear. 
Besides  these  principles,  Demangeon's  paper  gives  a  concise  but 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  265 

adequate  analysis  of  many  other  problems  connected  with  the 
main  problem,  such  as  the  socio-economic  types  of  the  organiza- 
tion of  cultivation  among  the  grouped  and  the  dispersed  agricul- 
tural population,  the  factors  that  have  been  instrumental  in  these 
and  similar  problems,  etc.  Taken  as  a  whole,  the  paper  not  only 
gives  a  satisfactory  analysis  of  rural  ecology,  but  serves  as  a  good 
introduction  to  other  aspects  of  rural  social  organization.  The 
only  aspect  that  is  touched  upon  too  slightly  in  the  paper  is  the 
analysis  of  the  various  types  of  architecture,  construction,  and 
style  of  rural  houses  and  the  factors  responsible  for  a  predomi- 
nance of  a  given  type  in  a  given  locality.  Important  as  is  this  prob- 
lem, it  cannot  be  given  a  place  in  this  chapter.  Those  who  are  in- 
terested in  it,  and  want  to  study  it,  can  find  an  excellent  bibliog- 
raphy in  the  works  mentioned  in  Demangeon's  paper  and  in  the 
works  enumerated  in  the  bibliography  below. 

ADDITIONAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BRUNNES,  J.,  Geogrciphie  humaine  de  la  France  (Paris,  1920). 

CLEMENT,  T.,  CHOBERT,  J.,  HUART,  C.,  Les  anclennes  constructions  rurales 

en  Belgique  (Bruxelles,  1914-1919),  4  vols. 
DEMANGEON,  A.,  "L'habitation  rurale  en  France,"  Ann.  de  geog.  (1920), 

Vol.  XXIX. 
FLACH,  J.,  L'origine  historique  de  Inhabitation  et  des  Hcux  habites  en  France 

(Paris,  1899). 
FOVILLE,  A.  DE,  Enquete  sur  les  conditions  de  ^habitation  en  'Prance.  Les 

maisons-types  (Paris,  1894-1899),  2  vols. 
GEER,  STEN  DE,  "A  Map  of  the  Distribution  of  Population  in  Sweden," 

Geogr.  Review  (1922),  VoL  XII. 

LEFEVRE,  M.  A.,  Lf  habitat  rural  en  Belgique  (Liege,  1926). 
LEYDEN,  FR.,  Zur  Siedlungsfande  des  flamischen  Landes  (Berlin,  1923). 
MEITZEN,  A.,  Siedelung  und  Agrarwesen  der  Westgermanen  und  Ostgerma- 

nen,  der  Kelten,  Romer,  Finnen,  und  Slat/en  (Berlin,  1895),  4  vols. 
MIELKE,  R.,  Das  deutsche  Dorf  (Leipzig,  1917). 

,  Das  Dorf  (Leipzig,  1910). 

PESSLER,  W.,  Das  altsdchsische  "Baulrnhause  in  seiner  geographischen  Ver- 

breitung  (Braunschweig,  1906). 
RONSE,  A.,  and  RAISON,  TH.,  Fermes  types  et  constructions  rurales  en  West- 

Flandre  (Bruges,  1918),  2  vols. 
ROXBY,  P.  M.,  "The  Distribution  of  Population  in  China,"  Geogr,  Review 

(January,  1925). 


266  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

SCHWEISTHAL,  M.,  "Histoire  de  la  maison  rurale  en  Belgique  et  dans  les 
contrees  voisines,"  Ann.  Soc.  Arch.  (Bruxelles),  Vols.  XIX,  XX. 

SWAB,  H.,  Das  Schweizerhaus,  sein  Ursprung  und  seine  Constructive  Ent- 
wic\lung  (Aarau,  1918). 

VAVROU^EK,  B.,  and  WIRTH,  F.,  Dedina  (Prague,  1925). 

An  excellent  bibliography  is  given  in  most  of  these  works,  and  especially 
in  those  o£  Lefevre,  Demangeon,  and  others. 

40.  DEMANGEON:  GEOGRAPHY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT* 

To  travel  across  France  from  west  to  east  is  sufficient  to  obtain  the 
idea  of  a  contrast,  which  has  long  been  observed  by  travelers,  economists, 
and  geographers,  between  the  scattered  habitat  of  Brittany  and  the 
clustered  habitat  in  Lorraine.  In  the  regions  of  dispersed  habitat  one  no- 
tices that  the  rural  houses  are  here  separated  from  each  other  behind 
screens  of  trees  and  lost  at  the  end  of  a  winding  path,  and  there  loosely 
gathered  in  small,  more  or  less  open  groups,  which  are  called  hamlets. 
In  the  regions  having  a  grouped  habitat  the  houses  are  assembled,  on 
the  contrary,  in  close  masses  in  villages  which  form  "colonies  of  social 
plants'* 1  and  are  separated  by  vast  expanses  of  open  fields.  Even  if  one 
has  not  himself  viewed  these  landscapes,  large-scale  topographical  maps 
permit  him  to  note  the  existence  of  the  same  contrast  in  countries 
widely  separated  in  space  and  differing  greatly  in  civilization,  from 
western  Europe  to  the  Far  East. 

This  contrast  is  so  general  that  it  naturally  leads  the  mind  to  enquire 
concerning  its  causes.  This  search  does  not  present  itself  as  a  local  and 
limited  problem;  it  opens  a  vast  field  where  the  geographical  explana- 
tion must  traverse  a  complex  of  facts,  some  of  which  go  back  to  the 
distant  past  of  humanity  and  others  are  still  being  born  under  our  eyes. 
The  problem  appeals  to  a  variety  of  studies:  natural,  social,  demo- 
graphic, and  agricultural  conditions.  It  embraces  a  knowledge  of  hu- 
man settlements  throughout  all  history  and  constitutes  one  of  the  most 
original  aspects  of  the  science  that  deals  with  the  modes  of  life,  for  it 
is  concerned  with  knowing  how  the  ties  are  formed  that  bind  the  life 
of  the  peasant  to  the  cultivated  earth.  It  is  not  confined  to  the  recon- 
struction of  a  destroyed  past,  but  it  plunges  directly  into  the  living 
courses  of  actual  societies.  Certain  originalities  of  habitat  reveal  to  us 
the  uniqueness  of  certain  social  temperaments  and  of  certain  material 
civilizations.  What  a  profound  difference  separates  the  ancient  village 
of  India,  stable,  self-dependent,  rigidly  centralized,  faithful  to  its  tradi- 

*  From  A.  Demangeon,  "La  geographic  de  1'habitat  rural,"  Annales  de  geographic, 
1927,  XXXVI,  1-23,  97-114.  Translated  and  printed  with  permission  of  the  author. 
*P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  Principes  de  geographic  humaine,  1922,  p.  182. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  267 

tions  of  work  and  life  in  common,  from  the  young  American  township 
in  the  Great  Lakes  region,  composed  of  a  scattering  of  isolated  farms 
that  have  not  yet  found  their  social  center! 

It  may  seem  bold  to  attempt  to  establish  a  synthesis  over  so  vast  a 
terrain,  which  is  yet  so  little  known  and  already  encumbered  with  so 
many  chaotic  elements.  In  reality  this  attempt  is  concerned  only  with 
establishing  a  preparatory  classification  and  with  offering  material  for 
discussion. 

I.  THE  FACTS.   COUNTRIES   OF   THE  GROUPED   AND   COUNTRIES  OF   THE 

DISPERSED   TYPE 
A.  COUNTRIES  OF  GROUPED  HABITAT 

If  one  is  able  to  trace  the  outlines  of  the  geographical  distribution  of 
the  grouped  habitat,  one  has  a  chance  of  finding  a  basis  for  explanation 
and  classification.  The  regions  having  villages  often  coincide  with  the 
plains  of  the  east,  central,  and  western  parts  of  Europe,  which  in- 
clude the  best  and  the  most  ancient  of  the  agricultural  regions.  These 
village  regions  are  also  found  frequently  in  forested  and  mountainous 
districts. 

Western  Europe. — In  France  the  area  of  villages  extends  over  nearly 
all  of  the  departments  of  the  North  and  East;  the  maps  show  us  great 
clusters  of  houses  in  the  midst  of  nearly  blank  spaces;  while  in  the 
West  in  the  department  of  Manche  we  find  a  swarm  of  18,930  dis- 
persed inhabited  places,  there  are  noted  in  Champagne,  in  the  depart- 
ment of  Marne,  only  1,580  grouped  places,  though  its  population  is 
only  14  per  cent  less  than  that  of  Manche.  In  Belgium  the  collective 
mode  predominates  in  all  of  the  southern  regions.2  In  the  Netherlands 
it  is  strongly  marked  on  the  slimy  soil  of  Limburg,  on  the  thin  soil  of 
Drente,  as  well  as  in  certain  coastal  reclaimed  regions.  Finally,  in  the 
British  Isles  it  rarely  appears,  and  then  only  locally,  e.g.,  in  the  York- 
shire plains  and  about  the  chalk  cliffs  of  Downs.  These  lines  of  rural 
clusters  of  houses  stand  out  strikingly  in  the  midst  of  the  general  dis- 
persion in  Britain. 

Central  Europe. — Despite  the  diversity  of  forms  obligingly  described 
by  German  scientists,  the  concentrated  village  represents  the  funda- 
mental type  of  habitation  throughout  the  plains  from  the  north  to  the 
east  of  the  Weser,  as  well  as  in  the  neighboring  archipelago  of  Den- 
mark and  southern  Sweden,  and  in  Bohemia  with  its  belt  of  clusters.3 
One  also  encounters  it,  mixed  with  various  types  of  dispersion,  in  all 

2M.  A.  Lefevre,  L' habitat  rural  en  Belgique*  ttude  de  geographic  humainc,  1925. 
pp.  14-27. 

3  A.  Meitzen,  Siedelung  und  Agrarwesen  der  Westgcrmanen  und  Ostgermanen,  etc, 
1895,  Vol.  I;  M.  Mayr,  Die  Siedelungen  des  bayrischen  Anteils  am  EShmerwald  (Forsch. 
zu  der  Landes  und  VolfafotiuZf,  1912,  Vol.  XIX). 


268  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  south  Germany.  .  ,  .4  In  Switzerland,  the  cantons  of  ScharThausen 
and  most  of  Jura  are  composed  of  villages  which  are  scarcely  separated 
from  each  other.5  But  the  greatest  degree  of  concentration  of  rural 
dwellings  is  found  in  the  plain  of  Hungary.  Here  large  villages,  from 
30  to  50  kilometers  apart,  appear  as  islands  in  the  ocean  of  fields  and 
steppes;  they  sometimes  contain  as  many  as  10,000  or  20,000  inhabit- 
ants, and,  with  their  large  and  dusty  streets  constantly  overrun  with 
stock,  they  resemble  great  cities  whose  houses  are  farms.6 

Southern  Europe. — As  one  goes  southward  from  the  center  of 
France  the  agglomerated  type  becomes  more  conspicuous  as  one  ap- 
proaches the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea;  it  is  scarcely  general  in 
the  plain  of  Valencia,7  but  it  becomes  so  in  the  plains  of  Catalonia 
(and  thereabouts)  s  ;  in  Biterrois  most  of  the  villages  are  about  700 
population,  and  24  communes  exceed  1,000  inhabitants.  In  Spanish 
Galicia,  of  2,124,000  persons,  1,806,440  live  in  villages,  and  the  province 
of  Orense  has  only  4  persons  for  100  of  its  population  living  outside 
villages.9  In  many  parts  of  Provence  the  frequent  parodoxical  posi- 
tions of  the  villages  perched  in  inaccessible  places  in  the  mountains 
give  a  picturesque  illustration  of  the  concentration  of  the  population. 
If  one  digresses  along  the  Mediterranean  in  order  to  enter  the  Po  basin, 
one  notes  that  the  two  types  of  habitation,  grouped  and  dispersed,  are 
intermingled:  the  dispersed  forms  are  more  numerous  in  the  fertile 
irrigated  plains,  the  villages  frequenting  by  preference  the  high  plain 
of  Bergamo,  the  verge  of  the  Alps,  the  Lombardy  plain,  and  the  high 
Verona  plain.10  One  gets  the  impression  that  the  village  form  in  the 
Po  basin,  while  formerly  much  more  widespread,  has  yielded  to  the 
dispersed  type.  But  the  most  curious  instances  of  the  concentrated 
habitat  are  found  in  southern  Italy  and  Sicily;  the  peasants  crowd  to- 
gether in  true  cities  which  frequently  attain  some  tens  of  thousands  of 
inhabitants:  great  accumulations  teeming  with  life  in  the  midst  of 
empty  and  deserted  fields.11  In  order  to  reach  their  fields  the  agricul- 

4  R.  Gradmann,  Das  I'dndhche  Siedelungswesen  des  Konigreichs  Wiirtembergs  (Forsch. 
zu  der  Landes  und  Volfekunde,  1913,  Vol.  XXI).  By  the  same  author,  Petermanns 
Mitt.,  LVI,  1910,  I,  183-186,  246-250;  A.  Meitzen,  op.  tit.,  I,  429-431. 

KW.  Wirth,  Ztir  Anthropo geographic  der  Stadt  und  Landschaft  Schaffhausen,  1918. 

6L.  de  Lagger,  "La  plaine  hongroise,"  Ann.  de  geog.,  1901,  X,  438-444. 

TD.  Fancher,  "La  plaine  de  Valence,"  Ann.  de  geog.,  1924,  XXIII-XXIV,  127451. 

8  Max  Sorre,  La  repartition  des  populations  dans  le  Bas-Languedoc,  Bull.  Soc.  langue- 
docienne  de  geog.,  1906. 

°J.  Dantin  Cereceda,  Distribution  geographica  de  la  P  ablation  en  Galicia,  1925,  40  ff. 
and  map. 

10  A.  Lorenzi,  "Studi  sui  tipi  antropogeografici  della  Pianura  Padano,"  Riv.  G.  Italiana, 
1914,  Vol.  XXI.  See  also  Benevent,  Recueil  Travaux  Institut  G.  Alpine,  1916,  pp.  189- 
237;  O.  Marinelli,  Atlante  dei  tipi  geogra-fid,  'desunti  dai  rilievi  al  25,000  e  d  50,000 
dell  Institute  Geografico  Militare,  1922.  (Consult  especially  the  charts  63,  64,  70,  71.) 

11  Th.  Fischer,  "Ansiedlung  und  Anbau  in  Apulien,"  Uittelmeerbilder,   1906,  pp. 
204-215. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  269 

tural  workers  must  often  go  from  twenty  to  thirty  kilometers;  indeed, 
they  frequently  spend  the  week  far  from  their  homes  and  return  only 
for  Sunday.  This  is  an  example  of  a  paradoxical  type  of  habitation 
which  separates  the  cultivator  from  the  land  which  he  works. 

In  the  Balkan  peninsula  vast  regions  in  the  east,  central,  and  southern 
parts  must  be  included  in  the  grouped  type  of  habitation.  The  houses 
are  pressed  together  in  villages  in  eastern  and  southern  Serbia  as  in 
southern  Albania;  they  are  built  with  walls  touching,  and  are  often 
more  serried  than  in  the  cities  as  they  follow  along  the  narrow  and 
sinuous  streets.12  In  the  Peloponnesus  the  houses  are  rarely  isolated, 
except  a  few  stores  along  the  roads  and  an  occasional  monastery  in 
some  secluded  spot.13 

Eastern  Europe. — In  Russia  the  agglomeration  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion increases  as  we  pass  from  the  northwest  to  the  southeast  districts, 
as  we  approach  the  region  of  the  Black  Earth.  Doubtless  all  Russian  vil- 
lages are  not  identical  in  appearance  or  size.  There  are  differences  "be- 
tween the  Little-Russian  village,  with  its  whitewashed  houses  and  the 
small  gardens  between  the  houses,  and  the  Great-Russian  village 
stretched  out  in  a  straight  line,  with  wooden  houses  placed  close  to- 
gether and  usually  having  no  trees."  But  the  collective  mode  of  living, 
small  or  great,  is  the  rule  in  all  of  Russia  south  of  a  line  joining  Minsk 
and  Perm;  one  observes  this  fact  not  only  in  the  prairies  of  black  dirt 
and  in  the  steppes  but  also  in  the  belt  of  forested  departments  of  Mos- 
cow and  Novgorod.14 

The  Orient. — Practically  all  of  the  great  agricultural  communities  in 
the  Orient  are  characterized  by  village  life.  Except  in  a  few  regions, 
India  is  an  aggregate  of  villages;  the  village  is  here  the  social  cell.  The 
group  of  houses  gathered  together  on  an  elevated  spot  is  often  sur- 
rounded by  earthen  walls;  one  enters  by  a  tortuous  path.  Outside  is  an 
empty  spot  where  the  cattle  are  herded  together  at  night;  within  the 
circle  are  grouped  the  agencies  of  communal  life,  the  cistern,  pool, 
well,  or  reservoir  for  water,  and  the  temple.  Clusters  of  trees  shade  the 
approaches  to -the  village;  they  offer  shade  for  the  cattle  during  the  hot 
part  of  the  day,  a  playground  for  the  children,  a  place  of  rest  for 
strangers.15  Each  village  behind  its  groves  and  in  the  midst  of  its  fields 
thus  forms  a  small,  isolated  world  which  seems  to  be  self-sufficient. 

13  J.  Cvijic,  "La  peninsule  balkanique,"  Geographic  humainc,  1918,  chap,  xvi;  P.  Vu- 
jevic,  "Siedlungen  der  serbischen  Lander,"  Geogr.  Zeitschr.,  1906,  XII,  507-519. 

13  A.  Philippson,  Der  Peloponnesos,  1892. 

14  A.  Woeikof,   "La  groupernent  de  la  population  ruralc  en  Russie,"  Annales  de 
geographic,  1909,  XVIII,  13-23. 

16  B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Land  System  of  British  India,  1892,  and  The  Indian 
Village  Community,  London,  1896;  W.  Crooke,  The  North-Western  Provinces  of  India, 
1897. 


270  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  peasants  of  Java  also  dwell  together  in  this  way,  each  house  sur- 
rounded by  its  little  garden,  forming  verdant  villages  near  the  rice 
fields.  The  village  of  Tonkin,  "with  its  houses  of  clay,  its  fishponds 
and  pools,  its  small  vegetable  gardens  and  the  border  of  bamboo  with 
occasional  entrances,  which  serve  as  shade  or  as  defense — all  this  forms 
a  complete  unit."16  The  village  also  predominates  in  the  plains  of 
north  China.  It  seems  that  everywhere,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pa- 
cific, the  grouped  habitat  presents  itself  as  an  organized,  systematic, 
and  ancient  form  of  human  establishment. 

B.   COUNTRIES   WITH   DISPERSED   DWELLINGS 

The  contour  of  the  landscapes  differs  greatly  according  as  one  con- 
siders the  grouped  or  dispersed  habitat.  In  the  landscape  of  villages,  the 
houses  are  massed  in  groups,  which  punctuate  the  solitude  of  the  culti- 
vated fields;  there  seems  to  be  a  clear  separation  between  the  village 
and  its  fields.  In  the  case  of  dispersion,  the  habitat  is  not  closely  tied  to 
the  cultivated  fields,  the  attraction  between  the  houses  themselves  is 
much  less  than  between  the  houses  and  the  fields,  the  farmhouse  and 
other  buildings  are  located  near  the  land,  and  often  each  plot  of 
ground  is  surrounded  with  a  fence,  hedge,  or  ditch.  It  seems  that  even 
the  small  groups  of  houses  known  as  hamlets  should  generally  be  con- 
sidered as  forms  of  dispersion,  for  they  nearly  always  involve  the  close 
relation  of  houses  and  fields. 

Western  Europe. — If  one  excepts  certain  districts  where  villages  pre- 
vail, one  can  say  that  dispersion  constitutes  a  characteristic  of  the  rural 
inhabitants  in  the  British  Isles.  Nearly  everywhere  in  Ireland,  Scotland, 
Wales,  and  England,  as  well  as  in  the  neighboring  islands  of  Man 
and  Jersey,  the  farms  are  isolated  and  located  in  the  midst  of,  or  near- 
by, the  plots  of  land  cultivated.  Settlement  by  isolated  farms  always 
predominates  more  exclusively  in  the  West  than  in  the  East. 

In  France  the  region  of  the  dispersed  type  no  doubt  covers  two- 
thirds  of  the  territory.  As  in  other  countries  of  Europe  the  type  has 
many  varieties,  which  can  doubtless  be  explained  by  differences  of  age 
and  method  of  establishment.  On  the  plateaus  and  in  Valois  great 
farms  prevail,  a  powerful  agency  of  cultivation  which  dominates  the 
cultivated  region  from  its  high  position.  In  west  Armorica,  southwest 
Aquitania,  and  north  Flanders  there  is  a  host  of  little  farms  distributed 
in  the  groves  and  fields.  The  land  belonging  to  each  family  is  located 
close  by  the  house.  In  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  communes  of  the 
department  of  Mayenne  over  two-thirds  of  the  population  live  apart. 
In  [certain  parts  of  central  France]  the  rural  population  is  distributed 

lttP.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  Prindpes  de  geographic  humaine,  pp.  192-193. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  271 

among  small  groups  of  houses  or  hamlets.  In  Creuse  and  C6tes-du- 
Nord  more  than  three-fourths  of  the  people  live  on  separate  farm- 
steads. In  this  scattering  and  loosening  of  habitat,  there  are  many 
points  of  crystallization  which  are  often  called  villages;  but  these  are 
common  centers  of  social,  religious,  and  commercial  life  where  live 
officials,  shopkeepers,  and  a  few  artisans,  the  agricultural  work  being 
carried  on  by  separate  families  living  apart.  It  is  necessary  to  note  that 
the  grouped  and  dispersed  modes  are  not  separated  by  wide  gulfs,  but 
there  is  a  continuous  transition  with  overlapping  from  one  to  the  other. 
Certain  places  reveal  islands  of  villagers  in  a  region  predominantly  dis- 
persed; while  in  other  places  are  to  be  found  regions  of  isolated  farm- 
steads in  a  district  composed  largely  of  villages. 

In  Belgium  there  is  a  zone  of  dispersion  running  from  French 
Flanders  through  Flanders  and  Brabant;  it  crosses  into  Germany  and 
covers  the  territory  of  the  lower  Rhine,  and  goes  through  Westphalia 
as  far  as  the  Weser.17  It  also  encloses,  in  the  Netherlands,  the  sandy 
land  of  North  Brabant  with  a  few  villages  included.  In  Friesland 
many  isolated  farms  are  found  established  near  the  land  cultivated  by 
the  residents.18 

Central  Europe.— The  system  of  isolated  farms  preponderates  in  only 
a  few  parts  of  Germany:  the  Rhenish  and  Westphalian  plains  as  far  as 
the  Weser;  clusters  in  middle  Germany;  certain  cantons  in  the  Black 
Forest  and  Palatinate;  and  the  more  elevated  plains  of  Bavaria  at  the 
edge  of  the  Alps.  Hamlets  and  isolated  farms  comprise  more  than 
four-fifths  of  the  inhabited  places  of  Ravensburg.19  The  Alpine  regions 
also  must  be  classified  as  regions  of  dispersion,  particularly  in  the 
French  Alps;  even  if  isolated  houses  be  rare,  hamlets  abound,  little 
clusters  of  farms  near  the  respective  cultivated  plots.20  In  Switzerland, 
isolation  is  the  rule  in  nearly  all  the  mountains  and  foothills.  In  the 
canton  of  Appenzell,  the  hamlets  enclose  more  than  45  per  cent  of  the 
total  population  and  the  isolated  farms  an  additional  more  than  31  per 
cent;  every  peasant  has  all  his  land  in  a  single  piece  around  his  dwell- 
ing.21 In  the  environs  of  Lake  Zurich,  while  the  shores  of  the  lake  are 
occupied  by  villages,  little  hamlets  and  isolated  farms  populate  the  zone 
of  morainic  hills.  In  the  commune  of  Hutten,  the  isolated  farms  alone 
represent  86  per  cent  of  the  number  of  inhabited  places  and  44  per 

17  M.  Lefevre,  op.  cit.,  pp.  27-31;  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit.,  I,  517-518. 

18  A.  Blink,  Nederland,  III,  251;  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit.,  II,  52. 

10  R.  Gradmann,  Das  landliche  Siedlungstvesen,  p.  35;  O.  Schliiter,  Deutsches  Sifde- 
lungswesen,  in  J.  Hoops,  Reallexifan  der  germanischen  Alterthums^unde,  1911,  1913, 
pp.  402-439. 

20  R.  Gradmann,  op.  dt.t  p.  184;  A.  Meitzen,  op,  cit.,  pp.  416,  453;  R.  Blanchard, 
Les  Alpes  franfaises,  1925,  p.  74. 

21  A.  Ott,  Die  Siedelungs-verhaltnisse  beider  Appenzell,  1915,  pp.  43-49. 


272  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

cent  of  the  total  population.22  Mountains  do  not  seem  to  favor  large 
groupings  of  population. 

Southern  Europe, — The  Mediterranean  countries,  which  are  so  rich 
in  villages,  do  not  exclude  dispersion,  however.  Nearly  all  the  Po  Val- 
ley as  well  as  the  regions  between  Adige  and  Brenta  reveal  a  veritable 
seed  plot  of  isolated  farms  on  the  most  fertile  and  better  cultivated 
soils,  the  farms  being  hidden  behind  rows  of  trees.  "The  region  swarms 
with  rural  houses  not  more  than  500  meters  apart.  They  are  indistinctly 
blended  with  the  immense  garden  into  which  the  entire  plain  has  been 
converted  by  the  labor  of  the  inhabitants;  hedges  of  trees  and  festoons 
of  vines  interlace  the  fields  and  protect  against  the  rays  of  the  sun."  23 
Even  in  Morocco  where  villages  are  preponderant,  among  the  Hoha 
and  the  Vhiadma,  one  sees  houses  spread  over  all  the  region.24  Elisee 
Reclus  states:  "There  are  some  independent  tribes  which  feel  them- 
selves strong  enough  to  dispense  with  village  life.  Each  family  is  iso- 
lated. The  dwellings  are  distributed  without  plan  on  the  sides  of  the 
mountains  as  among  the  Basques."  25 

With  the  exception  of  [a  few]  regions,  all  the  northwestern  part  of 
the  Balkan  Peninsula  must  be  included  with  the  countries  with  dis- 
persed habitat.  In  the  mountainous  regions  that  have  been  cleared  of 
forests  and  where  pastoral  life  flourishes,  the  houses  are  scattered  about 
in  the  forests  with  the  fields  and  orchards  near  by;  frequently  they  are 
grouped  into  hamlets  when  the  families  are  united  by  blood.26  Simi- 
larly, in  the  hills  and  mountains  of  Transylvania  and  Bulgaria,  one 
finds  himself  in  a  region  of  hamlets. 

Northern  Europe. — The  countries  in  northern  Europe  are  marked 
by  a  strong  preponderance  of  isolated  farms.  This  type  of  habitation  is 
noted  in  the  Baltic  countries  and  especially  in  Finland  in  every  place 
where  the  colonists  have  cleared  land,  in  the  mountains  and  by  the 
lakes.  This  type  also  prevails  in  the  north  of  Sweden  and  Norway,  and 
in  Iceland. 

The  Orient. — Even  in  China  and  India,  where  the  village  appears  to 
be  the  ancient  structure  of  rural  civilization,  certain  regions  are  excep- 
tions to  this  general  rule.  In  China  as  we  go  south  from  the  region  of 
the  Yangtse,  the  houses  are  spread  out  over  the  cultivated  hillsides  in 
little  groups  placed  in  the  midst  of  gardens  and  plantations.27  In  India 
one  notices  some  regions  of  dispersion  in  lower  Bengal,  south  Punjab, 

~A.  Schach,  Beitrage  zur  Siedelungs  und  Wirtschaftsgeographie  des  Zurichseegebietes, 
1917,  pp.  70-73. 

23  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  op.  tit.,  p.  176;  O.  Marinelli,  op.  cit. 

*Aug.  Bernard,  Le  Maroc,  1913,  p.  149. 

^fclisee  Reclus,  Geographic  universelle,  1886,  XI,  690. 

26  J.  Cvijic,  La  peninsule  bal\anlque,  pp.  207-209;  A.  Meitzen,   op.  cit.,  II,  219; 
Vujevic,  op.  cit.,  pp.  510-511. 

27  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  op.  cit.,  p.  191. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  273 

and  Malabar.  The  rural  population  of  the  latter  district  is  dispersed, 
each  cultivator  often  having  his  house  in  the  midst  of  fields  and  of 
gardens  and  widely  separated  from  neighbors.  He  possesses  his  planta- 
tion of  fruit  trees,  cocoa  trees,  mango  trees,  palm  and  nut  trees,  and 
banana  trees;  he  waters  these  with  water  from  his  well.28  The  orchard 
here  seems  to  be  associated  with  these  dispersed  farmsteads.  Thus,  in 
regions  widely  separated  from  each  other,  we  see  two  types  of  rural 
landscapes  alternate,  coincide,  and  overlap:  on  the  one  hand,  large 
human  aggregates  where  the  cultivators  live  in  groups  with  social  life 
which  is  often  highly  developed;  on  the  other  hand,  small,  more  or 
less  isolated  unities  working  in  semi-independence. 

II.  SEARCH  FOR  ORIGINS  AND  CAUSES  OF  THESE  MODES  OF  HABITATION 

In  order  to  explain  the  types  of  rural  settlement  one  can,  in  different 
places  and  at  different  times,  appeal  to  quite  different  factors.  It  may 
be  said  that  the  whole  history  of  civilization  is  reflected  in  the  actual 
types  of  human  establishments.  Certain  forms  existing  today  are  not 
the  original  forms;  here  and  there  one  sees  evidence  of  evolution; 
some  places  have  even  had  total  revolutions.  The  examination  of  these 
influences  which  alone  can  determine  the  forms  of  habitat  permits  us 
to  describe  and  to  classify  them.  Three  large  groups  of  factors  can  be 
made:  (1)  the  influence  of  natural  conditions;  (2)  the  influence  of 
social  conditions;  (3)  the  influence  of  agricultural  economy. 

A.   THE    INFLUENCE    OF   NATURAL   CONDITIONS 

Among  the  natural  conditions  which  seem  to  have  contributed  to 
the  determination  of  the  various  habitats  one  recognizes  relief  con- 
figurations, the  nature  of  the  soil,  and  the  natural  resources  of  water. 

Relief.— Relief  formations  certainly  react  on  the  distribution  of 
human  dwellings.  It  has  often  been  observed  that  regions  having  con- 
tinuous level  plains  appear  better  adapted  to  grouping,  while  country 
that  is  indented  and  broken  into  small  bits  favors  the  isolated  type  of 
dwelling.  "The  dense  village  is  found  in  countries  where  the  arable 
surface  is  continuous,  all-of-a-piece,  permitting  a  uniform  cultivation. 
Under  the  pressure  of  common  necessities,  collective  associations  are 
formed.  The  digging  and  maintenance  of  wells  and  of  pools  and  the 
necessity  of  building  walls  contributes  to  the  concentration  and  the 
grouping  of  the  dwellings."  29  If  the  plains  are  better  adapted  to  vil- 
lages, it  appears  that  the  mountains  and  broken  regions  offer  greater 
advantage  for  isolated  houses  and  hamlets.  This  is  due  to  the  small 
plots  of  arable  land  available  in  such  regions;  the  uneven  division  of 

28  G.  Slater,  Economic  Studies,  Vol.  I,  Some  South  Indian  Villages,  1918,  pp.  163 
et  $eq. 

30  P.  Vidal  dc  la  Blache,  op.  at.,  p.  195. 


274  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

that  land  limits  the  efforts  of  the  colonists  and  prevents  them  from 
dwelling  together  in  one  place.  This  is  so  for  several  reasons:  frequent 
transportation  by  wagon  or  cart  is  necessary  but  difficult  under  such 
conditions,  manure  can  be  distributed  only  for  short  distances,  and  the 
lack  of  fenced  areas  fosters  pastoral  economy.30 

Numerous  observations  illustrate  this  influence  of  geographical  relief. 
In  Great  Britain,  before  the  advent  of  the  enclosures  which  disturbed 
the  conditions  of  settlement  in  the  plains,  many  writers  describing 
rural  life  contrast  the  influences  of  plains  and  mountains  on  the  types 
of  settlement.  In  his  Description  of  England,  which  was  written  in  the 
time  of  Elizabeth,  Harrison  has  this  suggestive  passage:  "The  habita- 
tions of  our  rural  towns  and  villages  in  the  open,  level  country  are 
located  close  together  in  streets,  the  houses  touching  one  another; 
while  in  the  wooded  regions — i.e.,  in  the  mountains — they  are  scat- 
tered here  and  there,  each  among  its  own  fields."  31  In  the  period  of 
the  Domesday  BooJ^,  one  notices  that  the  isolated  farms  often  appear 
in  the  forests — i.e.,  in  the  hilly  country;  thus  concerning  Eardisley  in 
Hereford  one  finds  a  manuscript  which  clearly  states:  In  medio  cu jus- 
dam  silvae  est  fosita  et  ibi  est  domus  una  defensabilis?2  At  the  same 
time  in  a  mountain  valley  Langdendale  in  Derbyshire  presents  a  clear 
type  of  dispersion  with  its  series  of  little  hamlets  of  a  couple  of  farms 
every  two  miles.33 

These  instances  of  a  contrast  between  plains  and  mountains  are  re- 
peated from  one  end  of  France  to  the  other.  In  Vosges,  dispersion  in- 
creases as  we  go  toward  the  mountains;  there  is  a  tendency  to  village 
life  in  east  Coney  on  the  blistered  chalk  plateaus;  and  there  is  a  scatter- 
ing of  farms  with  their  orchards  and  fields  to  the  east  of  the  river.34  In 
Languedoc  dispersion  increases  as  one  ascends,  and  the  hamlets  nestle 
in  the  recesses  of  the  mountains.35  In  Germany  the  same  contrast  is 
frequently  repeated:  clustered  houses  in  the  plains  of  Wurttemburg, 
Unterland,  and  the  plateaus  of  Ranke  Alb;  dispersed  dwellings  on  the 
moraine  hills  that  extend  to  the  north  of  Lake  Constance  and  Allgan.36 
Similarly  are  found  villages  in  the  great  valleys  and  the  plains  that 
cross  the  Alpine  region  in  Switzerland,  Tyrol,  and  Bavaria;  hamlets 
and  isolated  farms  are  found  in  the  mountains.37 

80  Many  authors  are  agreed  on  this  influence  of  relief:  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit.,  II,  390; 
R.  Lennard,  "Englische  Siedelungswesen,"  in  Reallexi^on  by  Hoops,  pp.  593-613; 
H.  Bernhard,  "Die  landliche  Siedlungsformen,"  Geogr.  Zeitschr,,  1919,  pp.  20-32. 

31  Cited  by  J,  L.  Gomme,  The  Village  Community,  1890,  p.  64. 

82  Cited  by  Vinogradoff,  English  Society  in  the  Eleventh  Century,  1908,  p.  267. 

83  Cited  by  Vmogradofr",  op.  cit.,  p.  267. 

34  A.  Cholley,  "La  V6ge,"  Ann.  de  geog.,  1914,  pp.  233-235. 

38  Max  Sorre,  "La  repartition  des  populations  dans  le  Bas-Languedoc,"  op.  cit.,  p.  44. 
30  R.  Gradmann,  op.  cit.  (Forschtmgen),  pp.  38-41,  and  Petermanns  Mitt.,  pp.  184-186, 
87  A.  Schach,  op.  at.,  pp.  74-80.  Also  consult  a  Swiss  map. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  275 

In  the  countries  bordering  on  the  Baltic,  in  Scandinavia  and  Finland, 
dispersion  prevails  wherever  cultivation  has  conquered  the  fields  on 
the  mountain  slopes  or  among  the  rocky  hills  of  the  glacial  countries; 
the  mountaineers  of  Norway  live  on  isolated  farms,  but  villages  reap- 
pear on  the  plains  with  their  level,  continuous  slopes.  In  Walachia  the 
hamlet  is  the  prevailing  type  in  the  hills  and  mountains  and  the  "village 
in  the  plains.38  Villages  are  found  in  the  plains  of  Podolia  and  Galicia, 
hamlets  among  the  Carpathians  39  ;  in  Little  Russia,  isolated  farms 
predominate  in  the  rugged  regions  of  Poltava  and  of  Khorol,  large 
villages  in  the  plains  of  Zolotonocha  and  of  Kozelets.40  The  Kangro 
district  in  Punjab  has  two  juxtaposed  types  of  habitation:  in  the  plains 
the  villages  are  surrounded  by  their  arable  land  in  confused  parcels;  in 
the  mountains  are  hamlets  of  scattered  houses,  each  surrounded  by  its 
fields.  The  same  facts  are  observed  in  China  and  Japan;  mountains 
and  plains  are  widely  differentiated  by  forms  of  relief  and  are  marked 
by  contrasting  types  of  habitation. 

Nevertheless,  this  contrast  which  seems  to  be  so  general  and  so  defi- 
nite does  not  explain  everything.  For  one  often  notes  the  preponder- 
ance of  dispersion  in  certain  plains  (that  of  Lucerne  in  Switzerland, 
Flanders,  and  the  English  Plain)  and  the  excess  of  villages  in  certain 
mountains  (central  Italy,  Kobylia,  northern  Riesenburg).  Gradmann 
observes  that  there  is  no  coincidence  in  Upper  Schwabia  between 
regions  of  indented  relief  and  the  domain  of  dispersed  habitats,  and 
conversely  that  large  and  continuous  areas  of  fertile  soil  do  not  contain 
villages.41 

Soil  constitution. — Soil  can  impose  radically  different  conditions 
upon  the  distribution  of  habitations,  depending  on  whether  it  is  dry 
and  solid  or  marshy  and  soft.  Whether  the  danger  arises  from  rivers 
or  seas,  the  necessity  of  defending  their  hearths  against  the  waters 
often  leads  men  to  gather  together.  In  Italy  the  unhealthy  state  of  the 
valleys  has  forced  the  people  to  occupy  the  elevated  and  healthy  sites, 
and  here  the  villages  flourish.  Similarly,  in  the  Po  Valley  the  homes 
are  located  in  long  rows  on  the  dikes.  The  same  danger  has  forced 
close  settlement  in  the  parts  of  the  Netherlands  that  are  menaced  by 
the  seas.  Before  the  construction  of  dikes  the  inhabitants  gathered  on 
high  places,  most  often  artificial,  the  jagged  silhouette  of  which  still 
attracts  the  attention.  ...  In  the  low  areas  (in  the  Netherlands)  the 
houses  are  located  along  the  streets,  roadways,  or  on  the  dikes;  these 
villages  may  be  counted  by  the  tens  in  Holland.  One  finds  the  same 

88  Emm.  de  Martonne,  La  Vallachie,  1902,  chap.  xvii. 

30  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  op.  at.,  pp.  188-189. 

40  A.  Woeikof,  op.  cit.,  p.  21. 

ttR.  Gradmann,  op.  cit.  (Forschungcn),  p.  41. 


276  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

type  of  extended  villages  in  the  colonies  of  peat-cutters  of  Overyssel, 
Drente,  and  Groningen  on  the  banks  of  the  canals. 

One  gets  the  impression  of  an  imperious  necessity  which,  in  the  low 
lands  susceptible  to  flooding,  constrains  the  inhabitants  to  gather  to- 
gether on  high  places.  However,  why  is  it  that  in  the  regions  of 
polders  (low  areas),  for  instance,  in  the  maritime  plain  of  Flanders 
and  on  the  bottom  of  a  former  lake  in  Haarlem,  one  finds  dispersed 
dwellings  prevalent? 

Resources  of  water. — Many  men  have  stated  the  influence  of  water 
supply  on  the  manner  of  settlement  in  a  very  simple  and  reasonable 
manner,  thus:  "In  regions  of  permeable  limestone  rocks  the  water  is 
hidden  away  in  depths  of  the  earth  and  can  be  obtained  only  from 
deep  wells  and  rare  springs;  hence  the  houses  are  of  necessity  closely 
grouped  together.  Inversely,  in  regions  of  hard  rock  where  the  water 
spreads  everywhere,  water  is  common  and  houses  are  scattered." 

Assuredly  the  tyranny  of  water  imposes  itself  on  the  rural  habitat  in 
arid  places,  e.g.,  m  the  Mediterranean  region  where  nearly  all  the 
population  lives  in  villages  and  each  village  is  located  near  a  spring.42 
In  his  book  on  the  Peloponnesus43  Philippson  shows  the  close  tie 
binding  the  settlement  to  the  source  of  water  supply;  he  describes 
these  strong  and  fresh  springs  which  are  the  pride  and  joy  of  the  in- 
habitants; shaded  with  great  plane-trees,  emptying  their  clear  water 
into  a  stone  basin,  they  are  the  center  of  the  villages.  In  irrigated  coun- 
tries the  law  of  water  is  rigorously  enforced.  "Thus  everything  is  sub- 
ordinated to  the  source  of  life,  and  there  can  be  no  other  mode  of 
grouping  than  that  which  permits  everyone  to  share  equally  in  its  en- 
joyment, whether  the  source  is  running  water  or  bodies  of  water."  44 
In  the  Punjab  the  peasants  are  grouped  near  tta  essential  supply  on 
which  their  crops  depend:  reservoir,  well,  or  canal.  Cohesion  is  neces- 
sary in  order  to  keep  the  control  of  the  water  in  hand.  The  village 
reservoir  is  the  condition  of  common  existence;  with  its  strong  dikes 
of  earth  shaded  by  beautiful  trees,  like  a  fortress  it  contains  the  source 
of  life. 

But  in  the  humid  countries  of  heavy  rainfall  in  western  Europe,  it  is 
impossible  to  affirm  any  rigid  relation  between  hydrological  conditions 
and  the  distribution  of  houses.  Even  in  case  of  difficulty  in  obtaining 
it,  one  can  collect  and  hoard  the  water  when  it  rains.  The  pretended 
law  of  water  no  longer  exists.  In  regions  of  equal  water  supply  are 
found  different  systems  of  settlement.  On  a  subsoil  of  chalk  and  simi- 

42  T.  Fischer,  op.  cit.,  pp.  204-209;  Ch.  Monchicourt,  La  rtgion  du  Haut  Tell  en 
Tunisie,  1913,  pp.  391-399. 

WA.  Philippson,  op.  tit.,  p.  385. 

"P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  op.  dt.,  p.  173. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  277 

lar  substances  French  Picardy  has  compact  villages,  while  the  Chiltern 
plateau  in  England  has  isolated  farms.  In  the  same  region  in  France, 
CauXj  on  a  chalk  subsoil  one  finds  dispersed  dwellings  in  the  west  and 
compact  villages  in  the  eastern  part.  On  the  plateaus  of  Ardennes  in 
France  and  Belgium  where  springs  are  abundant,  the  inhabitants  are 
gathered  in  villages.  On  the  other  hand,  in  some  parts  of  Hungary 
where  water  is  always  found  near  the  surface  in  a  sheet  that  can  be 
tapped  with  the  most  shallow  wells,  the  rural  dwellings  are  grouped 
in  large  villages.  The  question  of  water  supply,  especially  in  the  past, 
seems  of  secondary  importance,  and  we  would  be  in  error  to  imagine 
it  of  decisive  importance.45 

B.  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  SOCIAL  CONDITIONS 

The  types  of  habitat  may  have  been  determined  by  factors  in  the 
human  environment  itself.  One  can  conceive  that,  as  was  the  case  with 
many  other  products  of  civilization,  these  types  have  been  manifesta- 
tions of  original  tendencies  or  of  traditions  peculiar  to  different  peo- 
ples. One  might  also  conceive  that  in  their  origin  they  have  obeyed  the 
needs  of  defense  and  that  the  organization  of  property  has  also  been 
instrumental  in  the  development  of  these  types. 

Original  tendencies.— We  are  but  slightly  informed  on  the  original 
tendencies  of  human  societies.  The  documents  that  we  have  on  the 
primitive  periods  furnish  us  with  hypotheses  only.  But  the  mind  can- 
not avoid  searching  for  the  origins  of  rural  civilization.  Is  the  grouped 
habitat  or  the  dispersed  habitat  the  first  form?  Or  should  we  suppose 
that  they  are  both  distinct  original  forms  springing  from  different  local 
conditions?  We  will  ignore  this  question.  What  seems  probable  is  that 
long  before  the  epoch  in  which  the  territorial  establishment  based  on 
permanent  occupation  of  a  particular  geographical  area  became  the 
material  base  of  social  organization,  blood  relationship  had  been  the 
tie  of  social  groups.  Has  not  the  custom  of  living  together  been  de- 
veloped among  men  who  belonged  to  the  same  family  and  descended 
from  the  same  ancestor?  Have  they  not  sought,  by  a  wholly  natural 
instinct,  to  group  together  and  to  associate  for  mutual  defense?  Thus 
the  formation  of  groups  would  be  the  first  step  taken  by  men,  and 
that  ancient  family  organization  would  be  the  framework  of  the  first 
village  communities;  grouping  and  not  dispersion  would  be  the  first 
beginnings  of  settlement.  In  Celtic  Great  Britain  the  inhabitants  lived 
in  family  groups  composed  of  hundreds  of  individuals  with  their 
flocks,  thus  constituting  villages.  But  we  do  not  know  if  such  has  every- 
where been  the  primitive  type  of  habitat  or  if  the  family  community 

"This  opinion  on  the  question  of  water  is  similar  to  that  of  R.  Gradmann,  op,  cit. 
(Farschungen),  p.  38;  and  to  that  of  0.  Marinelli,  Geogr.  Teacher,  1925,  p.  202. 


278  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

has  everywhere  been  followed  by  the  village.  In  western  Serbia  the  per- 
sistence of  family  communities  does  not  prevent  the  scattering  of  habi- 
tations into  small  hamlets;  we  cannot  be  certain  as  to  whether  that  dis- 
persion is  a  primitive  fact  or  whether  it  is  the  result  of  evolution.  The 
evolutionary  process  which  transforms  the  grouped  habitat  into  the 
dispersed  form,  of  which  we  have  many  ancient  illustrations,  is  true 
agricultural  progress  since  it  permits  the  cultivator  to  reside  near  his 
fields.  But  this  is  not  the  only  type  of  agricultural  progress,  since  the 
development  of  agriculture  has  often  rendered  the  village  community 
necessary.  According  to  H.  J.  Fleure,  it  is  the  use  of  the  plow  that  has 
necessitated  cooperative  cultivation  and  frequently,  no  doubt,  the  con- 
solidation of  houses. 

Ethnic  traditions. — In  the  opinion  of  certain  scholars  the  opposition 
between  grouped  and  isolated  habitations  is  explained  by  contrasting 
ethnic  traditions.  A.  Meitzen  first  indicated  the  contrast,  which  is  so 
marked  in  western  and  central  Europe,  between  the  regions  of  con- 
centrated villages  and  the  regions  of  isolated  farms.  He  attributes  this 
contrast  to  a  difference  of  original  settlement,  the  villages  correspond- 
ing to  Germanic,  and  the  isolated  farms  to  Celtic,  settlement.  He  indi- 
cates particularly  the  numerous  villages  between  the  Weser,  Elbe,  and 
the  Danube  and  everywhere  that  the  "victorious  conquests  of  Ger- 
mans"46 had  established  them.  Isolated  farms  are  widespread  in  Ire- 
land, Scotland,  Wales,  and  other  parts  of  western  France. 

This  theory  does  not  bear  criticism.  Despite  the  prodigious  and  inter- 
esting accumulation  of  facts  that  the  works  of  A.  Meitzen  contain,  the 
theory  suffers  from  insolvable  contradictions.  It  is  not  demonstrated— 
in  fact  the  contrary  is  true — that  the  group  type  of  settlement  is  the  ex- 
clusive property  of  Germanic  peoples.  We  see  it  in  the  possession  of 
Slavs  who,  as  Meitzen  recognizes,  live  in  villages  of  peculiar  form,  but 
villages  nevertheless;  in  the  possession  of  Celtic  communities  in  Great 
Britain;  in  the  possession  of  Romans,  among  whom  certain  "villas"  or 
great  estates  with  their  agricultural  workers  formed  the  nucleus  of  true 
villages;  in  the  possession  of  Gauls  who  lived  more  often  in  villages 
(fid)  than  on  isolated  farms.  Among  the  Helvetians  Caesar  counted 
not  less  than  400  vici,  which  he  clearly  distinguished  from  isolated 
dwellings  (aedificia)  .4T  Nor  has  it  been  demonstrated  any  more  clearly 
that  the  isolated  dwelling  is  an  attribute  of  the  Celts;  since,  in  coun- 
tries west  of  the  Weser  which  are  entirely  Germanic,  all  the  people  live 

48  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit.,  I,  520.  This  theory  has  been  revived  and  set  forth  by  other 
authors,  as  O.  Schluter,  in  the  Geogr.  Zeitschr.,  1900,  VI,  248-262,  and  in  the  Reallexi- 
\on  by  Hoops,  pp.  402-439  (Deutsches  Siedelungswesen*) . 

47  J.  Flach,  L'origine  historique  de  I' habitation,  pp.  10,  36-37;  K.  Schumacher,  Siede- 
lungs  und  Kulturgcschichte  der  Rheinlandc,  1923,  II,  193-203;  F.  Seebohm,  The  'Eng- 
lish Village  Community,  pp.  279-280. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  279 

in  this  fashion.  The  same  dispersion  is  observed  in  other  Germanic 
countries  such  as  Flanders,  the  Swiss  and  Bavarian  Alps,  and  northern 
Scandinavia.48  Nevertheless,  even  if  the  facts  had  supported  the  theory 
of  ethnic  influences,  the  solution  of  the  problem  would  have  only  been 
pushed  back  further,  for  it  would  remain  to  explain  why  a  given  race 
adopted  such  a  type  of  habitation. 

This  theory  is  no  better  suited  to  the  other  countries  to  which  many 
since  Meitzen  have  wished  to  extend  it.  In  India,  certain  scholars 
wished  to  designate  the  village  as  an  Aryan  institution,  but  it  is  very 
widespread  among  the  Dravidians.49  In  the  Alpine  region  of  upper 
Adige,  O.  Schliiter  contrasted  the  villages  of  the  Italian  districts  with 
the  dispersed  habitats  of  the  Germanic  districts  (here  the  Germans 
would  thus  have  adopted  the  dispersed  type  instead  of  the  more  com- 
pact mode).50  But  as  O.  Marinelli  51  has  remarked,  the  simplicity  of 
this  relation  is  only  apparent;  it  is  not  ethnic  traditions  that  are  mani- 
fest here  but  economic  necessities;  it  is  necessary  to  seek  the  explana- 
tion in  the  differences  between  the  epochs  of  colonization  and  of 
agricultural  economy. 

Conditions  of  security. — The  necessity  of  defense  in  times  of  trouble 
has  forced  the  peasants  to  group  themselves  into  villages;  conversely, 
with  the  return  of  security,  they  have  deserted  the  villages  to  establish 
themselves  on  the  land  of  their  choice.  History  furnishes  numerous 
proofs  of  this  relationship.  The  Mediterranean  countries  still  have  vil- 
lages perched  on  high  bluffs  in  a  most  paradoxical  position  opposite 
their  distant  fields.  In  the  plain  of  the  Po,  in  a  region  long  exposed  to 
the  ravages  of  armies,  one  still  sees  many  fortified  villages  of  huddled 
houses.52  "At  the  place  where  the  steppe  and  other  modes  of  life 
meet,"  says  Vidal  de  la  Blache,53  "everything  has  the  appearance  of 
a  fortress;  the  village  itself  in  the  Sahara,  in  Arabia,  in  Turkestan,  and 
Mongolia,  becomes  a  refuge.*'  In  Aures  and  Kabylie  the  villages  are 
perched  on  high  places  and  hill-crests  whicH  dominate  the  surrounding 
country,  "hundreds  of  aerial  points  separated  by  deep  valleys  in  which 
the  eagles  plunge  with  extended  wings."  54  "The  inhabitants  of  these 
houses  seek  safety  in  the  grouping  and  defensive  arrangement  of  their 

48  For  the  criticism  of  Meitzen's  theory,  sec  R.  Gradmann,  op.  cit.  (Forschungen), 
p,  95;  A.  Schach,  op,  cit.,  pp.  110-112. 

49  G.  L.  Gomme,  The  Village  Community,  pp.  23-32. 

80  O.  Schliiter,  Deutsches  Siedelungswescn,  p.  437.  See  also  Emm.  de  Martonne,  Les 
Alpes,  1926,  pp.  143-147. 

61 0.  Marinelli,  Geogr.  Teacher,  1925,  p.  202, 

C2O.  Marinelli,  Geogr.  Teacher,  1925,  p.  202;  R.  Benevent,  Revue  geogr.  alpine. 
1916,  pp.  204-205. 

B8P.  Vidal  dc  la  Blache,  op.  cit.,  pp.  195-196. 

wAug.  Bernard,  Enquete  sur  I' habitation  rurale  des  indigenes  de  VAlgerie,  1921,  pp. 
82  et  seq. 


280  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

buildings."  55  Certain  villages  in  Tunis  are  posed  as  acropolises  upon 
steep  peaks  behind  thick  groves  of  spiny  cactus.  On  the  southern  slope 
of  the  Atlas  Mountains  many  villages  have  been  transformed  into  forti- 
fied places  and  are  true  citadels  where  the  sedentary  peasant  places  his 
storehouse  of  grain  protected  from  roving  nomads. 

Many  troubled  epochs  have  left  their  traces  in  the  types  of  habitat 
in  France.  Brutails  relates 56  that  in  most  of  Roussillon  the  peasants 
deserted  the  plains  from  fear  of  African  corsairs  in  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries  in  order  to  establish  mountain  villages.  Those  re- 
maining in  the  plains  retrenched  and  fortified;  "in  Corsavi,  a  church 
which  was  dedicated  in  1158  is  today  far  from  the  village,  which  aban- 
doned it  to  gather  around  a  fortified  rock."  In  the  southern  Alps  along 
the  Durance  one  notices  a  tendency  for  the  houses  to  become  more 
closely  grouped  as  one  recedes  from  the  central  region,  that  is,  as  one 
goes  toward  the  more  accessible  and  more  frequently  menaced  places; 
in  order  to  escape  the  attacks  of  the  Saracens,  who  had  long  come  by 
sea,  the  villages  are  located  on  high  points  as  though  about  fortresses.57 
In  Baronnisi,  as  Mouralis  has  shown,  the  Romans  lived  in  scattered 
dwellings  on  the  plain;  but,  due  to  feudal  disturbances,  the  peasants 
left  the  valleys  for  elevated  villages.  "Certain  villages  .  .  .  were  located 
on  rocky  positions  which  were  nearly  inaccessible  and  often  were  hun- 
dreds of  meters  above  the  river."  5S 

The  needs  of  defense,  however,  have  not  led  everywhere  to  concen- 
tration of  houses.  In  Frioul  and  Roman  Campagna  many  isolated 
farms  have  been  fortified;  this  is  proof  that  insecurity  does  not  always 
lead  to  grouping.  One  would  be  more  wrong  than  right  in  considering 
all  grouping  as  a  defensive  precaution;  this  has  been  assumed  without 
proof  for  Russian  villages  located  south  of  Moscow  and  of  Oka,  and 
for  the  Hungarian  villages  of  AlfoldL  In  France,  nothing  permits  us 
to  state  that  the  populations  of  Picardy,  of  Champagne,  and  of  Lor- 
raine are  gathered  into  villages  because  of  need  for  security.  The  very 
fact  of  the  location  of  these  villages  in  open  country  drives  away  all 
possibility  of  protection;  they  seem  rather  to  have  sought  the  center  of 
fertile  territory.  "The  appearance  of  a  village  in  Meuse  does  not  reveal 
any  preoccupations  with  security,  quite  the  contrary.  ...  It  is  consid- 
eration of  agricultural  existence  that  is  revealed  in  the  choice  of  loca- 
tions. The  approaches  are  easy,  without  hedges  of  trees,  in  open  coun- 

65  Aug.  Bernard,  op.  at.,  pp.  75-76. 

65  f-  A.  Brutails,  Etude  sur  la  condition  des  populations  ruralcs  du  Roussillon  au 
moyen  dge,  1891,  pp.  38-39,  43. 

57  R.  Blarichard,  Les  Alpes  franfaises,  1925,  p.  75. 

58  D.  Mouralis,  "Les  phenom£nes  d'habitat  dans  le  massif  des  Baronnics   (Prealpes 
du  Sud)>"  Revue  geogr.  alpine,  1924,  pp.  547-645. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  281 

try.  The  village  is  open  on  the  fields  in  all  directions,  and  the  steeple 
can  be  seen  from  afar.'* 50 

The  agrarian  regime. — The  social  organization  is  able  to  impose  cer- 
tain restrictions  on  the  habitat.  In  the  countries  of  great  estates  and 
large  holdings,  the  proprietors  have  frequently  themselves  decided  the 
location  of  the  agricultural  houses.  The  large  villages  of  southern  Italy 
originated  principally  in  the  fact  that  the  landlords  wished  to  group 
their  tenants  in  order  better  to  control  them.60  According  to  Mannelli, 
they  prevented  the  settlement  of  their  peasants  in  the  country,  not  only 
to  avoid  the  dangers  of  malaria  and  to  escape  the  expense  of  construc- 
tion of  too  many  rural  houses,  but  also  in  order  that  the  enjoyment  of 
an  isolated  farm  should  not  become  for  each  working  family  an  excuse 
to  claim  ownership  of  the  plot  of  land  that  was  assigned  to  it.61  In 
Russia,  the  superintendents  of  the  great  estates  preferred  villages  m 
order  that  the  peasants  could  be  overseen  more  easily.02  In  the  Balkan 
peninsula  the  system  of  large  holdings  organized  by  the  Turks  led  to 
the  formation  of  villages  by  the  grouping  of  the  houses  around  the 
dwelling  of  the  master.63  In  Mexico,  the  landlord  had  the  agricultural 
workers  (peons)  gathered  together  in  a  village  near  his  house.  Simi- 
larly, certain  Gallic-Roman  villages  (vici)  originated  in  the  grouping 
of  the  colonists  near  the  villa;  later  certain  villages  of  the  Middle  Ages 
originated  in  the  collection  of  serfs  at  some  point  of  the  lordly  domain. 
In  our  own  days  in  Roman  Campagna  one  observes  Lombardian  and 
Piedmontese  farmers  establish  great  estates  and  gather  the  families  of 
permanent  workers  around  them,  thus  forming  the  nuclei  of  new  vil- 
lages. In  Verceil  and  Novara,  Cremona,  and  the  Po  Delta,  great  hold- 
ings always  have  the  same  result—the  concentration  of  the  workers' 
families. 

At  other  times  the  great  proprietors  adopted  the  system  of  dispersed 
farms  when  it  was  to  their  interest  to  divide  their  domains  among 
many  small  holders.  The  Baltic  countries  have  a  majority  of  small  iso- 
lated farms;  this  is  because,  for  a  long  period,  the  landed  nobility  has 
believed  that  cultivation  profited  and  succeeded  better  when  it  was 
freed  from  servitude  to  a  village  community,64  Thus,  according  to 
Marinelli,  we  can  also  explain  the  diffuse  colonization  which  was 
widespread  in  Tuscany  at  the  end  of  the  medieval  period;  the  unit  of 
exploitation,  the  podere,  was  sufficiently  large  to  occupy  and  support 
a  family,  and  the  house  of  each  tenant  was  built  on  the  land  which 

60  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  ttude  stir  k  valUe  lorraine  de  la  Mffusc,  1908,  pp.  147-148. 

60  H.  Bernhard,  "Die  landlichen  Siedlungsformen,"  Geogr.  Zeitschr.,  1919,  pp.  29-30. 

61 0.  Marinelli,  op.  cit.,  1925,  p.  203. 

C2  A.  Woeikof,  op.  dt,f  pp.  20,  23. 

03  J.  Cvijic,  La  peninsule  balfynique,  pp,  223-224. 

C4A.  Woeikof,  op.  cit.,  p,  16. 


282  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

he  formed.  A  group  of  several  of  these  small  farms  formed  an  estate 
which  the  owner  assigned  to  the  oversight  of  an  intendant. 

C.  THE  INFLUENCE   OF   AGRICULTURAL  ECONOMY 

Even  the  condition  of  agricultural  economy  can  lead  the  peasants  at 
one  time  to  group  together,  at  another  time  to  dwell  apart.  Whether 
a  population  is  sparse  or  dense,  or  whether  it  possesses  crude  or  refined 
methods  of  cultivation,  it  will  exercise  a  different  hold  on  the  soil;  and 
this  possession  can  change  within  the  same  country  if  economic  condi- 
tions change.  Let  us  consider  how  the  types  of  agricultural  economy 
can  act  on  the  types  of  habitat, 

The  nomadic  stage  of  cultivation. — One  of  the  first  stages  of  agricul- 
tural culture  appears  to  have  been  the  itinerant,  nomadic  culture;  that 
is,  the  continual  shifting  of  the  cultivated  fields  across  the  vast  un- 
claimed areas.  This  instability  is  explained  both  by  the  poor  techniques 
of  production  and  by  the  low  population  density.  The  occupants  are 
content  to  burn  the  bushes  and  herbs  which  cover  the  ground;  with 
little  effort  they  turn  under  the  ashes,  and  after  one  or  two  harvests 
they  allow  the  fields  to  return  to  the  wild  state  and  clear  another  field 
which  was  previously  uncultivated.  This  nomadic  culture  is  found 
among  the  Germans  at  the  time  of  Tacitus,  among  the  Irish  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  among  the  inhabitants  of  Wales  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  is  still  observed  in  the  steppes  of  southern  Russia  and  in  the  forested 
region  of  northern  Russia.  In  some  places  the  colonists  proceed  by 
burning;  on  the  ashes  of  the  forest  they  sow  three  or  four  plantings 
and  then  abandon  the  exhausted  land  to  the  forest.  The  same  practice 
persists  in  Siberia  and  in  cantons  of  the  governments  of  Olonetz, 
Archangel,  and  Perm. 

With  this  unstable  agriculture,  the  habitation  shifts  with  the  fields. 
The  movement  of  houses  is  facilitated  by  their  lightness  and  simplicity 
of  construction.  In  these  conditions,  nothing,  except  possibly  the  tend- 
ency for  families  to  gather  together,  aids  consolidation.  From  the  eco- 
nomic point  of  view  many  tendencies  lead  to  scattering  and  dispersion: 
the  necessity  of  indefinite  ranges  for  the  animals,  frequent  shifts  in  cul- 
tivated fields,  and  open  country  for  hunting.  The  historical  documents 
nearly  always  show  us  this  primitive  economy  in  association  with  the 
isolated  or  dispersed  habitat.  Since  a  now  distant  epoch  when  the  fam- 
ily community  relaxed  its  ties,  we  see  the  dispersed  habitat  extend  over 
Ireland  and  Wales.  In  the  twelfth  century  Cambrensis  described  the 
light  flimsy  houses  of  Wales  as  constructed  of  wood  for  a  semipastoral 
people  who  lived  dispersed  about  the  fringe  of  the  forest.  The  coloni- 
zation of  the  Russian  forest  was  the  work  of  isolated  pioneers  or  of 
small  groups.  In  the  republic  of  Novgorod  in  a  surveyor's  register  of 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  283 

the  fifteenth  century  cited  by  Woeikof  mention  is  made  of  numerous 
farms  and  small  holdings.  It  was  by  means  of  hamlets  that  the  clear- 
ings proceeded  in  medieval  Wiirttemberg.  The  penetration  o£  the 
Swedes  into  the  vast  forests  of  the  Northland,  like  the  advance  of  the 
Finns  into  their  immense  forest,  was  accomplished  by  isolated  estab- 
lishments.65 

The  stage  of  periodic  redistribution. — A  new  stage  of  agriculture 
begins  when  the  growth  of  population  and  the  rarity  of  arable  land 
compels  the  society  to  limit  the  individual  right  of  free  appropriation. 
The  boundaries  of  the  cultivable  fields  are  determined  so  as  to  order 
and  regulate  their  division  among  the  families.  These  divisions  are 
made  for  a  limited  period  and  effected  periodically;  they  are  intended 
to  decrease  the  inequalities  of  division  of  the  land  and  to  provide  land 
for  the  new  generations;  they  thus  establish  the  relations  of  a  limited 
community  among  the  sharers.  This  intervention  of  the  community 
for  the  periodic  redi vision  of  the  lands  only  applies  to  the  best  of  these, 
to  those  that  can  return  good  crops;  outside  of  these  regularly  culti- 
vated fields  there  is  a  zone  of  unsurveyed  fields,  pastures,  and  woods 
which  are  not  divided  but  enjoyed  in  common.  These  agricultural  prac- 
tices have  predominated  for  a  long  time  in  numerous  parts  of  Europe: 
Russia,  Sweden,  Germany.  The  redistribution  of  the  cultivated  fields 
was  still  made  in  Ireland  under  the  oversight  of  Sir  John  Davies  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  Hanssen  points  it  out  as  late  as  1835  in  Eifel  and 
Hunsrlick.66 

Does  this  stage  of  agricultural  evolution  correspond  to  any  evolution 
of  habitats?  Curiously,  it  seems  not  to  act  in  the  same  manner  in  all 
countries:  in  one  place  it  leaves  the  dispersed  habitat  intact,  elsewhere 
it  favors  the  grouped  type.  In  medieval  Ireland  one  notes  the  existence 
of  arable  lands  which  are  cultivated  in  common  where  each  receives  an 
equal  lot  by  periodic  distribution.  According  to  Seebohm,  by  the 
seventh  century  there  were  already  complaints  that  the  growth  of  popu- 
lation had  reduced  the  individual  shares  from  thirty  to  twenty-seven 
strips  or  furrows.67  One  might  believe  that  this  practice  should  have 
led  the  Irish  to  bring  their  houses  near  the  arable  fields  and  to  develop 
villages.  But  Ireland  has  always  remained  a  country  of  scattered  home- 

05  For  the  nomadic  stage  o£  culture  see:  P.  Lacombe,  L' appropriation  du  sol,  1912, 
pp.  10-11,  19-22;  F.  Seebohm,  The  English  Village  Community,  pp.  186,  370,  342, 
368;  J.  St.  Lewinski,  The  Origin  of  Property,  pp.  5-9,  15-18;  M,  R.  Bonn,  Die  englische 
Kolonization  in  Ireland,  1906,  I,  255-259;  II,  140-141;  H.  Bernhard,  "Die  landlichen 
Siedlungsformen,"  Geogr.  Zeitschr.,  1919,  pp.  20-32;  A.  Woeikof,  "Le  groupement  de  la 
population  rurale  en  Russie,"  Ann.  de  geog.,  1909,  pp.  13-23;  L.  Beauchet,  Histoirc  de 
la  propnete  fonder e  en  Suede,  1904,  pp.  10-15, 

80  J.  St.  Lewinski,  op.  cit.,  pp.  52-53,  60-61;  A.  Meitzcn,  op.  cit,,  II,  24. 

67  F.  Seebohm,  op.  cit.,  pp.  126,  214-230;  G.  Slater,  "The  Inclosure  of  Common 
Fields,"  Geogr.  fourn.,  1907,  pp.  45-46. 


284  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

steads.  In  reality,  in  this  country  of  pastoral  economy,  the  parcels  of 
good  land  represent  only  an  insignificant  proportion  of  the  exploited 
territories.  The  peasants  gather  at  more  or  less  fixed  dates  to  plow, 
seed,  and  harvest,  but  they  place  their  houses  near  their  pastures,  each 
separate  from  the  others. 

In  Sweden,  the  custom  of  periodically  redividing  the  arable  fields 
existed  before  the  twelfth  century.  This  custom  assured  to  each  inhabi- 
tant the  enjoyment  of  a  certain  number  of  parcels  during  a  given  num- 
ber of  years,  but  with  the  obligation  to  return  them  to  the  community 
at  a  time  fixed  by  law  with  a  view  to  a  reallotment.  As  this  was  an 
agricultural  country,  one  might  believe  that  the  necessity  of  abandon- 
ing their  fields  periodically  must  have  led  the  cultivators  to  choose  a 
fixed  spot,  not  subject  to  division,  where  all  their  houses  would  be 
grouped.  It  appears,  however,  that  even  the  land  on  which  the  family 
dwelling  was  erected  was  not  the  private  property  of  each  family  but 
that  the  obligation  of  sharing  fell  on  it  also.  Hence  all  dispossessed  in- 
habitants became  deprived  of  their  houses  and  razed  them  to  re-erect 
them  on  a  new  plot  of  ground.  The  law  always  granted  them  a  certain 
delay,  for  it  was  desired  to  avoid  the  profound  disturbance  that  the 
simultaneous  demolition  of  all  of  the  houses  would  have  provoked. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  this  obligation  to  reconstruct  the  house  elsewhere 
was  not  unduly  laborious,  for  the  rural  dwellings  of  Sweden  were 
made  of  planks  and  could  easily  be  knocked  down  and  transported. 
Thus  the  habit  of  living  in  isolated  houses  persisted  in  Sweden  despite 
these  conditions,  the  system  of  hamarsfypt. 

We  see  in  Russia,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  periodic  redistribution 
of  land  was  conducive  to  a  village  life.  It  is  at  a  recent  date,  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  under  the  influence  of  land  short- 
age and  of  increasing  population,  that  the  people  came  to  desire  the 
periodic  reallotment  of  the  land  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  same 
agricultural  community.  Thus  developed  a  Russian  institution  that  has 
long  been  taken  for  a  Slav  institution,  the  mir;  from  the  territory  of 
the  mir  each  father  of  a  family  received  a  few  parcels  distributed  in 
each  quality  of  soil  and  kept  them  until  the  next  reallotment,  which 
was  made,  according  to  differing  regions,  every  six,  ten,  fifteen,  and 
even  twenty  years.  This  evolution,  more  recent  than  the  one  in 
Sweden,  did  not  lead  to  the  periodic  displacement  of  the  dwellings; 
the  peasant  had  to  establish  his  habitation  on  the  place  chosen  for  the 
village  so  as  not  to  move  to  each  portion  and  to  make  possible  cer- 
tain common  endeavors.  It  seems  that,  in  this  case,  the  obligations  of 
the  agricultural  community  had  separated  the  peasants  from  the  system 
of  isolated  farms  and  led  them  to  dwell  in  groups.68 

88  J.  St.  Lewinski,  op.  cit.,  passim;  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit,f  I,  25;  II,  213, 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  285 

The  stage  of  fixed  possession  within  the  agricultural  community. — 
A  new  stage  of  agriculture  commences  the  day  that  increase  of  popu- 
lation renders  a  better  management  of  the  soil  necessary.  The  peasants 
come  to  desire  to  cultivate  the  same  land  rather  than  to  shift  their 
place  of  cultivation  periodically;  they  can  thus  realize  for  themselves, 
individually,  all  the  benefits  of  the  labor  they  have  bestowed  on  the 
fields.  This  agricultural  formula  does  not  everywhere  date  from  the 
same  period,  but  it  reveals  a  systematic  organization  with  fixed  rules 
which  are  imposed  upon  all  the  members  of  the  agricultural  com- 
munity. In  a  large  part  of  Europe  it  has  been  conceived  in  such  a 
manner  that  it  can  be  adapted,  during  the  year,  to  the  production  of 
cereals  and  to  the  care  of  domestic  animals.  It  requires  a  triennial  ro- 
tation of  a  winter  cereal  the  first  year,  a  spring  cereal  the  second  year, 
and  fallowing  the  third  year.  In  practice  this  rotation  precludes  the 
isolated  mode  of  habitation.  All  the  arable  territory  is  divided  into 
three  portions  devoted  respectively  to  wheat,  oats,  and  fallowing.  On 
each  of  these  the  freedom  of  the  cultivator  was  limited  by  a  discipline 
of  cooperative  work  and  community  obligations;  it  was  necessary  for 
everyone  to  work  at  the  same  time  on  the  agricultural  tasks,  leaving 
the  stubble  fields  and  fallowed  ground  to  the  flocks.  As  each  person 
had  his  plots  scattered  in  each  of  the  three  fields,  it  was  impossible  for 
the  house  to  be  located  in  the  center  of  its  scattered  domain.  The 
houses  were  grouped  around  a  central  nucleus,  wells,  bridge,  and  later, 
church  or  chateau;  in  dwelling  in  this  village,  the  peasant  was  really 
in  the  center  of  his  domain.  One  understands  that  "the  necessity  of 
an  agreement  on  the  conduct  of  the  cultivations  .  .  .  had  created  the 
need  of  centralizing  the  exploitation  of  the  soil  at  some  point.  A  co- 
operative regulation  of  the  dates  of  the  events  in  agricultural  life,  the 
fixing  of  certain  periods  of  exploitation  necessitated  the  settled  habitat 
as  beneficial  to  all.  .  .  .  This  gave  rise  to  the  common  central  village 
in  which  all  roads  terminated." 69 

This  organization,  extremely  ancient  in  certain  countries,  originated 
in  certain  other  countries  at  dates  before  recorded  history.  In  Sweden, 
the  periodic  redistribution  of  lands  according  to  the  system  of  ham- 
arstypt  gradually  tended  with  agricultural  progress  to  be  replaced 
by  that  of  solsfypt;  individual  enjoyment  of  the  land  was  substituted 
for  collective  use.  This  revolution  was  in  the  process  of  being  accom- 
plished in  the  epoch  of  the  drafting  of  the  provincial  laws,  during  the 
thirteenth  and  until  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  centuries;  but  it  was  ac- 
complished only  gradually  as  those  interested  demanded  it.  The  result 
of  this  definitive  division  of  the  land  was  the  choice  of  a  location  for 

60  P.  Vidal  dc  la  Blache,  op.  cit.,  pp.  185-186. 


286  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  village,  where  the  peasants'  houses  came  to  be  gathered.  This  loca- 
tion was  divided  between  the  cultivators  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of 
their  holdings;  each  was  allowed  to  fence  his  portion;  he  might  erect 
any  buildings  he  chose  on  condition  of  preserving  a  certain  space  be- 
tween his  own  and  his  neighbor's  house  to  prevent  fires  and  allow 
adequate  drainage.70 

More  recently,  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  one  notes  in  Java 
a  process  of  substituting  villages  with  their  communal  customs  for 
the  dispersion  of  individual  houses.  In  the  region  of  rice  plantations, 
irrigation  often  necessitates  the  grouping  of  the  dwellings.  Examples 
are  frequent  in  India.  In  Pudu-Vayal,  thirty  miles  northwest  of  Mad- 
ras, the  village  territory  is  divided  into  sections  in  accordance  with  the 
value  of  the  soil  One  section  corresponds  to  the  land  bordering  on 
the  reservoir  and  least  exposed  to  drought;  another  section  of  fields 
is  farther  from  the  water  supply;  and  a  third  section  receives  enough 
water  only  every  two  or  three  years.71  Here  also  the  situation  obliges 
the  inhabitants  to  locate  in  a  central  place. 

The  stage  of  specialized  culture. — New  progress  of  rural  economy 
and  new  needs  have  led  certain  advanced  peoples  to  perceive,  often  at 
an  early  stage,  the  inconveniences  of  the  grouped  habitat.  The  entan- 
glement of  plots  of  land  holds  the  cultivators  in  a  rigid  dependence 
upon  others  and  obliges  them  to  diverse  services:  to  always  raise  the 
same  crop  on  the  same  plot  of  ground,  to  harvest  together,  to  allow  the 
neighbors  to  cross  their  fields,  to  lose  time  in  reaching  the  more  distant 
plots,  to  desist  from  undertaking  improvements  until  agreement  and 
collaboration  are  obtained,  to  irrationally  choose  the  crops  to  be  culti- 
vated. From  the  agricultural  point  of  view,  the  isolated  habitat  which 
reposes  in  the  midst  of  its  fields  represents  a  superior  practice;  it  al- 
lows the  cultivator  his  liberty;  it  brings  him  near  his  soil;  it  allows 
him  to  escape  from  the  people  of  the  village.  The  isolated  farm  forms 
the  strongest  economic  unity  and  is  independent  of  the  constraint  of 
others. 

Certain  countries  also  which  are  permeated  by  the  commercial  spirit 
and  anxious  to  direct  their  agriculture  as  much  towards  supplying 
food  for  great  cities  as  towards  domestic  consumption  have  deliberately 
formed  compact  blocks  from  the  dispersed  fields  of  the  village  com- 
munities in  order  to  establish  isolated  farms.  England  completed  this 
revolution  in  two  periods,  one  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries 
and  the  other  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries;  this  strenu- 
ous operation  bears  the  name  of  "enclosure."  By  the  formation  of  in- 

70Beauchet,  op.  at.,  pp.  32-33,  41-43. 

71 J.  St.  Lewinski,  op.  at.,  p.  30;  G.  L.  Gommc,  op,  at.,  pp.  23-24. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  287 

dependent  farms  full  initiative  is  granted  to  the  farmer;  he  can  arrange 
his  work  and  production  to  his  own  fancy,  give  clover  and  turnips  a 
place  in  the  rotation,  feed  more  cattle,  enclose  his  fields  in  order  to  bet- 
ter care  for  his  flocks.  This  revolution  in  methods  of  cultivation  led 
to  a  revolution  in  habitat,  which  became  dispersed  where  it  had  been 
concentrated.  European  colonists  established  in  the  New  World  have 
frequently  adopted  this  dispersed  type  as  the  most  modern  and  most 
economical  of  rural  establishments.  It  is  also  in  the  direction  of  disper- 
sion that  the  tendency  to  specialization  of  crops  which  we  note  nearly 
everywhere  in  the  world  is  acting:  market  gardening  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean countries,  orcharding  in  the  same  region,  and  intensive  grass- 
raising  in  the  plain  of  the  Po. 

In  order  to  explain  how  certain  men  have  acquired  the  habit  of 
dwelling  together  in  villages  and  certain  others  of  living  on  isolated 
farms  or  in  small  hamlets  we  must  appeal  to  all  the  natural,  social, 
and  agricultural  conditions  of  their  surroundings.  The  study  of  habitat 
is  one  chapter  of  the  study  of  rural  civilizations;  it  should  go  back  to 
their  distant  origins  and  follow  their  evolution  to  the  present  period. 
If  we  wish  to  classify  the  types  of  habitat,  we  must  consider  them  as 
manifestations  of  human  enterprise  which  are  not  necessarily  de- 
termined by  natural  geography.  In  the  same  country  during  the  course 
of  its  history  the  factors  affecting  habitat  are  not  acting  uniformly; 
agricultural  colonization  has  succeeded  in  adopting  a  succession  of  dif- 
ferent types  of  habitat.  In  the  same  country,  one  type  of  habitat  already 
well  established  has  often  changed  into  another  if  the  conditions  of  the 
human  environment  have  made  that  evolution  necessary, 

III.  THE  TYPES  OF  GROUPED  HABITAT 

Agglomeration  finds  its  expression  in  the  village,  the  fixed  habitat 
of  a  group  of  cultivators.  What  method  can  be  adopted  for  classifying 
the  variations  of  this  type  ?  It  seems  necessary  to  consider  especially  the 
position  of  the  fields  with  relation  to  the  village.  This  situation  pro- 
vides the  index  which  permits  us  to  indicate  the  cause  and  the  origin 
of  grouping.  Three  principal  varieties  of  villages  can  thus  be  recog- 
nized: (1)  the  village  with  rotation  of  fields,  which  was  widespread 
in  the  Middle  Ages  in  western  and  central  Europe  but  which  is  cer- 
tainly of  more  ancient  origin;  (2)  the  village  with  contiguous  fields, 
of  more  recent  origin,  belonging  to  a  period  o£  increasing  population 
and  associated  with  colonization  of  lands  which  had  formerly  lain  un- 
used in  the  spaces  between  the  ancient  village  domains;  (3)  the  village 
separated  from  its  fields,  a  paradoxical  creation  from  the  point  of  view 
of  economics,  security,  or  large  estates. 


288  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

A,  THE  VILLAGE  WITH  ROTATION  OF  FIELDS 

A  product  of  an  advanced  stage  of  agricultural  civilization,  this  type 
of  village  has  been  known  in  Europe  since  a  very  ancient  period.  As 
a  common  and  permanent  habitat  belonging  to  a  numerous  population 
living  on  a  limited  area  of  land,  it  presents  some  notable  characteris- 
tics. The  cultivated  territory  is  divided  into  three  portions,  each  de- 
voted in  turn  from  one  year  to  another  to  the  production  of  winter 
cereals,  spring  cereals,  and  fallowing.  This  rotation  seems  to  nourish 
both  the  people  and  the  cattle.  It  assures  regular  pasturage  for  domestic 
animals;  when  the  crops  are  once  harvested,  the  fields  become  a  vast 
pasture  open  to  all  the  flocks  of  the  village.  This  system  of  open  pas- 
ture, called  open-field  in  England,  is  made  possible  by  great  expanses 
of  open  fields  without  fences  and  nearly  without  trees.  One  of  the  most 
remarkable  traits  of  rural  life  in  villages  is  the  pasturage  of  the  com- 
bined flocks  of  cattle  on  the  fallowed  and  stubbled  fields.  It  is  neces- 
sary for  all  the  fields  to  be  cleared  of  the  crops  at  the  same  time;  thus 
harvests  must  be  made  quickly  and  this  leads  to  cooperation.  A  soli- 
darity of  work  unites  the  villagers,  dominates  the  agricultural  system, 
fixes  the  modes  of  exploitation,  and  necessitates  living  in  grouped 
dwellings.  "The  dwelling  could  scarcely  be  isolated  since  it  cannot  con- 
centrate its  fields  about  it.  There  is  only  one  means  for  a  man  to  live 
in  the  center  of  his  holdings;  this  is  to  dwell  in  the  village.  Rotation 
of  fields  has  imposed  a  regime  of  labor  which  makes  enclosure  impos- 
sible and  obligates  people  to  adopt  the  common  pasture  and  the  tan- 
gled parcels  of  land.  The  independence  of  the  land  does  not  orig- 
inate in  an  individual  initiative  which  is  free  from  services  to  the  com- 
munity. It  is  necessary  to  live  in  the  community  or  else  to  separate 
oneself  completely  by  emigrating  to  some  new  region  and  establishing 
an  isolated  farm."  72 

This  agrarian  organization  reveals  itself  as  one  of  the  most  ancient 
known  to  our  civilization.  The  inhabiting  of  villages  probably  orig- 
inates in  past  history  at  the  unknown  time  when  the  agricultural  life 
which  is  associated  with  it  arose.  We  find  it  clearly  defined  with  the 
triennial  rotation  in  the  ninth  century  in  France  in  the  registers  of 
Saint  Germain-des  Pres 73  and  in  Belgium  in  the  registers  of  the  abbey 

72  G.  Hottenger,  Morcellement  et  remembrcment,  1914,  p.  40.  Numerous  authors 
have  written  about  this  type  of  village;  see:  O.  Schliiter,  Deutsches  Siedelungstvesen,  in 
the  Reallexikon  o£  J.  Hoops,  1911-1913,  pp.  402-439;  F.  Seebohm,  The  English  Village 
Community,  1898;  J.  Wilson,  "Agriculture  and  Its  History.  Ireland,  Clare  Island,"  Proc. 
R.  Irish  Acad.,  May,  1911;  A.  Mcitzen,  op.  citt,  and  particularly  his  atlas;  J.  Flach,  The 
Historic  Origin  of  Habitation  and  of  Inhabited  Places  in  France,  not  dated;  H  Bernhard, 
"Die  landlichen  Siedlungsformen,"  Geogr.  Zeitschr.,  1919,  pp.  20-32;  VinogradofF, 
English  Society  in  the  Eleventh  Century,  1908, 

"M.  B.  Guerard,  Polyptyque  de  I' abbe  Irminon,  1884:  Prolegomenes,  p.  649. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  289 

of  Mount  Blandin.74  Hanssen  indicates  its  existence,  judging  from 
certain  manuscripts  in  Germany  in  the  eighth  century,75  and  Seebohm 
likewise  in  England  in  the  seventh  century.76  But  these  medieval 
manuscripts,  as  far  back  as  they  may  go,  do  not  record  the  origin  of 
the  organization  that  they  mention.  Everything  demonstrates,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  continuity  between  the  villages  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  villages  of  the  preceding  epochs.  In  England, 
the  use  of  marl  in  the  time  of  the  Britons  implies  the  practice  of  a  regu- 
lar rotation;  according  to  Seebohm  77  the  Saxons  found  there  an  an- 
cient agriculture  with  the  village  community  and  open-field  dating  from 
a  considerable  time  before  the  Romans.  In  his  interesting  book  on  the 
English  village,  H.  Peake 7S  goes  back  to  the  prehistoric  origin  of  the 
village  community.  He  assumes  that  a  community  system  based  on  the 
cooperative  cultivation  of  arable  land  ought  to  date  from  the  time 
when  the  cultivation  of  grains  begins,  that  is,  with  the  neolithic  epoch; 
and  he  thinks  that  the  establishment  of  the  first  villages  in  East  Eng- 
land coincides  with  the  arrival  of  men  of  the  Alpine  race  (about  1000 
or  900  B.  C.)  who  cleared  the  heavy  soil  of  the  plains  and  there  began 
the  growing  of  these  grains  according  to  the  triennial  rotation  as  they 
had  done  in  their  central  European  home. 

In  Germany,  as  the  excellent  studies  of  Gradmann  have  shown,  the 
regions  of  villages  correspond  to  the  territories  first  peopled,  with  those 
that  have  been  the  most  completely  freed  of  vestiges  of  the  neolithic 
age,  and  with  those  that  the  neolithic  peoples  had  found  free  from  for- 
ests, open  and  adapted  to  agricultural  establishments.  In  these  natural 
clearings  which  formed  gaps  in  the  primitive  forests,  the  pioneers  of 
humanity  created  their  fields  and  built  their  villages;  our  actual  vil- 
lages are  the  direct  descendants  of  theirs.  .  .  .  These  open  spaces 
amidst  forest  masses  determined  the  first  agricultural  societies.  It  is  to 
the  prehistoric  epoch  that  we  must  go  in  order  to  find  the  origin  of 
the  village  with  rotating  fields.  This  ancient  concentration  of  habitat 
represents  a  tradition  which  is  so  powerful  that  in  certain  countries 
which  have  renounced  the  division  of  land  and  the  scattering  of  hold- 
ings for  the  redivision  of  land  in  independent  holdings  the  inhabitants 
have  perpetuated  the  village;  today  it  is  from  this  center  that  the  land 
of  each,  freed,  however,  of  all  community  duties,  is  exploited.  Without 

74  Cited  by  V.  Brants,  in  the  Essai  hitforique  stir  la  condition  des  classes  rurales  en 
Belgiquff  jusqu'a  la  fin  du  XVIII  stick,  1880,  p.  206, 

75  See  J.  Wilson,  op.  cit..  p.  10. 

70  F.  Seebohm,  op.  cit.,  pp.  376-379. 

77  F.  Seebohm,  op.  cit.,  pp.  250-251,  430-436. 

78  H.  Peake,  The  English  Village.  The  Origin  and  Decay  of  its  Community,  1922. 


290  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

doubt  we  have  an  example  o£  this  incomplete  evolution  in  the  island 
of  Aurigny.79 

Certain  countries  of  old  civilization  also  have  the  village  habitat 
with  agriculture  carried  on  cooperatively.  This  is  the  case  for  tens  of 
thousands  of  Indian  villages  where  the  necessity  of  controlling  the  ir- 
rigation water  has  led  to  the  grouping  of  peasants.  Everywhere  one 
notes  the  grouping  of  the  houses,  the  scattering  of  plots,  the  long  dis- 
tances which  must  be  traversed  in  order  to  reach  the  distant  fields.  In 
a  (certain)  district  in  Tinnevelly  there  are  1,913  parcels  of  land  of 
which  600  are  less  than  a  half-acre,  most  of  them  located  about  4.5 
kilometers  from  the  village;  in  Eruvellipet  (160  miles  south  of  Mad- 
ras) a  holding  of  30  acres  is  divided  into  21  pieces;  in  (a  certain)  dis- 
trict of  Tanjore  a  holding  of  10  acres  is  divided  into  more  than  10 
pieces.  This  subdivision,  this  dispersion  of  the  fields  of  the  same  culti- 
vator throughout  the  village  territory  is  customary  in  the  United  Prov- 
inces and  the  presidency  of  Bombay.  Slater,  who  has  shown  the  many 
handicaps  in  this  arrangement,  states  that  it  is  rare  to  see  villagers  con- 
sent to  diminish  these  difficulties;  so  strongly  rooted  are  the  traditions 
of  village  life.80 

B.  THE  VILLAGE  WITH  NEIGHBORING  FIELDS 

In  addition  to  the  ancient  villages  with  scattered  fields  one  finds 
others  established  during  the  Middle  Ages  by  the  colonists  who  cleared 
the  forests  and  swamps  of  Europe. 

We  know  that  this  period  witnessed  the  appearance  of  many  isolated 
farms  and  hamlets :  Why  then,  among  generations  recognizing  the  eco- 
nomic superiority  of  the  isolated  hamlet,  should  there  be  found  men 
who  adopt  the  grouped  habitat?  In  reality,  as  many  of  these  new  col- 
onies were  established  among  the  marshes  and  forests,  there  are  na- 
tural conditions  which  lead  to  grouping.  But,  in  contrast  to  the  vil- 
lages with  rotation  of  fields,  in  these  new  villages  there  was  a  carefully 
maintained  contact  of  each  house  with  its  fields.  This  contiguity  re- 
sulted from  the  general  plan  of  the  village,  which  was  usually  deter- 
mined by  the  great  proprietor  who  founded  the  colony.  The  farms 
were  arranged  to  the  right  and  left  of  a  road;  behind  each  of  them 
the  fields  extended  in  long  parallel  lanes  across  the  entire  available 
territory.  It  is  to  this  variety  of  villages,  established  in  the  ninth  and 
fourteenth  centuries,  that  the  German  scientists  (Meitzen,  Bernhard, 
Schliiter,  Gradmann)  give  the  well-chosen  name  of  Reihendorjer 
(villages  in  a  line).  They  distinguish  two  varieties:  the  villages  of 

70  S.  Harris,  "La  communaute  de  village  d' Aurigny,"  Ann.  de  geog.,  1926,  XXXV, 
293-297. 

80  G.  Slater,  op,  cif.,  passim. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  291 

the  marshes  (Marschuf endorser)  and  the  forest  villages  (Waldhuf en- 
dor  fer)  . 

The  marsh  villages  are  established  in  wet  or  flooded  regions  of  the 
low  countries  of  western  Europe  along  the  dikes  and  canals.  Each 
house  clings  to  the  inner  side  of  the  dike;  and  its  fields,  divided  into 
strips  by  the  ditches,  form  a  narrow  band  stretching  across  the  drained 
land.  This  type  of  village  originated  in  the  Netherlands  countries, 
where  it  has  several  examples  among  the  polders  (residents  of  low 
land)  and  in  the  colonies  of  peat-workers.  There  are  Dutch  colonies 
carried  into  the  German  countries  of  the  North  Sea,  along  the  Elbe 
and  the  Weser;  the  first  was  established  at  Vahr  near  Bremen  in 
1106  and  the  type  spread  during  the  thirteenth  and  the  fourteenth 
centuries,  always  with  the  aid  of  Hollanders;  and  one  sees  it  still  de- 
veloping in  the  nineteenth  century  among  the  German  peat- workers. 
The  same  system  is  established  in  other  drained  regions,  such  as  the 
Fens  of  England  or  the  low  plains  of  the  Po  basin'.81 

The  forest  villages  were  located  along  the  valleys  or  the  roads  of 
mountain  forests.  Here  again  the  habitations  arranged  on  each  side 
of  a  road  had  a  long  strip  of  ground  which  included  the  gardens  and 
meadows  on  the  low  ground,  the  fields  higher  up,  and  the  pastures 
and  wood  lots  highest  of  all.  These  villages  abounded  in  the  Black 
Forest,  and  one  finds  them  also  in  Austria,  Silesia,  and  Pomerania.82 
They  are  likewise  observed  in  certain  parts  of  France  that  were  cleared 
in  ancient  times,  as  in  North  Caux.  Leopold  Delisle  has  followed,  in 
the  manuscripts  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  the  history  of 
the  villages  located  in  the  clearings  of  the  Norman  forests.  The  land 
destined  for  habitations  was  divided  into  equal  portions;  at  one  end 
of  these  long  pieces  each  man  erected  his  cottage,  and  these  cottages 
were  aligned  on  each  side  of  the  road  which  served  the  village.  Many 
villages  still  preserve  this  arrangement.83 

C.  THE  VILLAGES  LOCATED  APART  FROM  THE  PIELDS 

In  certain  villages  one  observes  no  direct  or  near  contact  between  the 
dwelling  of  the  cultivator  and  his  fields;  grouping  is  not  based  on  any 
agricultural  plan.  It  even  seems  that  the  position  of  the  fields  forms 
a  paradoxical  difficulty  for  cultivation;  there  is  complete  separation 
between  the  two  elements  of  the  village,  houses  and  fields.  One  notices 

81  See  Bernhard,  off.  cit.,  p.  28;  Schliiter,  op.  cit.,  pp.  402,  436;  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit , 
I,  43,  49;  II,  31-36,  343  et  seq;  Blink,  Nederland,  III,  257-260.  See  also  the  Atlas  of 
Marinelli. 

32  See  R.  Gradmann,  op.  cit.  (Forschungen,  1913),  and  Pctermanns  Mitt,,  1910; 
A,  Meitzen,  op.  cit.,  I,  26,  416;  II,  396-400,  417-418;  M.  Mayr,  Die  Sieddungen-Bohmer- 
wcUd  (Forschungen,  1912). 

83  Leopold  Delisle,  ttudes  sur  la  condition  de  la  classe  agricole  et  I'etat  de  I' agriculture 
en  Normatidie  au  moyen  dge,  1851,  pp.  395  et  scq. 


292  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

this  dissociation  in  villages  which  have  been  forced  for  defense  to  perch 
on  a  high  point,  to  huddle  together,  and  to  fortify,  remaining  often 
tens  of  meters  distant  from  their  fields,  above  the  valley  lands  which 
they  cultivate.  It  has  been  stated  that  these  dwellings  hasten  to  descend 
and  to  approach  the  fields  whenever  security  is  obtained.  In  the  south- 
ern Alps  the  villages  on  the  heights  fall  in  ruins,  and  their  inhabitants 
migrate  to  the  low  lands.  No  less  complete  is  the  separation  in  the 
great  villages  of  southern  Italy,  where  the  great  proprietors  gather  all 
their  workmen  together  and  where  the  workers  must  often  go  from 
twenty  to  thirty  kilometers  to  reach  the  fields.  In  central  and  southern 
Italy  there  are  also  numerous  vineyards  at  a  distance  from  the  village, 
necessitating  the  erection  of  a  temporary  dwelling  at  picking  time. 
In  the  Peloponnesus,  many  mountain  communes  have  land  in  the 
plains,  often  distant  several  days  travel;  here  they  construct  a  house 
which  they  inhabit  during  the  winter  fieldwork,  living  in  the  moun- 
tain village  in  summer.84 

IV.  THE  TYPES  OF  DISPERSION 

The  dispersion  of  dwellings  marks  the  triumph  of  individualistic 
over  social  tendencies.  Why  did  the  isolated  habitat  persist  for  centuries 
in  certain  countries?  Why  have  other  countries  chosen  to  substitute  it 
for  the  grouped  habitat?  Why  have  new  countries  adopted  it  and  not 
the  grouped  habitat?  These  questions  lead  us  to  distinguish  within  the 
dispersed  type  four  varieties  which  are  differentiated  essentially  by 
their  age,  that  is  to  say  by  the  date  of  colonization  or  of  agricultural 
evolution  in  which  they  appeared.  They  are  (1)  primary  dispersion, 
of  ancient  origin;  (2)  intercalary  dispersion;  (3)  secondary  dispersion; 
(4)  primary  dispersion,  of  recent  origin. 

A.  PRIMARY  DISPERSION,  OF  ANCIENT  ORIGIN 

We  know  that  the  grouped  habitat  and  the  existence  of  villages  re- 
veal to  us  certain  necessities  of  rural  economy :  fertile  soils,  suitable  for 
the  production  of  grains;  limited  land,  so  that  the  use  must  be  regu- 
lated and  divided  among  the  members  of  the  community.  The  same 
necessities  are  not  imposed  in  the  lands,  woods,  and  mountains  which 
are  less  fertile  and  more  adapted  to  pasturage  than  to  cultivation.  The 
arable  lands  are  scattered  discontinuously  over  uncultivated  areas;  vast 
waste  areas  are  open  to  roving  cattle.  To  these  less  compact  resources 
corresponds  a  looser  and  more  dispersed  habitat.  Many  countries 
adopted  the  dispersed  type  in  an  early  period  and  have  faithfully 
clung  to  it  throughout  many  centuries.  This  ancient  custom  is  ex- 

84  On  these  dissociated  villages  see:  D.  Mouralis,  op.  cit,,  passim;  O.  Marinelli,  Geogr. 
Teacher,  1925,  p.  203;  A.  Philippson,  Der  Peloponnesos,  1892. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  293 

pressed  in  the  landscape  itself,  in  the  shady  appearance  of  the  hedges 
and  fences,  earthen  walls,  and  rows  of  trees  which  surround  each 
habitation.  Thus  results  the  old  contrast  between  the  bare,  deserted, 
fenceless  fields  of  the  village  regions  and  the  verdant  groves  of  the 
countries  of  isolated  farms  where  nearly  all  the  fields  are  enclosed. 

Among  the  oldest  places  with  isolated  habitat  is  the  Britannic  west 
(Ireland,  Scotland,  Wales,  Devon,  Cornwall).  In  his  description  of  a 
trip  across  Wales,  Leland  states  that  none  of  the  inhabitants  live  in 
grouped  habitats.  All  the  historians  agree  in  recognizing  that  hereto- 
fore Cornwall  has  been  essentially  a  country  of  dispersed  farms  long 
since  enclosed.  We  have  the  same  certainty  regarding  Ireland.85 

It  is  the  same  in  west  France,  in  Normandy  and  Brittany,  as  well 
as  in  the  mountainous  regions.  In  the  northern  Alps,  Arbos  shows  the 
general  tendency  to  dispersion  in  the  form  of  hamlets  or  of  isolated 
farms.86  According  to  Cholley,  the  settlement  of  the  mountains  in 
Savoy  was  accomplished  during  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  by 
means  of  the  dispersed  form.  "The  settlement  is  found  linked  to  a 
particular  form  of  individual  or  familial  exploitation.  .  .  .  The  divi- 
sion into  little  hamlets  seems  to  be  the  original  manner  of  settlement 
of  the  region,  and  it  is  under  the  form  of  small  hamlets  or  of  isolated 
farms  that  settlement  proceeded  in  the  sixteenth  century.  .  .  .  The  iso- 
lated house  and  the  simple  hamlet  (from  one  to  ten  houses)  appear 
to  be  the  original  forms  of  settlement  of  the  country;  and  the  villages 
seem  to  be  derived  from  these.  .  ,  .  The  map  of  scale  1 : 80,000  clearly 
shows  this  swarming  of  scattered  houses  and  groups  of  two  or  three. 
For  example,  in  Great  Bornand,  the  twenty-seven  houses  of  the  hamlet 
of  Chinaillon  are  in  reality  spread  over  nearly  a  kilometer." 8T  There 
is  the  same  scattering  of  dwellings  in  Segala  and  upper  Cevennes 
(central  part),  in  the  mountains  of  Roussillon,  and  in  the  Vosges. 
The  settlement  of  the  Vosges  mountains  was  effected  during  the 
twelfth  century  by  means  of  hamlets  and  isolated  farms,  in  distinction 
to  the  plain,  which  is  the  region  of  clustered  villages.88  In  Brittany, 
dispersion  is  the  rule;  it  is  even  tending  to  increase.  "The  little  groups 
of  two  hearths  are  multiplying;  the  peasants  isolate  themselves  in  their 
corners  of  meadow  between  the  four  walls  of  their  ditches."89 

85  A.  Meitzen,  Die  verschiedene  Weiss  des  Ubergangs  vom  Nomadenleben  zum  festen 
Siedlung,  7e  congres  geographiqtte  international,  1889,  2e  partie,  pp.  483-498;  G.  L. 
Gomme,  op.  dt.,  pp.  141-142;  F.  Seebohm,  op.  cit,,  pp.  240-242;  R.  H.  Tawney,  The 
Agrarian  Problem  in  the  Sixteenth  Century,  1912,  p.  262;  A.  G.  Bowen,  "Study  of  Rural 
Settlements  in  South  West  Wales,"  Gffogr.  Teacher,  1926,  pp,  317-325. 

86  Ph.  Arbos,  La  vie  pastorale  dans  les  Alpes  jrangaises,  1924,  pp,  481,  499,  519,  529. 

87  A.  Cholley,  Les  Prealpes  de  Savoie,  1925.  See  the  chapters  on  settlement  and  habitat. 

88  A.  Fournier,  Topographic  ancienne  du  d£partement  des  Vosges,  1897. 
80  C.  Vallaux,  La  Basse-Bretagne,  1906,  pp.  131-132, 


294  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

In  Germany,  west  of  the  Weser,  as  far  as  one  goes  back  in  history 
one  finds  isolated  farms  each  surrounded  with  its  fenced  plot  of  land; 
dispersion  is  the  rule  also  in  the  German  Alps  and  in  Bavarian  Bohmer- 
wald.  In  the  rocky  lands  of  north  Europe  amidst  the  scattered  bits  of 
arable  land  the  unit  of  settlement  is  the  farm;  this  is  likewise  the  case 
in  Greenland  and  Iceland.  In  the  Dmaric  Mountains,  in  the  western 
part  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  the  dispersed  habitat  prevails.  "The  vil- 
lages often  extend  for  seven  or  eight  kilometers,  the  hamlets  often 
for  two  or  three  kilometers,  and  the  houses  are  separated  by  a  kilometer 
or  more.  ...  All  the  buildings,  land,  orchard,  forest,  are  grouped 
around  the  house;  the  whole  thing  forms  an  economic  unit."90 

In  Mexico,  in  contrast  to  haciendas  and  their  villages  of  peons  and 
in  contrast  also  with  the  village  communities  of  the  Indians  which  oc- 
cupy the  better  land,  in  the  mountainous  regions  and  the  least  acces- 
sible land  one  notices  many  ranches  or  small  rural  properties  isolated 
or  in  small  hamlets;  one  finds  them  particularly  in  the  hilly  regions 
with  small  plots  of  land  which  are  too  small  for  large-scale  exploita- 
tion.91 While  villages  predominate  in  the  east  of  India,  the  peasants 
of  Malabar,  Cochin,  and  Travancore  avoid  grouping  their  houses;  and 
dispersion  is  most  prominent  in  the  localities  where  the  basic  crop  is 
not  a  cereal  such  as  rice  but  a  tree  such  as  the  coconut.92 

B.  INTERCALARY  DISPERSION 

In  addition  to  the  countries  where  the  custom  of  the  isolated  habitat 
is  lost  in  the  night  of  time,  there  are  others  of  more  recent  coloniza- 
tion where  the  zones  of  dispersion  are  intercalated  among  the  zones  of 
grouped  habitats.  Between  the  clearings  which  were  primitively  culti- 
vated exist  some  forests  where  the  clearings  of  medieval  times  have 
made  new  breaks;  here,  in  these  lands,  the  waste  lands  and  the  woods, 
infiltrations  of  colonists  have  established  themselves  beyond  the  bound- 
aries of  the  ancient  villages. 

Illustrations  of  these  irregular  scattered  settlements  interspersed  be- 
tween the  village  clearings  are  not  lacking  in  France.  Musset  described 
in  Bas-Marne  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  a  new  generation 
of  isolated  properties,  farms,  or  small  holdings,  which  were  placed  in 
the  intervals  between  the  former  establishments.  They  were  character- 
ized by  bearing  the  name  of  the  proprietor  who  founded  or  owned 
them  preceded  by  the  article  and  followed  with  the  suffixes  iere  or  trie. 
The  abbot  Augot  counted  8,000  of  these  names  in  the  single  depart- 
ment of  Mayenne,  representing  about  2,500  persons;  settlement  was 

MJ.  Cvijic,  La  peninsule  bal\anique,  pp.  173-174,  216,  218-220. 
MSee  G.  McCutchen  McBride,  The  Land  Systems  of  Mexico,  1923. 
82  Slater,  op,  cit.,  p.  152. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  295 

made  here  at  the  expense  of  the  forest  by  successive  clearings.93  To  the 
west  of  Paris  one  notes  a  significant  contrast  between  the  large  an- 
cient villages  occupying  the  muddy  plateaus  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Mauldre  River  and  the  host  of  hamlets  and  individual  farms  spread 
out  on  the  left  bank;  most  of  these  scattered  places  are  of  more  recent 
date  than  the  villages.  .  .  .  M.  Quantin 94  tells  us  of  parts  of  Puisaye 
which  belong  to  the  department  of  Yonne  which  are  "covered  with 
innumerable  farms,  isolated  houses,  and  small  hamlets  scattered 
throughout  the  wooded  regions.  These  places  are  rarely  mentioned  in 
the  old  documents.  Most  of  them  originated  in  grants  (in  the  fifteenth 
century)  of  portions  of  the  domains  of  the  feudal  lords  or  monasteries 
to  individuals." 

In  Germany,  also,  lines  of  hamlets  and  separate  farms  are  inter- 
twined with  zones  of  villages.  These  forms  of  habitat,  originating  in 
the  medieval  clearings,  appear,  for  example,  in  the  valleys  of  the  Kin- 
zig  and  the  Murg  (in  the  Black  Forest),95  in  the  Westphalian 96  plain, 
in  the  hills  and  rugged  plateaus  which  prevail  in  the  basin  of  the 
Neckar  and  the  Mein.97  In  Switzerland  about  Lake  Zurich  beside  the 
ancient  villages  located  on  the  terraces  and  plains  are  to  be  found  a 
host  of  separate  dwellings  which  date  from  the  twelfth  to  the  four- 
teenth centuries,  which  were  the  great  period  of  forest  clearings.  .  .  .98 
In  the  Low  Countries,  on  the  sands  of  Brabant,  Limbourg,  Gueldre, 
and  Overyssel  the  farms  are  scattered  over  the  land,  along  the  roads 
and  paths,  each  in  the  midst  of  its  fields  surrounded  with  hedges  and 
earthen  levees. 

C.  SECONDARY  DISPERSION 

In  certain  countries  the  inconveniences  of  the  village  finally  appeared 
to  be  so  intolerable  to  agricultural  exploitation  that  the  dispersed  habi- 
tat was  substituted  for  the  villages,  often  progressively,  but  frequently 
deliberately,  without  a  transition  stage.  Thus  was  accomplished  a  true 
reconstruction  of  habitat,  and  even  a  rude  inversion.  But  one  should 
distinguish  between  instinctive  and  systematic  reconstruction. 

Frequently,  in  a  nearly  instinctive  manner,  the  peasants  attempt  by 
slow  degrees  to  free  themselves  from  the  concentrated  habitat.  About 
the  enormous  villages  of  Hungary  extend  fields  which  are  so  large  that 
it  is  nearly  impossible  to  operate  them  while  living  in  the  village.  Thus 
in  the  fields  of  rye,  maize,  potatoes,  and  of  forage  which  often  sur- 

88  R.  Musset,  Le  Bas-Marne,  1917,  pp.  223-239,  452-455. 
04  Cited  by  Flach,  Originc  de  I' habitation,  pp.  91-92,  63-64. 
05Gradmann,  op.  cit.f  Petermann's  Mitt,,  p,  186. 
1)8  Schliiter,  op.  at,,  pp,  543-544. 

07  A.  Meitzen,  op.  cit.,  I,  416-417,  431-441. 

08  A.  Schach,  op.  cit.,  pp.  80  et  seq. 


296  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

round  the  village  at  a  radius  of  ten  to  fifteen  kilometers,  they  have 
erected  temporary  structures,  more  simply  constructed  than  the  village 
houses,  where  the  peasants  dwell  during  the  season  of  field  work.  These 
temporary  shelters  are  composed  of  two  parts,  the  stable  and  the  living 
quarters  and  granary,  and  are  covered  with  tiles  or  reeds  and  sur- 
rounded with  a  fence  to  confine  the  cattle;  one  can  see  them  from  afar 
because  of  the  high  silhouette  of  the  well  sweep.  A  host  of  these  small 
houses  are  scattered  over  the  agricultural  outskirts  of  the  villages. 
This  dwelling  is  temporary  and  uncomfortable,  but  it  often  tends  to 
become  permanent;  thus  we  have  an  indication  of  a  tendency  to  the 
fragmentation  of  the  villages.  To  this  form  of  dispersion  another  may 
be  added:  this  is  the  small  agricultural  colony  which  is  established 
beyond  the  region  of  cultivation  in  the  solitude  of  the  forest,  the  peas- 
ant constructing  a  permanent  cottage  on  his  parcel  of  land,  thus  mark- 
ing a  new  stage  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  habitat." 

In  Swiss  Mittelland  one  can  observe  a  slow  dissociation  of  the  vil- 
lage communities  and  a  multiplication  of  individual  farms;  in  the  com- 
mune of  Wiilflingen  .  .  .  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  people  lived 
in  the  village  in  1880  but  today  less  than  half  do  so,  the  rest  being  on 
separate  farms.100  Certain  parts  of  Russia  are  evolving  similarly  to- 
wards independent  operation:  in  the  steppes  of  northern  Crimea,  as 
well  as  in  the  district  of  Konstantinograd,  many  peasants  have  pur- 
chased land  and  are  established  on  individual  farms.  In  the  northern 
part  of  the  government  of  Kherson,  certain  intelligent  farmers  became 
convinced  of  the  handicaps  of  village  life  and  have  settled  upon  their 
holdings;  in  thirty  years  the  average  number  of  persons  per  village  has 
decreased  one-half.101  During  these  last  years  the  isolated  establish- 
ments practicing  cultivation  of  many  crops  have  been  successful;  these 
examples  urge  the  Russian  peasants  to  desert  the  commune.  This 
transition  is  expensive,  however,  for  it  is  necessary  to  move  all  the 
buildings  to  the  new  location.102 

In  Egypt  the  village  is  no  longer  in  harmony  with  certain  require- 
ments of  the  new  economy.  With  the  perennial  irrigation  and  cultiva- 
tion of  summer  crops  like  cotton,  it  was  to  the  farmers'  interests  not  to 
remain  in  the  villages  but  to  live  closer  to  their  land.  Thus  ensued  the 
construction  of  rural  houses  on  the  land  cultivated  so  as  to  avoid  too 
long  journeys  for  men  and  beasts  in  going  to  the  fields  for  work;  for 

69  See  L.  de  Lagger,  op.  cit.,  pp.  438-444;  W.  Gotz,  Das  Donaugebiet,  1882,  pp.  266- 
277;  A.  Kain,  La  Hongrie,  1910,  p.  103. 

100  Bernhard,  of.  cit.,  p.  31. 

101  A.  Woeikof,  op.  cit.,  passim. 

102  See  Das  heutige  Russland,  1923,  p.  117. 

EDITORS*  NOTE. — The  present-day  situation  is  different.  See  Prokovitch's  and  Soro- 
kin's  papers. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  297 

a  quarter  of  a  century  these  isolated  farms  have  multiplied,  particularly 
in  the  Delta.103  In  certain  villages  in  southern  Italy,  for  example  Mai- 
lur,  in  order  to  decrease  the  inconveniences  of  the  many  small  plots 
the  proprietors  exchange  land,  each  attempting  to  group  his  holdings. 
When  they  have  succeeded,  they  construct  a  cabin  or  field  hut  which 
usually  is  only  a  shelter  for  their  implements  and  a  place  to  rest  dur- 
ing the  work  season  but  which  sometimes  becomes  a  comfortable  cot- 
tage, a  small  farmhouse.  Mallur  has  a  score  of  these  huts  and  the  fam- 
ilies living  in  five  of  them  have  left  the  village.  This  is,  says  Slater,  the 
beginning  of  an  evolution  similar  to  that  of  the  enclosures  in  Eng- 
land.104 

Returning  to  France,  we  observe  in  the  southern  parts  the  loosening 
of  the  bonds  which  held  the  people  so  closely  grouped  in  the  villages. 
De  Ribbe  105  shows  that  since  the  sixteenth  century  certain  villages 
of  Provence  which  were  erected  in  high  places  have  lost  a  part  of  their 
inhabitants  who  have  gone  down  into  the  plains  in  order  to  establish 
isolated  farms.  Mouralis  106  studied  the  movement  which  led  the  vil- 
lagers of  Baronnies  toward  the  valleys.  "The  fortress  village  perched 
on  a  height  tends  to  be  transformed  into  a  scattered  village  in  the  val- 
ley." They  emigrate  by  degrees  in  order  to  establish  themselves  in 
little  hamlets  of  three  or  four  houses  lying  near  their  fields.  "Of  more 
than  one  hundred  of  these  elevated  villages  which  offered  shelter  to  the 
population  of  Baronnies  during  the  Middle  Ages  only  fifty  are  in- 
habited today;  and  of  these  fifty  few  shelter  more  than  half  of  the  com- 
munal population.  Most  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  region,  nearly  54  per 
cent,  are  distributed  in  hamlets  and  farms."  The  same  tendency  toward 
dispersion  has  been  noted  in  Basse-Provence  .  .  .107;  the  peasant  feels 
himself  confined  in  the  village,  he  wishes  more  spacious  buildings,  so 
he  constructs  a  new  house  along  the  road  and  near  his  fields. 

The  secondary  type  of  dispersion  is  often  a  systematic  reconstruction. 
These  efforts  to  transform  the  ancient  arrangement  often  began  in  the 
distant  past.  Gradmann  10S  shows  that  during  the  course  of  the  last 
four  centuries  there  has  been  accomplished  in  Haute-Souabe  an  exten- 
sive rearrangement  whose  object  was  to  join  the  scattered  holdings  of 
each  village  cultivator  into  independent  unified  farms;  the  grouped 
habitats  have  been  destroyed  and  the  isolation  of  farmhouses  into  the 

108  A.  Demangeon,  "Problemes  et  aspects  actuel  de  la  vie  rurale  en  Egypte,"  Ann.  de 
geog.,  1926,  XXV,  155-173. 

104  Slater,  op.  cit.,  pp.  19-20. 

105  De  Ribbe,  La  societe  provenfde  h  la  fin  du  moyen  dge,  1898,  p.  455. 
100  Mouralis,  op.  cit.t  pp.  589  et  scq. 

107  G.  Sarmant,  "La  Basse-Provence  interieure,"  Ann.  de  geog.,  1925,  XXIV,  313-320. 

108  R.  Gradmann,  op.  at.   (Forschungen) ,  pp.  36-37,   129  et  seq.t  and  Petermanns 
Mitt.,  pp.  185-186. 


298  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

corresponding  properties  completed.  This  tendency  to  dismemberment, 
beginning  with  the  abbey  of  Kempten  about  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century  had  not  ceased  to  spread  by  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century;  it  represents  the  thought  of  an  agricultural  economy 
which  is  conscious  of  the  advantages  of  the  isolated  farm.  In  Schleswig- 
Holstein  a  parallel  transformation  was  accomplished  between  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  1766;  blocks  of  land  with 
fences  were  established  independent  of  the  rules  of  the  village  com- 
munity, and  the  farmhouse  was  rebuilt  on  each  piece.109 

The  establishment  of  the  solstyjt  in  Sweden  in  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries  had  led  to  the  organization  of  the  village  com- 
munity with  its  system  of  divided  and  rotated  fields.  From  the  begin- 
ning of  the  seventeenth  century  the  disadvantages  of  this  organization 
were  felt  keenly;  in  certain  villages  the  property  of  a  score  of  owners 
was  divided  into  five  or  six  thousand  parcels;  the  strips  were  so  narrow 
that  one  could  not  turn  with  a  carriage  without  entering  his  neighbor's 
land.110  In  addition,  by  a  series  of  laws  enacted  during  two  centuries 
the  storsfyft  or  large  holding  was  realized;  that  is,  the  division  of  the 
village  land  among  the  proprietors,  composition  of  large  plots  which 
were  within  reach  and  easy  to  till,  and  sometimes  the  uniting  of  all  of 
each  man's  holdings  into  one  piece.111  Certain  peasants  left  their  vil- 
lage in  order  to  construct  their  dwellings  on  their  own  land.  The 
Swedish  villages  are  now,  only  small  groups  of  five,  ten,  or  fifteen 
houses,  surrounded  by  a  swarm  of  individual  farms. 

In  Russia  the  agrarian  reform  of  Stolypin  in  1906  led  to  a  true  revo- 
lution in  habitat.  It  was  concerned  with  the  division  of  the  common 
property,  with  the  regrouping  of  scattered  plots,  with  the  dissolution 
of  the  villages  and  the  establishment  of  individual  farms.  Bern- 
hard  112  points  out  that  in  (a  certain  village  in)  Minsk,  of  thirty-four 
families,  twenty-two  had  obtained  holdings  of  30  hectares  on  which 
they  had  constructed  their  house  and  their  farm  buildings;  not  more 
than  a  dozen  families  remained  in  the  village.  If  this  reform  had  been 
general,  it  would  have  been  able  to  effect  a  total  transformation  of  the 
rural  habitat.  It  is  proper  to  ask,  in  connection  with  certain  countries 
where  the  dispersed  habitat  appears  to  be  very  old,  whether  this  dis- 
persion has  resulted  from  a  systematic  operation  similar  to  that  of 
Souabe  and  of  Sweden.  Would  it  not  also  be  the  case  for  the  fields  of 
Flanders  and  Lombardy,  which  have  long  been  reputed  for  their 

109  A.  Meitzen,  op.  tit.,  I,  58. 

110  L.  Grandeau,  "Rapports  du  jury  international.  Exposition  de  1900,"  Agriculture, 
1905,  p.  386. 

111  L.  Beauchet,  op.  cit.,  p.  58. 

112  H.  Bernhard,  op.  tit.,  p.  31. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  299 

advanced  economy  and  their  intensive  culture?  Historic  research  alone 
can  give  us  the  answer. 

The  most  curious  example  of  an  inversion  of  habitat  by  systematic 
reconstruction  o£  the  rural  systems  of  cultivation  is  found  in  Great 
Britain.  So  long  as  the  system  of  open-fields  with  its  three  fields  and 
community  customs  persisted,  the  houses  of  the  English  cultivators 
were  grouped  in  villages.  Wherever  the  agrarian  rearrangement  which 
resulted  from  the  enclosures  gathered  the  scattered  holdings  into  single 
farms,  the  farmhouses  became  established  in  the  midst  of  their  hold- 
ings. This  succession  of  individual  cultivation  was  associated  with  an 
extensive  upsetting  of  rural  homes.  The  historic  documents  enable  us 
to  measure  the  magnitude  of  this  revolution  in  habitat. 

The  triumphs  of  enclosure,  which  was  accomplished  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  villages  and  the  substitution  of  dispersion  for  grouping,  are 
chiefly  divided  into  two  periods,  the  one  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
and  the  other  in  the  eighteenth  and  ninteenth  centuries.  The  most 
profound  changes  occurred  in  the  earlier  period.  Certain  manuscripts 
show  that  from  1485  to  1517  in  Berks  the  enclosure  of  6,615  acres  led 
to  the  eviction  of  670  persons  and  the  destruction  of  119  homes.113 
A  more  detailed  illustration  is  that  of  Stretton  Baskerville  in  Warwick- 
shire. At  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  enclosure  caused  four  houses 
and  three  cottages  and  later  an  additional  twelve  houses  and  four  cot- 
tages to  disappear,  with  the  result  that  eighty  peasants  were  forced  to 
emigrate  and  the  ruined  church  was  transformed  into  a  stable.114  All 
documents  emphasize  the  disappearance  of  the  villages.115  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  same  phenomena  were  repeated.  In  a  Midlands 
parish,  twenty  farms  and  land  belonging  to  sixty  cottages  were  united 
into  four  farms  with  pastures  which  were  adequately  cared  for  by  four 
shepherds.116  In  Wiseton  (in  Notts),  following  the  enclosure  of  the 
lands,  a  proprietor  built  seven  brand-new  farmhouses  on  the  central 
location.117  In  Leicester  and  Notts  certain  villages  which  had  a  hun- 
dred houses  and  families  under  the  open-field  system  had  only  eight  or 
ten  houses  by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  only  40  or  50 
inhabitants  instead  of  500  to  600.118  In  1803  a  certain  Cambridgeshire 
parish  was  indicated  where  43  hearth  fires  had  been  extinguished  and 
as  many  houses  demolished  in  order  to  allow  for  doubling  the  size 

™J.  S.  Leadam,  The  Domesday  of  Enclosures,  1517-1518,  1897,  I,  90-95. 

115 W'  CunninSham>  The  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Commerce,  1890,  I,  399. 
On  a  map  of  the  manor  of  Whadborough   (in  Leicestershire)   dated   1620  and 
reproduced  m  Tawney,  The  Agrarian  Problem,  one  reads  these  significant  words:  "The 
place  where  the  town  of  Whadboroughe  stood," 

HT  G<  Slater'  "Tlle  Inclosure  of  Common  Fields,"  Geogr.  foitrn.,  1907,  p.  55. 

W.  H.  R.  Curtler,  The  Enclosure  and  Redistribution  of  our  Land,  1920,  p.  168. 
ibid.,  pp.  173-174. 


300  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  a  farm  of  200  acres.119  Thus  the  evolution  of  a  modern  type  of 
commercial  agriculture  terminated  in  the  substitution  of  the  dispersed 
for  the  grouped  habitat  over  a  great  part  of  the  territory. 

D.  PRIMARY  DISPERSION,  OF  RECENT  ORIGIN 

When  no  necessities  of  protection,  defense,  or  of  cultivation  are 
imposed  upon  rural  establishments,  modern  colonization  nearly  always 
follows  the  dispersed  type  by  developing  isolated  farms.  This  independ- 
ence seems  to  be  the  necessary  condition  of  an  efficient  economic 
functioning. 

Wherever  the  possession  of  powerful  modern  materials  of  civilization 
permits  the  rural  dwellers  to  battle  natural  forces,  the  isolated  habitat 
is  preferred.  In  countries  menaced  by  water,  the  perfection  of  a  defense 
frees  the  people  from  the  necessity  of  living  in  groups.  In  the  maritime 
plain  of  Belgium  and  most  of  the  Netherlands  polders  the  farms  are 
separated;  they  multiply  in  proportion  to  the  process  of  drying  out  the 
land,  and  each  farm  is  the  personal  work  of  one  man  or  of  a  group 
whose  efforts  and  capital  have  saved  them  from  the  waters,  In  addition, 
one  can  say  that  dispersion  actually  prevails,  since  at  other  times  the 
houses  become  clustered  on  the  dikes.  The  security  of  territory  well 
drained  by  modern  engineers  permits  the  location  of  habitations  in 
open  fields;  such  is  the  case  in  the  polder  of  the  sea  of  Haarlem,  which 
is  kept  dry  by  powerful  pumps.  The  farms  are  scattered  and  sur- 
rounded by  their  fields. 

The  same  economic  concern  of  expending  the  minimum  of  effort  for 
the  maximum  of  freedom  and  return  is  at  the  basis  of  the  tendency  for 
rural  establishments  which  are  made  at  the  present  time  to  adopt  the 
isolated  farm.  The  Russian  emigrants  in  Siberia,  even  those  who  come 
from  villages,  establish  separate  farms.120  Even  in  the  Far  East  the 
village  occasionally  seems  to  be  an  abandoned  form;  the  Japanese 
authorities  have  deliberately  adopted  the  system  of  isolated  dwellings 
in  the  colonization  of  Yezo.  Plots  of  land,  in  geometrical  forms,  are 
laid  out  in  areas,  of  5,  30,  or  270  hectares,  designed  respectively  for 
small,  moderate,  and  large-scale  exploitation  and  each  farm  receives 
a  colonist.121  Many  new  countries  are  settled  in  the  same  manner: 
South  Africa,  Australia,  Argentine,  Canada,  the  United  States.  There 
are  exceptions  only  in  those  cases  where,  despite  the  advantages  of  the 
isolated  farm,  the  settlers  have  been  obliged  to  gather  together  to  fight 
the  hostile  natives  (e.g.,  French  villages  in  Algiers,  German  villages  in 
Argentine) . 

"•/&/.,  p.  227. 

120  J.  St,  Lewinski,  op.  cit,t  pp.  22-24. 

131 H.  Bernhard,  op.  cit.,  p.  21. 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  301 

In  the  United  States  this  dispersion  of  homesteads  forms  one  of  the 
most  original  traits  of  the  social  structure  of  the  rural  civilization. 
This  condition  creates  many  problems  of  organization  which  were 
solved  long  since  by  our  older  European  civilizations  but  which  are  still 
discussed  in  these  young  regions.  If  we  examine  a  map  of  the  Topo- 
graphical Survey  we  note  two  territorial  divisions:  the  county  and  the 
township.  Each  county  is  divided  into  a  certain  number  of  districts  of 
geometric  form,  the  townships,  whose  boundaries  are  set  at  the  time 
of  settlement.  It  is  within  these  official  and  impersonal  frameworks  that 
the  hosts  of  farms  are  distributed.  One  family  after  another  settles  in 
the  solitude  wherever  fancy  dictates;  they  are  not  divided  among  any 
administrative  districts  smaller  than  the  townships,  which  would  be 
comparable  to  our  communes  or  our  parishes,  which  are  living  unities 
based  on  local  proximity,  and  on  the  solidarity  of  social  life.  It  is  these 
small  unities  that  they  today  desire  to  create  in  America;  they  will  be 
the  elementary  social  cells  among  which  the*  farms  will  be  divided. 
What  should  be  the  unit  of  this  crystallization  and  on  what  should  it 
be  based?  In  order  to  know  this,  it  is  necessary  to  know  what  "social 
areas"  are  able  to  furnish  the  elementary  framework.  Mr.  Dwight  San- 
derson 122  has  made  this  study  for  Otsego  county,  New  York.  He  rec- 
ognizes many  social  areas  whose  limits  do  not  coincide;  some  are  based 
on  topographic  proximity  (houses  in  the  same  valley),  others  on  com- 
mon use  of  a  social  institution  (the  same  church  or  school),  others  on 
the  common  patronage  of  an  economic  institution  (same  merchants, 
mill,  cooperative  creamery,  railroad  station,  or  industrial  plant),  and 
still  others  on  common  ancestry.  How  should  one  choose  the  proper 
element  with  which  to  unite  all  of  these  dispersed  human  parcels  into 
communes  (rural  communities)  ?  In  the  same  manner  as  the  medieval 
church  was  chosen  to  be  the  center  of  our  rural  communes  since  it  was 
the  spiritual  center  of  the  parish,  it  is  the  school,  another  spiritual  cen- 
ter, which  it  appears  ought  to  serve  as  the  center  for  the  future  organi- 
zation of  the  rural  communes  of  that  part  of  the  United  States. 

CONCLUSION 

This  geographic  study  of  the  rural  habitat  is  only  a  synthetic  essay, 
A  complete  synthesis  will  be  possible  only  when  one  will  be  able  to 
make  a  map  of  the  types  of  habitat  for  each  country.  But  this  is  yet  im- 
possible for  we  lack  the  local  analyses  and  correlations.  It  yet  remains 
for  us  to  clearly  determine  our  methods  of  procedure  and  to  make  our 
terminology  more  precise.  Between  the  two  types  of  agglomeration  and 

123  Dwight  Sanderson,  Locating  the  Rural  Community,  Cornell  Reading  Course  for 
the  Farm,  1920,  pp.  413-436;  Dwight  Sanderson  and  Warren  S.  Thompson,  The  Social 
Areas  of  Otsego  County,  1923. 


302  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

dispersion  the  facts  show  intermediary  types;  between  the  village  and 
the  isolated  farm  there  is  the  hamlet.  Is  the  hamlet  to  be  considered  as 
a  small  village  or  as  a  group  of  individual  farms?  In  the  first  case  it 
should  be  regarded  as  a  closed  form,  a  variety  of  agglomeration;  in  the 
second  case  as  an  open  formation,  a  type  of  dispersion.  The  study  and 
observation  of  places  and  the  knowledge  of  their  past  will  alone  permit 
us  to  explain  them  and  to  classify  them.  The  definition  of  the  rural 
habitat  will  scarcely  be  a  question  of  statistics  only,  of  the  number  of 
houses  and  inhabitants;  it  chiefly  implies  that  one  analyze  the  relation- 
ships between  the  dwelling  and  its  agricultural  land;  one  should  not 
separate  these  two  aspects.  Following  the  example  of  Meitzen  and 
Gradmann,  it  is  necessary  to  take  as  a  basis  of  analysis  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  plans  on  a  large  scale;  the  registers  of  deeds  are  of  inestima- 
ble value,  for  when  one  can  use  them  one  has,  so  to  speak,  an  indi- 
vidual picture  of  each  house  and  of  each  field. 

The  knowledge  of  habitat,  of  its  forms  and  of  their  distribution, 
clearly  belongs  to  geography,  as  do  all  the  facts  relating  to  the  surface 
of  the  earth.  This  grouping  and  scattering  of  rural  houses  are  universal 
traits  which  nearly  everywhere  reveal  the  imprint  of  humanity;  in 
themselves  and  by  the  very  fact  of  their  existence  they  constitute  ele- 
ments of  the  landscape,  and  that  is  sufficient  justification  for  our  under- 
taking their  description.  But  this  does  not  limit  their  geographic  inter- 
est, for  differences  in  habitat  are  associated  with  natural,  economic,  and 
social  distinctions. 

Field  and  grove,  champaign  and  enclosure,  are  old  words  in  French 
and  English  which  express  certain  contrasts  between  landscapes  origi- 
nating in  difference  in  habitat.  In  all  places,  when  the  peasant  lives  in 
isolation,  he  builds  an  enclosure;  it  is  a  means  of  protecting  himself, 
of  guarding  his  cattle,  of  separating  fields  and  pastures,  of  marking  the 
boundaries  of  his  property.  Whether  this  boundary  be  a  hedge,  a  ditch, 
or  a  wall  of  earth,  the  enclosure  contains  some  trees;  there  are  rows  of 
trees,  often  planted  close  together,  which  give  the  appearance  of  a 
grove.  The  grove  is  a  human  product,  an  artificial  arrangement  of 
nature,  which  indicates  a  particular  mode  of  occupation.  Direct  contact 
between  the  house  and  the  individual  field  thus  ends  in  a  transforma- 
tion of  the  landscape  by  this  association  of  trees  and  occupation  of  the 
land.  The  tree,  which  is  the  enemy  of  cultivation  when  it  exists  as 
forest,  becomes  its  collaborator,  it  is  the  sign  of  man.  Some  regions 
which  were  formerly  cleared,  such  as  the  fields  of  central  and  eastern 
England,  have  taken  on  again  the  appearance  of  woods  by  virtue  of 
dispersion  of  habitat.  In  certain  parts  of  the  North  American  prairies 
which  were  once  vast  grassy  treeless  surfaces  the  landscape  has  been 


ECOLOGY  OF  RURAL  HABITAT  303 

slowly  changed  as  the  farms  have  multiplied.  Each  farm  is  surrounded 
with  trees  or  small  groves,  which  dot  the  vast  plain,  each  grove  shad- 
ing a  rural  establishment;  the  domain  of  the  tree  expands  and  is  more 
complete  where  the  colonization  is  older.  On  the  contrary,  when 
grouped  habitat  prevails,  the  cultivated  fields  of  an  entire  village  are 
held  together  and  united  into  an  unenclosed  area  which,  once  the 
harvest  is  finished,  resembles  a  steppe.  These  are  the  lands  known  as 
champaign  to  the  English  medieval  writers,  the  campagnes  and  plaines 
of  France,  open  landscapes  where  the  trees  are  clustered  about  the  occa- 
sional villages.  All  types  of  fields,  wheat  or  rice,  are  mixed  together 
in  the  same  space  from  which  the  cultivated  herb  has  driven  the  tree. 

From  the  economic  point  of  view  the  isolated  and  grouped  habitats 
offer  additional  contrasts.  Some  rural  regions  where  all  the  plots  of 
land  are  limited  by  permanent  enclosure  possess  a  greater  fixity  and 
solidity  than  regions  without  the  enclosure  and  the  internal  division 
which  characterize  the  village  horizon.  In  the  latter,  development  of 
piecemeal  plots  is  easy  and  inevitable;  the  land  is  cut  into  strips  and 
reduced  to  morsels,  and  these  small  bits  easily  pass  from  hand  to  hand 
by  inheritance;  the  estate  vanishes  and  exploitation  is  divided  among 
tens  of  small  fields  widely  separated  from  one  another.  Under  condi- 
tions of  dispersion,  on  the  contrary,  the  estate  is  coherent  and  difficult 
to  divide  and  has  chances  of  surviving,  and  it  keeps  its  original  bound- 
aries. It  remains  adjusted  to  the  means  and  needs  of  the  family,  repre- 
senting a  more  vital  economic  unity,  more  insured  against  crises,  more 
independent.  Does  it  not  seem  that  the  isolated  farms  in  the  woods  of 
western  France  which  have  long  been  considered  as  poor  estates  today 
hold  many  advantages  over  the  scattered  holdings  of  the  ancient  vil- 
lages which  formerly  were  considered  as  abundant  granaries?  The 
history  of  the  village,  however,  reveals  the  role  it  has  played  and  still 
plays  in  the  development  of  those  occupations  which  require  agree- 
ment and  cooperation.  While  the  isolated  farm  is  only  the  framework 
for  a  single  family  life,  the  village  often  has  hundreds  of  families; 
thanks  to  this  large  population  where  certain  families  and  individuals 
can  specialize  in  one  occupation,  the  village  has  furnished  the  back- 
ground of  a  true  industrial  workshop.  In  France  and  in  western  Eu- 
rope, in  Germany,  in  Russia,  as  in  China  and  India,  one  observes  that 
the  village  formerly  and  even  yet  has  been  the  means  by  which  indus- 
trial life  has  interpenetrated  rural  life. 

The  description  of  the  social  differences  between  countries  of  vil- 
lages and  countries  of  isolated  farms  has  become  nearly  classic.*  Each 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — We  regard  the  subsequent  characterization  of  the  psychology  of  vil- 
lage and  isolated  farm  neither  typical  nor  generally  applicable. 


304  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

type  of  habitat  furnishes  a  different  framework  for  social  life.  The 
village  is  marked  by  proximity,  contact,  community  of  ideas  and  senti- 
ments; with  dispersed  habitat,  "everything  bespeaks  separation,  every- 
thing marks  the  fact  of  dwelling  apart." 123  From  this  results  the  dif- 
ference between  the  villager  and  the  peasant  that  has  been  so  clearly 
indicated  by  Vidal  de  la  Blache:  " Among  the  rural  populations 
gathered  around  villages  is  developed  a  characteristic  mode  of  life 
which  obtained  its  importance  and  influence  in  ancient  France,  the 
life  of  the  village.  Limited  as  the  horizon  may  be,  feeble  as  may  be  the 
pressures  from  outside,  the  village  forms  a  small  society  open  to  gen- 
eral influences.  Instead  of  being  scattered  in  bits,  the  population  forms 
a  nucleus;  and  this  rudiment  of  organization  suffices  to  give  it  unity. 
In  Lorraine,  Burgundy,  Champagne,  and  in  Picardy  the  rural  in- 
habitant is  primarily  a  villager;  in  the  West,  he  is  a  peasant,"124  There 
are  additional  profound  differences  between  a  scattered  and  a  grouped 
population  as  regards  mentality  and  psychology  as  has  been  ingeniously 
noted  by  A.  Siegfried.125  In  regions  with  farms  which  are  "greatly 
isolated  behind  hedges  or  rows  of  trees"  there  are  "suspicious  indi- 
vidualism," hostility  towards  the  stranger,  and  a  sort  of  impermea- 
bility toward  outside  ideas;  in  countries  of  villages,  there  is  readiness 
for  collective  enterprises,  a  feeling  of  association,  and  a  penetration  and 
diffusion  of  external  influences.  Thus  the  social  structure  which  de- 
pends so  largely  on  intellectual  and  moral  influences  frequently  re- 
flects the  structure  of  the  rural  habitat. 

EDITORS'  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

This  problem  in  the  United  States  has  been  discussed  most  recently  in  the  following 
works: 

GILLETTE,  J.  M.,  Rural  Sociology,  revised  ed.  (New  York,  1928). 
SIMS,  NEWELL  L,  Elements  oj  Rural  Sociology  (New  York,  1928). 
NELSON,  LOWRY,  A  Social  Survey  of  Escalaute,  Utah,  Brigham  Young  University  (1925), 

,  The  Utah  Farm  Village  oj  Ephraimf  Brigham  Young  University  (1928). 

SOROKIN,  P.,  and  ZIMMERMAN,  C.,  Principles  of  Rural-Urban  Sociology  (New  York, 
1929),  chaps,  vii,  xxii. 

123  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  op.  cit.,  p.  187. 

124  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  Tableau  de  la  geographic  de  la  France,  p.  311. 
'25A.  Siegfried,  Tableau  politique  de  la  France  de  I'ouest  (1913),  pp.  381-389, 


CHAPTER  VI 

DIFFERENTIATION   OF   THE   RURAL   POPULATION 

INTO  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITIES  AND 

FUNCTIONAL  ASSOCIATIONS 

1.  The  objectives  of  the  morphological  analysis  of  rural  social 
organization— K  morphological  study  of  the  social  organization 
of  a  population  is  an  analysis  of  the  fundamental  forms  of  its 
social  differentiation,  stratification ,  and  mobility.  An  analysis  of 
the  forms  of  social  differentiation  within  the  rural  population 
gives  an  idea  of  the  horizontal  aspects  of  rural  social  organization, 
while  an  analysis  of  the  forms  of  social  stratification  gives  an  idea 
of  its  vertical  aspects.  Finally,  a  study  of  the  mobility  of  the  rural 
population  furnishes  an  idea  of  the  elasticity  of  the  group's  struc- 
ture. This  chapter  deals  mainly  with  the  forms  of  social  differen- 
tiation within  the  rural  population,  while  the  next  chapters  deal 
with  the  forms  of  its  social  stratification  and  mobility. 

An  analysis  of  the  forms  of  rural  social  differentiation  must 
answer  the  following  questions:  (1)  What  are  the  general  bases 
of  the  differentiation  of  the  rural  population  into  a  series  of  real 
collective  unities  or  groups  ?  (2)  What  are  the  principal  types  of 
groups?  (3)  What  are  the  further  subdivisions  of  these  groups 
into  subgroups,  and  what  are  the  dominant  characteristics  of 
each  of  these  groups?  (4)  What  have  been  the  essential  changes 
in  the  forms  of  rural  social  differentiation  in  the  course  of  time, 
and  especially  with  the  growth  of  urbanization  ?  An  outline  of  the 
solution  to  these  problems  constitutes  the  main  task  of  a  study 
of  social  differentiation  in  a  general  work  such  as  this. 

Before  we  turn  to  a  brief  analysis  of  each  of  these  problems,  we 
must  answer  a  few  preliminary  questions.  What  is  a  social  group, 
a  community,  an  association,  or  a  collective  unity?  What  are  the 
bases  of  their  existence?  What  are  their  types?  If  we  turn  to  con- 
temporary sociology  for  the  answers,  we  find  only  very  great  con- 

[305] 


306  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

fusion.  Hence  we  are  forced  to  enter  briefly  into  an  analysis  of 
these  problems  in  order  to  make  our  subsequent  statements  com- 
prehensible. 

2.  Group-creating  bonds. — We  know  that  the  totality  of  indi- 
viduals engaged  in  agriculture  has  not  been  existing  in  an  atom- 
ized form  where  each  individual  has  been  equally  isolated  from 
or  connected  with  all  other  agriculturists.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in 
the  past  as  well  as  in  the  present,  individuals  have  been  united 
into  family  groups  and  these  families  have  been  organized  in 
some  manner  into  larger  super-family  groups  or  communities. 
Each  family  group  has  been  a  collective  unity.  And  the  totality 
of  the  families  who  have  composed  a  super-family  group  have 
functioned  as  a  social  unity  of  a  larger  caliber.  These  families 
have  been  bound  by  a  series  of  ties  into  a  super-family  unity 
whose  members  have  been  acting  as  parts  of  a  larger  social  body 
and  have  been  much  more  interdependent  upon  one  another  than 
upon  the  families  who  have  not  belonged  to  the  same  super- 
family  unity. 

The  problem  to  be  considered  now  is  the  determination  of  the 
factors  that  have  produced  a  family  unity  out  of  its  individual 
members,  and  a  "community"  or  super-family  social  unity  from 
a  number  of  separate  families.  What  have  been  the  bases  or  the 
factors  of  this  unification  ?  When  this  problem  is  answered,  what 
have  been  the  principal  types  of  the  rural  aggregate  according  to 
the  nature  of  their  ties  ?  Such  are  the  problems  to  be  dealt  with 
now.  They  are  different  from  the  ecology  of  the  rural  habitation 
because,  as  we  shall  see,  there  may  be  several  farm  families  widely 
scattered  within  a  given  territory,  and  yet  they  may  belong  to  and 
be  united  into  one  super-family  rural  community;  on  the  other 
hand,  there  may  be  many  families  living  in  spatial  proximity  in 
the  same  village,  and  yet  they  may  not  compose  a  real  rural  com- 
munity. The  same  is  true  of  individuals  composing  and  not  com- 
posing a  super-individual  group,  be  it  the  family  group  or  some 
other  social  unity. 

Let  us  note,  first,  that  when  we  say  "group"  or  "aggregate"  or 
"association"  or  "community"  we  mean  a  real  and  not  a  ficti- 
tious social  unity.  In  Russia,  according  to  the  census  of  1897  there 
were  168,682  male  infants  from  two  to  three  months  of  age.  Sta- 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  307 

tistically  they  are  classed  as  "the  group  of  infants  from  two  to 
three  months  of  age."  But  it  is  evident  that  they  do  not  form  a 
real  group  from  our  point  of  view,  for  these  children  are  not 
united  into  one  social  body.  Among  these  babies  there  is  no  rela- 
tionship in  the  sense  of  group  solidarity,  no  functioning  as  one 
social  unity,  and  not  even  any  particular  mutual  interdependence 
of  their  lives  and  behavior.  The  group  is  purely  "statistical"  or 
"fictitious."  Such  aggregates  as  "the  group  of  persons  who  wear 
glasses,"  and  "the  group  of  persons  who  do  not  wear  glasses"; 
"the  group  of  American  citizens  who  wear  blue  pajamas,"  and 
"the  group  of  American  citizens  who  wear  brown  pajamas,"  etc., 
would  also  be  fictitious. 

The  real  social  group,  as  distinguished  from  these  and  similar 
fictitious  groups,  exists  only  when  it  lives  and  functions  as  a 
unity.1  In  order  that  a  group  of  individuals  may  live  and  function 
as  a  unity  the  individuals  must  be  bound  by  some  ties  or  bonds, 
either  elected  or  compulsory,  which  unite  them  into  one  social 
group  in  life  and  not  on  paper  only.  These  bonds  make  their  lives 
and  behavior  closely  interdependent,  and  infuse  into  their  minds, 
in  some  form  and  to  some  degree,  feelings  of  oneness,  solidarity, 
and  community  of  interests.  Now  what  conditions  have  usually 
played  the  role  of  unifying  bonds  in  rural  communities  or  groups  ? 
What  are  the  roles  of  the  factors  that  have  created  a  real  super- 
individual  group  from  several  individuals  or  a  super-family  com- 
munity from  several  families  ?  That  is  the  question  we  face  now. 

The  principal  factors  or  ties  have  been  as  follows:  (1)  physio- 
logical kinship  and  community  of  blood  or  origin  from  the  same 
physical  or  mystical  (totemic)  ancestors;  (2)  marriage;  (3)  simi- 
larity in  religious  and  magical  beliefs  and  rites;  (4)  similarity  in 
native  language  and  mores;  (5)  common  possession  and  utiliza- 
tion of  the  land;  (6)  territorial  proximity  (neighborliness) ;  (7) 
common  responsibility  (sometimes  imposed  by  other  groups) 
for  the  maintenance  of  order,  payment  of  taxes,  discharge  of 
duties,  etc.,  and  common  acquisition  of  certain  privileges;  (8) 
community  of  occupational  interests;  (9)  community  of  various 

1  See  the  developed  theory  of  real  and  fictitious  social  groups  in  P.  Sorokin,  Sistema 
Soziologii,  II,  16  ff.;  A.  A.  Tschuprow,  Ochcrkt  po  tcorii  statistiki  (Studies  in  Statistical 
Theory}  (Russ.),  pp.  75  ff.;  B.  Kistiakowski,  Geselhchaft  und  Einzelwesen,  pp.  130  ff,; 
see  also  R.  M.  Maclver,  Community,  pp.  22  0,;  N.  L.  Sims,  The  Rural  Community, 
pp.  133ff. 


308  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

types  of  economic  interests;  (10)  subjection  to  the  same  lord; 
(11)  attachment,  either  free  or  compulsory,  to  the  same  social  insti- 
tution or  agency  of  social  service  and  social  control,  such  as  the 
same  police  or  political  center,  school,  temple  and  church,  trade 
agency,  military  authority,  electional  bureau,  hospital,  or  any  one 
of  various  other  agencies;  (12)  common  defense  against  a  com- 
mon enemy  and  common  dangers;  (13)  mutual  aid;  (14)  general 
living,  experiencing,  and  acting  together.2  Each  of  these  factors  or 
conditions  has  been  playing  the  role  of  a  tie  which  has  united 
a  number  of  individuals  into  a  real  social  group  or  number  of 
families  into  a  super-family  group  and  hence  has  contributed  to 
the  unification  of  families  into  larger  groups.  When  all  of  these 
binding  conditions  are  lacking  in  any  given  group  of  individuals, 
they  do  not  function  as  a  social  unity  and  hence  do  not  constitute 
a  real  group.  At  least  one  of  these  bonds  must  be  present  in  order 
that  individuals  may  be  united  into  social  groups,  whether  that 
unification  be  strong  or  very  slight. 

3.  The  elementary  and  cumulative  groups. — Since  these  are 
the  "group-creating  bonds"  we  can  classify  rural  groups  into  a 
series  of  classes  according  to  the  number  and  the  character  of 
these  ties.  In  the  first  place,  we  can  classify  them  according  to  the 
number  of  the  bonds  that  unite  the  individuals  or  families  into 
one  social  group.  From  this  standpoint  it  is  possible  to  distinguish 
two  main  types  of  social  groups.  The  elementary  social  group  is 
one  whose  members  are  unified  by  only  one  of  the  above  binding 

3  Compare  C.  J.  Galpin,  Rural  Life,  1918,  chap,  iv;  Sanderson  and  O.  Thompson, 
The  Social  Areas  of  Otsego  County,  Cornell  U.  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Research  Bull.  No. 
422;  J.  H.  Kolb,  Rural  Primary  Groups,  U,  of  Wise.  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  51; 
J.  H.  Kolb  and  A.  F.  Wileden,  Special  Interest  Groups,  ibid.,  Bull.  No.  84;  E.  H.  Mor- 
gan and  O.  Howells,  Rural  Population  Groups,  U.  of  Mo.  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Research 
Bull.  74;  C.  C.  Zimmerman  and  C.  C.  Taylor,  Rural  Organization,  N.  Carolina  Agric. 
Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  245;  P.  P.  Denune,  Some  Town-Country  Relations  in  Union 
County,  Ohio,  Ohio  State  U.  Studies,  Sociol.  Series  No.  1 ;  E.  A.  Taylor  and  F.  R.  Yoder, 
Rural  Social  Organisation,  State  College  of  Washington  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No. 
203;  N.  L.  Sims,  Elements  of  Rural  Sociology,  chap,  xxii-xxiv;  W.  H.  Baumgartel, 
A  Social  Study  of  Ravalli  County,  Montana,  Montana  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No. 
160;  B.  L.  Hummel,  Community  Organization  in  Missouri,  U.  of  Mo.  College  of  Agric. 
Circular  209;  E.  A.  Wilson,  Social  Organization  and  Agencies  in  North  Dakota,  N.  Dak. 
Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  221;  L.  Nelson,  Escalaute,  and  The  Utah  farm  Village  of 
Ephraim,  Bngham  Young  University  Studies,  Nos.  1  and  2;  J.  W.  Badger,  Rural  Com- 
munity Halls  in  Montana,  U.  of  Montana  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  221;  H,  J.  Bun:, 
Contacts  in  a  Rural  Community,  U.  of  Missouri  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  125, 
1929;  B.  L.  Melvin,  Rural  Population  of  New  York,,  and  Village  Service  Agencies, 
New  Yor£,  Cornell  U.  Agric.  Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  493,  and  Uemoire,  No.  116, 
1928,  1929. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  309 

ties,  such  as  blood  relationship,  territorial  proximity,  or  subjection 
to  the  same  lord  and  so  on.  The  cumulative  social  group  is  one 
whose  members  are  bound  together  not  by  one,  but  by  two  or 
more  binding  ties  (see  Scheme  1).  These  cumulative  groups  or 
communities  may  be  of  various  degrees  of  complexity  or  integra- 
tion: twofold,  threefold,  fourfold,  etc.,  according  to  the  number 
of  the  ties  that  bind  the  members  together.  For  instance,  we  may 
have  a  group  of  cultivators  who  dwell  in  the  same  village  (terri- 
torial tie) ;  who  are  kinsmen  (blood  tie) ;  who  have  the  same  reli- 
gion (religious  tie);  who  are  tenants  of  the  same  lord  (subjec- 
tion tie);  and  who  are  collectively  responsible  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  order  in  the  village  (collective  responsibility  tie),  In  this 
particular  case  the  rural  cumulative  community  is  bound  together 
by  five  ties — those  of  territory,  blood,  tenancy,  religion,  and 
responsibility.  We  may  have  another  cumulative  community  of 
the  fifth  degree  of  complexity  but  bound  together  by  ties  of  a  dif- 
ferent nature.  Likewise  we  may  have  various  bonds  combined  to 
produce  cumulative  groups  of  the  second,  the  third,  the  fourth, 
the  fifth,  the  sixth,  and  even  of  a  higher  degree  of  complexity. 
From  this  standpoint  we  have  a  great  variety  of  types  of  com- 
munities according  to  both  the  number  and  the  nature  of  the 
cumulated  ties. 

Schematically  the  elementary  and  cumulative  groups  may  be 
represented  as  follows: 


SCHEME  1 


•H-H 


Eie,  mentarq  ^roup  Camcilahve  §rc>up 

This  method  of  analysis  enables  us  to  comprehend  the  fact  that 
possibly  the  most  complex  of  all  the  cumulative  groups  has  been 
the  family.  Its  members  are  united  into  one  community  by  a  great 
number  of  ties  of  the  most  effective  type— blood  and  ancestors; 
the  same  house;  the  same  religion;  the  same  mores;  the  same 


310  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

points  of  attachment  to  social,  political,  and  other  centers;  the 
permanence  of  mutual  aid;  the  identity  of  practically  all  economic 
interests;  collective,  factual,  or  juridical  responsibility;  collective 
solidarity;  the  most  intensive  consciousness  of  oneness,  etc.  This 
very  high  degree  of  cumulative  integration  of  the  family  even 
today  has  been  the  reason  why  the  family,  among  a  multitude  of 
other  groupings,  has  been  easily  discernible  in  all  societies.  The 
fact  that  the  family  has  the  highest  degree  of  cumulative  integra- 
tion has  made  it  the  social  unity  among  all  other  social  unities. 
The  family  is  an  "integrated  cell"  in  the  multitude  of  social 
groupings,  always  easily  discernible,  always  tangible,  "springing 
into  the  eyes"  with  its  "concentrated  cumulated  unity." 

From  the  above  discussion  it  follows  that,  as  soon  as  a  part  of 
the  multitude  of  individuals  living  in  the  same  locality  are  bound 
together  by,  say,  five  ties,  while  all  the  other  individuals  are  bound 
together  by  only  two  of  these  five  ties,  such  a  multitude  of  indi- 
viduals represents  a  real  social  group  (bound  by  two  ties),  but  is 
subdivided  internally  into  two  groups,  a  part  of  its  members  being 
still  more  intimately  bound  together  by  three  additional  ties.  Gen- 
erally, as  soon  as  the  number  or  nature  of  the  bonds  uniting  indi- 
viduals is  different  for  different  parts  of  the  population  of  a  given 
locality  j  there  results  a  further  subdivision  or  social  differentiation 
and  stratification  of  the  given  population.  The  multitude  of  indi- 
viduals united  constitute  a  real  social  group  in  regard  to  other 
groups,  but  under  the  conditions  assumed  above,  they  are  further 
differentiated  into  subunits  whether  the  group  in  question  be  the 
family,  the  owner,  the  tenant,  or  laborer  subgroups,  or  what  not. 

In  Scheme  2  each  vertical  line  represents  a  farmer  or  a  family 
of  a  given  locality.  The  30  farmers  compose  one  group,  A,  all 
being  united  by  one  bond,  the  territorial.  But  within  this  group 
of  individuals  or  families,  1, 2,  3, 4,  5,  6, 7,  30, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 
26,  and  25  are  united  by  an  additional  tie  (say  a  community  of 
religion)  and  thus  compose  another  unity,  B.  Within  this  unity  B 
individuals  or  families  2, 3, 4, 30, 15, 16, 26, 25,  and  29  are  united  by 
a  third  bond  (say  community  of  affiliation  with  the  same  politi- 
cal party),  and  thus  constitute  an  additional  unity,  C.  Finally 
this  unity  C  is  split  up  into  two  subgroups,  D  and  E,  the  mem- 
bers of  D  perhaps  coming  from  Norwegian  stock,  and  the  mem- 
bers of  E  from  Italian  stock.  Members  of  these  two  subgroups 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION 


311 


will  then  be  unified  by  an  additional  tie.  Thus  as  the  number  of 
cumulative  ties  increases  there  appears  a  social  unity  within  an- 
other social  unity.  There  is,  in  other  words,  a  division  and  subdi- 
vision of  a  given  social  group  into  two  or  more  subgroups. 

SCHEME  2 


10 


In  this  chapter  we  are  interested  only  in  the  general  aspect  of 
the  differentiation  of  rural  populations  into  separate  super-family 
communities  or  aggregates.  An  inner  subdivision  or  differentia- 
tion and  stratification  of  each  of  these  communities  or  aggregates 
into  further  subgroups  will  be  analyzed  in  another  chapter.  We 
may  summarize  this  discussion  as  follows:  first,  the  existence  of 
any  real  social  group  presupposes  (besides  the  condition  of  inter- 
action) the  presence  of  one  or  more  ties  that  bind  the  individuals 
into  a  social  unity;  second,  the  conditions  that  play  the  role  of 
unifying  bonds  have  been  enumerated  above;  third,  we  can  dis- 
criminate elementary  and  cumulative  groups  of  various  degrees 
of  complexity  according  to  the  number  of  unifying  bonds.  These 
groups  will  also  be  of  various  types  according  to  the  nature  of 
the  binding  conditions,3  In  order  that  we  may  understand  the 
morphological  structure  of  any  real  social  group  or  community 

8  See  the  theory  of  elementary  and  cumulative  social  groups,  with  all  their  variety 
and  complications,  in  P.  Sorokin,  Sistema  Soziologii,  Vol.  II,  passim. 


312  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

we  must  know  its  composition  from  these  standpoints.  If  we  do 
not  know  these  factors,  we  scarcely  can  obtain  any  clear  knowl- 
edge of  the  structure  and  composition  of  a  community  or  group. 

4.  The  rural  "cumulative  community'  and  "rural  junctional 
association!' — After  the  establishment  of  the  above  guiding  prin- 
ciples in  the  morphological  analysis  of  real  social  groups,  we  can 
proceed  to  a  more  detailed  analysis  of  rural  groups.  A  study  of 
these  groupings  as  they  appear  in  various  localities  and  at  various 
times  shows  that  some  of  the  rural  groupings  have  been  elemen- 
tary, united  by  only  one  tie,  such  as  territorial  proximity,  eco- 
nomic interests,  blood  relationship,  religious  unity,  subjection  to 
the  same  lord,  a  collective  responsibility  for  the  payment  of  the 
taxes  and  discharge  of  imposed  duties,  or  gravitation  to  the  same 
school,  trading  center,  social  service  center,  recreation  center,  etc.; 
while  some  other  communities  have  been  cumulative,  differing 
according  to  the  number  and  nature  of  the  ties  which  have  char- 
acterized the  community.4  A  consideration  of  these  facts  makes  it 
plain  that  it  is  hopeless  to  try  to  view  various  rural  communities 
and  groupings  as  uniform  in  their  structure  and  composition 
everywhere  and  at  all  times. 

Stressing  this  variety  of  the  morphological  structure  of  various 
rural  groupings,  we  believe  at  the  same  time  that  it  is  possible  to 
discriminate  two  quite  distinct  morphological  types  of  rural  social 
organization,  other  types  being  intermediate  between  these  two 
extreme  forms.  The  first  type  is  represented  by  many  ancient 
rural  groups  which  kept  their  clan  organization  when  they  set- 
tled on  the  land.  The  second  type  is  represented  by  the  contempo- 
rary farm  population  in  many  regions  of  the  United  States  of 
America  and  in  some  other  countries.  We  know  that  a  clan  was 
a  manifolded  cumulative  group  whose  members  were  united  into 
one  "inseparable"  body  by  the  community  of  descent  from  real 
or  totemic  ancestors,  by  real  or  totemic  kinship,  by  community 
of  religious  and  magical  beliefs,  by  community  of  rites  and  cere- 
monies, by  common  need  of  mutual  protection,  by  a  common 
moral  code  and  common  mores,  by  community  of  the  most  vital 
interests,  by  the  same  language  and  the  same  authorities,  by  com- 
mon action  in  war  and  vengeance,  by  common  actions  in  procur- 

4  The  binding  power  of  the  above  ties  is  not  equal :  some  of  them,  such  as  blood  rela- 
tionship, as  a  rule  bind  more  intensively  than  others,  such  as  residence  in  the  same 
school  district. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  313 

ing  their  means  of  subsistence,  etc.  In  other  words,  the  tribe  or 
clan  was  a  social  group  very  closely  united  by  a  multiplicity  of 
the  most  vital  ties.  The  result  was  a  great  engulfment  of  the  indi- 
vidual or  of  a  separate  family  by  the  super-family  social  body.  We 
know  that  many  early  rural  communities  were  merely  clans  set- 
tled on  the  land,  and  that  the  close  integration  of  the  clan  con- 
tinued to  exist  in  the  early  territorial  groups  of  the  cultivators. 
Even  later,  when  this  extreme  integrity  of  the  community  was 
considerably  weakened,  there  were  still  numerous  and  vital  ties  in 
many  communities  such  as:  kinship;  community  of  land  posses- 
sion; collective  responsibility  for  the  maintenance  of  order  and 
payment  of  taxes;  community  of  governing  institutions;  and 
often  an  attachment  to  the  same  manor  or  subjection  to  the  same 
lord;  similarity  in  language,  religion,  and  mores;  self -sufficiency 
in  the  satisfaction  of  vital  needs;  and,  finally,  territorial  proximity 
of  the  members  and  their  geographical  and  psycho-social  isolation 
from  other  groups.  These  bonds  kept  the  integration  of  the  com- 
munity at  a  high  point. 

Let  us  glance  now  at  the  opposite  type  of  social  organization 
of  the  rural  population.  In  the  highly  urbanized  and  industrial- 
ized countries  many  of  these  bonds  weakened  and  disappeared. 
Consequently  the  rural  cumulative  group  began  to  disintegrate 
more  and  more.  The  improvement  of  roads  and  means  of  com- 
munication destroyed  the  geographical  isolation  of  the  rural  com- 
munity and  merged  it  in  the  larger  sea  of  the  human  population. 
The  growth  of  the  division  of  labor  between  the  city  and  the 
country  eliminated  the  self-sufficiency  of  the  country  and  robbed 
the  rural  community  of  the  tie  of  economic  unification.  The  divi- 
sion of  labor  among  the  cultivators  melted  and  reduced  the  ties 
of  collective  work  and  activity;  the  transition  from  community 
landownership  to  private  landownership  broke  the  bond  that 
had  been  imposed  by  community  land  possession;  the  scattering 
of  the  cultivators  from  a  village  community  to  dispersed  farms 
led  to  the  disappearance  of  the  tie  of  close  territorial  proximity; 
kinship,  as  a  social  tie,  has  been  practically  obliterated;  increas- 
ing religious,  moral,  and  social  heterogeneity  of  the  cultivators 
weakened  the  ties  that  had  previously  existed  by  virtue  of  their 
homogeneity  in  these  respects;  the  abolition  of  serfdom  and  lord- 
ship liberated  them  from  the  binding  chain  of  attachment  to  the 


314 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


same  lord  and  master;  equalization  of  the  rights  and  duties  of  the 
cultivators  with  those  of  other  citizens  made  them  less  distinct  as 
a  special  group,  as  did  also  the  annulment  of  the  collective  respon- 
sibility of  the  members  of  rural  communities.  These  and  simi- 

SCHEME  3 


Commcinitcj  C 

lar  processes  carried  away  one  after  another  the  majority  of  the 
ties  that  had  previously  made  the  members  of  a  rural  group  a 
highly  integrated  social  unity. 

Because  of  the  factors  we  have  mentioned  and  others  similar, 
the  majority  of  the  bonds  that  had  united  the  rural  group  were 
cut,  and  as  a  result  the  cumulative  community  has  been  more 
and  more  disassociated,  disintegrated,  atomized,  and  weakened. 
Such  was  the  process  of  this  disintegration  in  a  schematical  and 
rough  form.  In  many  places  such  as  contemporary  United  States 
of  America,  it  has  brought  a  situation  in  which  we  find  only 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION 


315 


slight  traces  of  the  existence  of  a  cumulative  rural  community 
among  the  cultivators.  In  fact,  American  investigators  have  had 
great  difficulty  in  determining  whether  or  not  "the  rural  com- 
munity" actually  exists.  In  many  places  all  that  we  find  is  the 
existence  of  several  overlapping  and  overcrossing  elementary 
groupings  of  the  farmers  (groupings  around  the  trading  or 
school  centers,  or  so-called  "special  interest  groupings,"  in  the  ter- 
minology of  Kolb).  These  two  extreme  types,  "communities" 
and  "groupings,"  are  depicted  schematically  and  in  a  very  simpli- 
fied form  in  Schemes  3  and  4. 

SCHEME  4 


In  Scheme  3  we  see  clearly  the  three  different  communities, 
each  of  which  is  "a  world  in  itself,"  the  members  of  each  of  which 
are  bound  into  a  unity  by  several  cumulative  ties. 

In  Scheme  4  we  see  practically  no  cumulative  community,  but 
a  mere  network  of  overlapping  and  fancifully  overcrossing  ele- 
mentary groupings.  In  Scheme  4  let  grouping  A  be  religious 
affiliation;  B,  political  party;  Q  cooperative  organization;  D,  the 
school  affiliations.  Each  of  these  groupings  embraces  only  a  part 
of  the  farmers  of  a  given  locality  and  unites  even  that  part  by  one 
or  at  most  a  few  ties.  In  the  first  type  (Scheme  3)  the  community 


316 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


usually  has  clear-cut  territorial  boundaries,  which,  together  with 
the  other  ties,  makes  it  easy  to  determine  the  location  of  the 
community  or  its  center,  and  the  boundaries  between  communi- 
ties. The  factual  situation  is,  of  course,  in  many  instances,  more 
complex.  Sometimes  (among  the  dispersed  rural  population) 
there  are  no  visible  territorial  boundary  lines  which  separate  one 
cumulative  community  from  the  others.  However,  since  amidst 
such  a  dispersed  population  there  are  families  united  by  several 
specific  cumulative  ties  with  one  another,  while  they  are  united 
with  other  families  only  by  one  or  two  bonds,  it  is  always  pos- 
sible to  find  such  a  cumulative  community  and  separate  it  from 
other  cumulative  communities  or  elementary  groups  of  a  given  lo- 
cality. Territorial  proximity  is  only  one  of  the  ties  and  does  not 
necessarily  have  to  be  present  in  order  that  a  cumulative  com- 
munity may  exist.  Scheme  5  depicts  the  situation. 

SCHEME  5 

Cumulative  comma  nihj  A 

Cumulative 


I  x|'*^"I3J..Z!lII.*.;i      I        TVV  Cumulativ 

J-  —  _  ,  /iFiih  4-THjt  M,  "T"1" 


- 

Cumulative 
commanitq  C 


In  such  a  community  as  represented  by  Scheme  3  the  individ- 
ual members  are  united  very  closely,  with  the  result  that  each 
community  appears  as  an  island  in  the  sea  of  human  population. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  community  itself  is  tangibly  separated 
from  other  communities  and  from  the  world  outside  itself.  In 
the  second  type  of  groupings  (Scheme  4)  it  is  difficult  to  deter- 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION 


317 


mine  the  location  of  the  community,  or  the  boundary  line  be- 
tween communities.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  no  one  grouping 
embraces  all  the  farmers  of  a  given  locality;  in  addition,  each  of 
the  groupings  in  which  some  of  the  farmers  of  a  given  locality 

SCHEME  6 


Remap" 
Catholics    I 


i_— -  All 
Methodbb 


/       Ail 

/ — Greek- 
/    Orthodox 


are  involved  has  many  members  from  other  farming  localities 
as  well  as  from  nonfarming  groups  and  extends  over  an  area 
far  beyond  that  of  the  locality,  sometimes  over  the  whole  coun- 
try or  over  the  world.  For  instance,  150  of  250  farm  families  of  a 
given  locality  are  affiliated  with  the  Methodist  Church,  50  fami- 


318 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

SCHEME  7 
All  Republicans 


Iv 


/    '     \— R  AU 

f          \     Farmer- 


\ 


Laborites 


All  Democrat's 


lies  with  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  the  remaining  50 
families  with  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church.  In  respect  to  religion, 
the  entire  group  of  farmers  of  this  locality  is  split  into  three 
groupings,  but  each  of  these  groupings  is  affiliated  with  world 
religious  organizations  and  by  virtue  of  this  fact  is  in  indirect 
contact  with  all  those  countries  and  areas  in  which  such  religious 
organizations  exist.  The  same  thing  may  be  said  with  regard  to 
the  political  affiliation  of  the  farmers  of  a  given  locality,  for  here 
again  they  are  divided  and  have  no  general  tie.  Each  faction, 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  319 

through  its  affiliation  with  its  party,  comes  into  contact  with  an 
organization  of  far  greater  extent  than  the  locality  of  the  farmers. 
The  lines  of  this  political  differentiation  will  not  coincide  in  the 
main  with  lines  of  differentiation  according  to  religious  affilia- 
tion. A  similar  phenomenon  is  observed  if  we  consider  groupings 
on  the  basis  of  nationality,  cooperative  organization,  tax  payment, 
school  affiliation,  or  many  other  forms  of  groupings.  Schemes  6 
and  7  depict  the  situation. 

In  these  schemes  each  vertical  line  depicts  a  farmer  and  the 
totality  of  the  lines  represents  all  the  farmers  of  a  given  locality. 
Scheme  6  shows  their  differentiation  on  a  religious  basis  into 
three  groups  and  the  connection  of  each  of  these  local  groups 
with  the  world  organizations  of  the  three  religious  bodies.  Thus 
the  local  group  does  not  constitute  a  unity,  but  each  differentiated 
group  is  linked  with  other  people  scattered  throughout  the  world. 
Scheme  7  shows  the  same  phenomenon  in  regard  to  the  political 
differentiation  of  the  farmers.  A  comparison  of  the  two  shows 
that  the  religious  and  the  political  groups  do  not  coincide.  If  to 
these  schemes  are  added  schemes  that  would  depict  the  affiliations 
of  the  same  farmers  with  nationality  groups,  with  trade  centers, 
with  schools,  with  cooperative  organizations,  etc.,  the  differentia- 
tion of  the  local  group  would  appear  still  greater  and  the  con- 
trast to  the  cumulative  groups  discussed  previously  would  be  still 
more  conspicuous. 

Under  such  conditions  it  is  difficult  to  determine  where  the 
community  is,  where  its  boundaries  are,  and  which  individuals 
constitute  its  membership.  The  question  arises  as  to  what  is  to  be 
taken  as  the  basis  of  the  community.  If  we  take  gravitation  to  the 
trade  center,  the  community  map  will  be  of  one  kind;  if  we  take 
as  the  basis,  gravitation  to  the  schools,  the  recreation  hall,  the 
church,  or  the  cooperative  organization,  the  map  of  the  communi- 
ties and  their  membership  will  be  different  in  each  case,  and  will 
differ  from  the  results  secured  when  we  took  as  the  basis  gravi- 
tation to  the  trade  center.  In  each  of  these  cases  there  will  be 
many  different  elementary  groupings,  and  no  cumulative  group 
with  a  definite  territorial  abode,  or  with  a  membership  composed 
of  all  the  neighboring  farmers.  Several  investigators  have  tried 
to  find  the  location  of  the  community  on  the  basis  of  the  name 
with  which  the  farmers  who  were  questioned  styled  the  locality 


320  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  "which  they  lived.5  But  it  is  rather  evident  that  the  mere  fact 
that  there  is  a  name  given  to  the  locality  in  which  several  farmers 
live  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  there  is  any  real  integration 
or  grouping  of  these  farmers  into  one  community.  As  a  rule,  the 
farmers  residing  in  a  locality  of  the  same  name  compose  either  a 
fictitious,  statistical  community,  or  at  the  best  such  a  community 
may  represent  only  some  territorial  grouping  of  the  farmers,  and 
territorial  grouping  is  only  one  of  the  elementary  groupings 
among  many  others,  no  one  of  which  will  probably  coincide  in 
its  entirety  with  the  boundary  lines  of  the  territorial  grouping. 
In  addition,  the  membership  of  any  one  of  these  other  elementary 
groupings  will  be  considerably  different  from  the  totality  of  farm 
families  living  in  a  locality  that  is  designated  by  one  name.6 

The  territorial  proximity  remains;  but  since  the  farms  are  not 
clustered  into  villages  with  an  uninhabited  space  between  them, 
mere  territorial  proximity  does  not  indicate  where  one  com- 
munity ends  and  another  begins.  It  is  true  that  the  mere  fact  of 
territorial  proximity  constitutes  a  bond  of  union  between  terri- 
torial neighbors,  but,  if  this  territorial  tie  is  not  reinforced  by 
other  ties,  it  remains  weak  arid,  what  is  more  important,  does  not 
indicate  in  itself  the  boundary  lines  between  various  communi- 
ties.7 

8  See  the  studies  cited  of  C.  J.  Galpin,  Dwight  Sanderson,  E.  H.  Morgan,  J.  H.  Kolb, 
C.  C.  Taylor,  C.  C.  Zimmerman,  Lowry  Nelson,  B.  L.  Hummel,  W.  H.  Baumgartel,  and 
others. 

"This  has  been  found  in  practically  all  these  studies.  In  121  local  groups  studied  by 
Kolb,  6  of  the  names  of  the  farmers'  neighborhoods  were  "accidental,"  1  was  due 
to  the  economic  institution,  3  were  due  to  the  educational  institution,  40  were  the 
names  of  previous  settlers  or  of  the  families  questioned;  8  were  due  to  the  nationality 
of  the  settlers,  39  were  due  to  natural  phenomena  (Blue  Valley,  The  Ridge,  Spring 
Valley,  Hundred  Mile  Grove,  etc.),  4  took  the  name  of  the  post  office,  5  were  due 
to  various  social  institutions,  and  15  took  the  name  of  the  official  township.  The  other 
investigators  mentioned  found  somewhat  similar  results.  The  testimony  of  these  results 
is  clear.  First,  the  name  with  which  several  farmers  designate  their  locality  does  not 
mean  that  a  real  grouping  exists  among  these  farmers;  second,  these  localities  with  a 
name  do  not  compose  a  real  cumulative  group,  but,  instead,  the  farmers  are  united  only 
into  a  series  of  heterogeneous  and  overlapping  elementary  groupings  of  various  kinds 
and  with  different  membership. 

7  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  some  of  the  investigators,  for  instance,  B.  L.  Hum- 
mel, introduce  as  a  criterion  of  the  community,  the  Aristotelian  concept  of  self-sufficiency. 
Hummel  distinguishes  a  community  from  a  neighborhood  by  regarding  as  communities 
only  such  territorial  aggregates  as  are  self-sufficient  as  communities.  (B.  L.  Hummel, 
op.  cit.,  p.  2.)  But  it  is  evident  that  in  this  case  only  the  whole  country  or  only  the 
whole  of  mankind  would  compose  Hummel's  "community,"  because  under  the  present 
conditions  of  division  of  labor,  neither  large  inhabited  areas  nor  even  many  nations  are 
self-sufficient,  that  is,  satisfy  by  themselves  all  their  needs. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  321 

The  tie  of  the  territorial  neighborhood  is  often  reinforced  in 
some  way  by  other  ties,  for  instance,  by  grouping  the  population 
on  territorial  bases  into  counties,  townships,  congressional  dis- 
tricts, state  electoral  districts,  school  districts,  and  so  on.  If  the 
lines  of  these  various  territorial  constituencies  should  coincide 
more  or  less,  the  population  embraced  by  them  would  com- 
pose a  variety  of  the  cumulative  community.  If,  however,  these 
lines  do  not  coincide,  as  is  true  in  many  cases,  then  the  ter- 
ritorial proximity  of  dispersed  farms  remains  a  very  weak  ele- 
mentary tie  and  does  not  indicate  the  boundary  dividing  one 
community  from  another.  There  exists  a  mere  aggregate  of  ter- 
ritorial neighbors,  divided  into  several  groupings  of  special  in- 
terests, rather  than  a  cumulative  community  composed  of  the  total 
population  of  a  locality. 

This  discussion  indicates  that  the  structure  of  the  above  two 
types  of  rural  groupings  is  different.  Since  these  two  types  of 
groupings  are  different,  it  may  serve  to  clarify  future  discussion 
if  we  designate  them  by  different  names.  The  name  "cumulative 
community"  is  more  suitable  for  the  designation  of  the  cumula- 
tive and  territorially  outlined  rural  groups  of  the  first  type;  the 
name  "functional  association"  or  "differentiated  grouping"  is 
proper  for  the  designation  of  the  rural  population  groupings  of 
the  second  type.  Other  groupings  of  the  rural  population  are  in- 
termediary between  these  two  types. 

5.  Other  characteristics  associated  with  the  cumulative  com- 
munity and  functional  associations. — The  difference  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  rural  cumulative  community  and  the  rural  aggregate 
with  functional  associations  or  differentiated  groupings  is  natu- 
rally connected  with  a  series  of  other  differences  between  the 
cumulative  community  and  the  population  differentiated  into 
functional  associations.  The  most  important  of  them  may  be  given 
in  schematical  form  as  follows: 

(a)  The  population  of  the  cumulative  rural  community  is  more 
strongly  attached  to  the  community  and  less  strongly  attached 
to  the  world  outside  itself.  The  population  with  differentiated 
rural  groupings  is  attached  to  a  less  degree  to  the  territorial  neigh- 
bors and  is  attached  in  a  greater  degree  to  the  members  of  the 
same  groupings  even  though  they  may  be  outside  the  locality, 
sometimes  even  in  different  countries. 


322  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

(b)  The  solidarity  of  the  population  of  a  cumulative  rural  com- 
munity is  concentrated  and  localized  within  it.  The  community 
embraces  all  the  members  but  it  does  not  extend  much  beyond 
the  local  group.  The  solidarity  of  the  rural  population  with  the 
differentiated  groupings  does  not  extend  over  all  the  rural  neigh- 
bors but  is  limited  to  the  neighbors  who  are  members  of  the  same 
groupings;  on  the  other  hand,  it  extends  beyond  the  boundary  of 
the  locality  to  all  members  of  the  same  grouping  even  though  they 
are  far  away  (to  members  of  the  same  nationality,  cooperative  or- 
ganization of  a  national  character,  religious  organization,  etc.). 
Since  these  groupings  are  several  and  different  the  solidarity  is  dif- 
fused and  pulverized  along  these  different  lines;  for  this  reason  it 
is  less  concentrated  and  less  intensive. 

(c)  The  network  of  differentiated  groupings  and  their  solidari- 
ties is,  in  general,  more  flexible  and  changes  more  often  than  the 
network  of  the  cumulative  community.  The  former  is  similar  to 
the  complex  network  of  telephone  lines  in  a  city  in  which  the 
network  of  "connections"  changes  incessantly.  One  group  of  per- 
sons is  talking  at  a  given  moment;  another  group  at  another  mo- 
ment. Some  persons  who  were  talking  a  moment  ago  are  discon- 
nected, and  new  persons  are  now  included  in  the  system.  The 
result  is  that  the  network  of  telephone  talkers  changes  kaleido- 
scopically  all  the  time.  Affiliating  with,  and  resigning  from, 
the  majority  of  the  elementary  groupings  is  voluntary.  In  this  re- 
spect we  may  contrast  the  present  economic,  recreational,  educa- 
tional, cultural,  and  similar  ties  with  the  prevalent  bonds  of  the 
cumulative  community,  such  as  common  blood,  community  of 
race,  comomnity  of  land  possession  imposed  by  the  state,  etc. 
Since  the  nature  of  the  ties  in  these  differentiated  groupings  or 
functional  associations  is  such  that  they  may  be  put  on,  and 
taken  off,  like  a  suit,  the  greater  flexibility  of  such  groupings, 
the  more  fluid  composition  of  their  membership,  and  even  the 
shorter  duration  of  life  of  many  of  the  groupings  themselves  is 
naturally  facilitated.  Differentiated  groupings  may  appear  and 
disappear.  (See  Professor  Kolb's  analysis  of  the  duration  and 
changes  in  the  "special  interest"  groupings  as  an  illustration  of 
this  point.)  Many  of  the  cumulative  communities  are  and  must 
be  less  flexible  in  the  number  and  fluidity  of  the  individuals  who 
compose  them.  They  must  also  be  more  durable.  Since  their  mem- 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  323 

bers  are  bound  by  many  ties,  and  since  some  of  these  ties,  espe- 
cially mythical  or  blood  kinship,  are  such  that  they  cannot  be 
put  on  or  taken  off  easily  and  depend  but  little  on  the  free 
volition  of  the  individual,  the  community  is  rigid,  stable,  and 
relatively  durable.  It  often  appears  naturally  (clan-villages)  and, 
rather  than  being  dissolved  artificially,  it  usually  requires  a  funda- 
mental change  in  the  existing  social  and  economic  conditions 
to  produce  maladjustment,  disorganization,  and  death. 

(d)  "Neighbor"  in  the  cumulative  rural  community  means  all 
the  members  of  the  community;  that  is,  practically  all  those  who 
dwell  in  the  same  locality  and  who  are  bound  by  cumulative  ties. 
"The  neighbor"  means  a  man  who  dwells  in  territorial  proximity 
and  who,  at  the  same  time  is  "like-minded"  in  his  religion,  occu- 
pation, and  language,  is  often  a  kinsman,  and  is  a  copartner  in 
land  possession  and  in  the  totality  of  rights  and  privileges. 
"Neighbor"  in  the  rural  population  differentiated  into  various 
functional  associations  means  either  a  territorial  neighbor  and 
nothing  more,  or  else  another  member  of  the  same  elementary 
grouping  who  may  be  outside  the  locality  entirely.  Territorial 
neighborliness  here  is  much  weaker  than  in  the  cumulative  rural 
community,  for  it  is  not  reinforced  by  as  many  other  bonds.  The 
neighborliness  of  the  functional  groupings  excludes  many  terri- 
torial neighbors.  It  amounts  to  not  a  great  deal  more  than  the 
neighborliness  of  two  neighboring  roomers  in  the  city  who  are 
near  spatially,  but  who,  nevertheless,  often  do  not  know  the  name, 
life  history,  or  anything  else  concerning  each  other,  and  who, 
moreover,  do  not  care  to  know  each  other.  As  the  groupings  in 
this  latter  type  of  rural  population  are  different  and  numerous, 
the  group's  neighborliness  is  again  somewhat  split,  pulverized, 
and,  through  this,  weakened  in  intensity. 

The  contemporary  village  in  the  United  States  and  Canada 
gives  an  example  of  this.  That  the  modern  American  rural  aggre- 
gate, and  to  a  less  degree,  the  modern  European  one,  is  not  a 
cumulative  community  (as  it  was  supposed  to  be  by  several  in- 
vestigators) but  a  differentiated  aggregate  holds  true.  In  spite  of 
the  small  size  of  the  aggregate  (from  250  to  2,500  population) 
and  the  territorial  proximity  of  the  villagers,  the  American  vil- 
lage of  today  has  very  little  in  common  with  a  cumulative  com- 
munity. In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  so  much  an  agricultural  ag- 


324  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

gregate  as  a  business,  manufacturing,  and  trading  agglomeration. 
The  largest  occupational  group  of  such  villages  is  not  the  agri- 
cultural group,  but  those  engaged  in  manufacturing  and  mechani- 
cal pursuits.  The  next  largest  group  consists  of  those  engaged  in 
trade  (with  the  exception  of  the  Far  West,  where  the  agricul- 
tural group  is  second).  In  the  Middle  Atlantic  region,  the  third 
largest  occupation  is  transportation,  while  in  the  South  and  Mid- 
dle West  the  third  place  is  occupied  by  agriculture.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  the  above  regions  agriculture  occupies  only  the  fourth 
place  and  is  followed  by  professional  service  as  the  fifth  largest 
occupational  group.8 

Thus,  occupationally,  the  contemporary  American  village  is  not 
predominantly  agricultural,  but  represents  a  melting  pot  of  vari- 
ous and  quite  different  occupational  groups.  Socially  it  is  also 
very  heterogeneous,  less  so  than  the  large  cities  but  much  more 
than  any  cumulative  community.  It  is  differentiated  and  stratified 
to  a  considerable  extent.  Its  male  population  contains  from  28  to 
31  per  cent  of  laborers;  from  18  to  25  per  cent  of  proprietors, 
managers,  and  officials;  from  14  to  19  per  cent  of  skilled  work- 
ers; from  9  to  14  per  cent  of  clerks;  and  from  8  to  16  per  cent  of 
semiskilled  workers.  Among  the  females  the  variation  is  still 
greater.  Further,  from  the  standpoint  of  national  and  economic 
(income  groups)  composition,  or  religious,  political,  and  cultural 
affiliations,  the  village  population  again  shows  a  great  hetero- 
geneity, which  has  proceeded  so  far  in  some  respects  that  the  vil- 
lage aggregate  appears  over  organized  and  over  differentiated. 
The  population  of  a  small  village  often  happens  to  be  differen- 
tiated into  too  many  functional  associations.  On  the  average  one 
village  has  5.6  churches,  about  16  church  organizations,  from  6  to 
8  lodges,  several  civic  organizations,  27  social  organizations,  and 
from  8  to  10  economic  associations.  On  the  average  there  are  21.1 
village  organizations  and  16.1  church  organizations,  or  all  to- 
gether about  37  different  organizations  per  village.9 

Such  a  superabundance  of  various  functional  associations  is  a 
significant  symptom  of  the  great  differentiation  of  the  village 
population  into  specified  groupings,  and  indicates  that  the  village 

8  See  C.  Luther  Fry,  American  Villages,  New  York,  1926,  pp.  77  ff.;  also  B.  L,  Melvin, 
Rural  Population  of  N.  Y.,  1928;  Social  Relationships  of  Slatfrville  Springs,  Cornell 
University,  1930. 

"Edmund  Brunner,  Gwendolyn  S.  Hughes,  and  Marjorie  Patten,  American  Agricul- 
tural Villages,  New  York,  1927,  pp.  175  ff.;  see  also  Fry's  work  cited;  H.  P.  Douglass, 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  325 

as  a  whole  is  not  a  cumulative  community.  It  is  true  that  the  tie 
of  territorial  proximity  remains  and  it  binds  the  villagers  together 
into  a  sort  of  neighborhood  group.10  However,  it  is  a  weak  neigh- 
borhood, since  its  members  are  bound  together  only  by  this  tie 
and  are  differentiated  in  regard  to  other  binding  characteristics. 
It  is  true  the  village  aggregate  still  remains  nearer  to  a  cumu- 
lative community  than  the  population  of  a  large  city,  but  this 
does  not  mean  that  it  is  really  a  cumulative  community.  In  this 
respect  it  is  perhaps  farther  from  the  real,  clear-cut,  and  many- 
bonded  cumulative  communities  than  from  the  urban  aggregate 
of  a  large  city.  On  the  contrary,  the  Mexican  Ejidos,  the  American 
Quaker  Hills  of  some  time  ago,  and  the  earlier  agrarian  vil- 
lages were  certainly  cumulative  groupings.11 

(e)  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  organization  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion differentiated  into  several  functional  groupings  is  much  near- 
er to  the  social  organization  of  the  city  than  to  the  organization 
of  the  cumulative  rural  community.  We  have  seen  that  the  city 
population  is  much  more  heterogeneous,  differentiated,  and  strati- 
fied (chapter  iv).  Hence,  the  aggregate  of  the  city  population  is 
differentiated  along  many  lines  into  numerous  functional  group- 
ings and  has  very  little  in  common  with  a  manifold  cumulative 
community  whose  members  are  bound  together  by  many  ties  and 
isolated  from  the  population  of  other  cities  by  a  ditch  of  many 
cumulative  differences.  Such  cumulative  communities  are  melted 
in  the  city  population  and  replaced  by  the  most  differentiated 
elementary  groupings,  which  interlace  in  the  most  fanciful  way. 
The  differentiated  groupings  of  the  rural  population  are  becom- 
ing similar  to  the  differentiated  organization  of  the  city,  though 
the  urban  network  of  differentiated  groupings  is  even  more  dif- 
ferentiated, complex,  and  fanciful  than  that  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion. 

(f)  From  the  standpoint  of  the  social  affiliation  of  the  mem- 
bers, the  cumulative  community  type  of  social  organization  is 
quite  different  from  the  differentiated  grouping  type.  A  member 

The  Little  Town,  1927;  B.  L.  Melvin,  Village  Service  Agencies,  New  York,  1929; 
J.  W.  Badger,  The  Rural  Community  Chtb  in  Montana,  Montana  U.  Exper.  Station  Bull, 
No.  224,  1930. 

10  See  H.  P.  Douglass,  op.  cit.,  p.  54. 

"See  Warren  Wilson,  Quaker  Hill,  1905;  F.  Tannenbaum,  The  Mexican  Agrarian 
Revolution,  1929;  N.  L.  Sims,  A  Hoosier  Village,  1912;  J.  M.  Williams,  An  American 
Town,  1907;  and  also  dozens  of  European  and  Asiatic  community  monographs  cited 
elsewhere. 


326  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  cumulative  community  may  be  compared  to  a  man  who 
carries  all  his  insurance  policies  and  all  his  investments  in  the 
same  insurance-investment  company— his  cumulative  community. 
A  member  of  the  aggregate  with  differentiated  groupings  is 
similar  to  a  man  who  carries  his  life  insurance  in  one  insurance 
company,  his  accident  insurance  in  a  second,  his  insurance  against 
theft  in  a  third,  his  insurance  against  fire  in  a  fourth;  one  part  of 
his  savings  in  one  kind  of  bonds,  a  second  part  in  another,  a  third 
part  in  one  bank,  a  fourth  part  in  another,  and  so  on.  The  mem- 
ber of  the  cumulative  community  may  be  said  to  be  bound  to 
it  for  life  and  death;  if  the  community  fails,  he  is  ruined;  if  the 
community  prospers,  he  prospers.  Hence  he  is  organically  at- 
tached to  his  community  and  very  devoted  to  it;  it  molds  him 
into  the  same  form  as  his  fellow  members;  his  personality,  desires, 
and  volitions  are  those  of  his  community.  For  this  reason  the 
members  of  the  cumulative  community  are  quite  similar  and 
highly  like-minded,  with  a  well-developed  consciousness  of  the 
community  and  with  a  feeling  of  oneness  and  solidarity  that  is 
organic  and  deeply  rooted.  Under  such  circumstances  there  is  a 
natural  collective  responsibility  and  collective  consciousness. 
The  fault  of  a  member  is  the  fault  of  the  community;  the  achieve- 
ments of  a  member  are  the  achievements  of  the  community;  the 
community  rather  than  the  individual  is  the  social  unit  that  bears 
the  responsibility.  The  community  engulfs  the  individual  and 
makes  him  an  integral  part  of  itself. 

The  member  of  the  population  split  into  differentiated  group- 
ings is  in  quite  a  different  position.  Since  he  is  insured  in  many 
companies,  and  since  his  savings  are  distributed  among  many  dif- 
ferent banks  and  firms,  he  is  attached  to  some  extent  to  all  of 
them  but  is  not  attached  for  life  and  death  to  any  one.  He  can- 
not give  all  his  zeal  and  devotion  to  any  one  of  them  for  he  knows 
that  if  one  company  fails  there  are  other  companies  and  banks. 
His  personality  and  interests  are,  therefore,  divided  among  all 
these  different  companies.  Each  of  them  stamps  his  personality 
to  some  degree,  but  no  one  of  them  wields  a  monopolistic  power 
in  its  formation.  Hence  the  personality  of  such  a  member  is  a 
mosaic,  as  are  also  his  volitions,  desires,  ideas,  and  interests: 
there  is  a  little  bit  from  this  grouping,  a  little  bit  from  that  group- 
ing, another  bit  from  a  third  grouping,  etc.  He  is  not  engulfed 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  327 

entirely  by  any  single  grouping,  but,  being  separate  from  all  of 
them,  he  is  said  to  be  an  "individualist,"  a  center  connected  with 
many,  but  not  dissolved  by  any,  or  in  any,  of  these  groupings. 
His  solidarity,  split  among  these  various  groupings,  is  relatively 
weak  with  reference  to  any  one  of  them,  and  may  be  compared 
in  this  respect  to  the  love  of  a  man  attached  to  many  women. 
Under  such  circumstances  his  solidarity  and  relationships  with 
his  numerous  partners  in  various  groupings  is  not  organic  but 
artificial,  or  contractual.  It  does  not  arise  naturally  but  orig- 
inates from  a  weighing  of  his  interests,  profits,  and  payments;  it 
assumes  the  form  of  a  contract  in  which  the  respective  rights  and 
duties  of  the  parties  are  definitely  agreed,  have  definite  limits,  and 
are  outlined  clearly  in  order  that  one  party  may  not  deceive  the 
other.12 

Such  are  the  positions  of  the  members  within  the  cumulative 
community  and  within  the  aggregate  which  is  differentiated  into 
many  functional  groupings.  The  structure  of  the  two  aggregates 
themselves  and  the  character  of  the  personality  and  behavior  of 
the  members  are  conspicuously  different  in  the  two  cases.  Other 
existing  rural  aggregates  occupy  various  positions  intermediate 
between  the  extreme  types  which  we  have  described. 

The  question  as  to  which  of  these  types  has  predominated  in 
the  past  or  which  one  predominates  in  the  present  cannot  be  an- 
swered in  too  simple  a  manner.  Although  the  progress  of  the 
division  of  labor  together  with  increased  urbanization  has  facili- 
tated the  disintegration  of  the  rural  cumulative  communities  and 
promoted  the  development  of  the  rural  aggregates  with  differen- 
tiated functional  associations,  nevertheless,  in  various  countries 
and  at  various  periods  there  have  been  many  changes  and  many 
types  of  rural  organization  which  were  sometimes  nearer  to  the 
former,  sometimes  to  the  latter  type.  For  instance,  we  have  al- 
ready called  attention  to  the  fact  that  in  many  places  the  earliest 
cultivators  were  settled,  not  in  villages,  but  in  the  form  of  scat- 

12  See  further  development  of  these  typological  characteristics  in  F.  Tonnies,  Gemein- 
schaft  ttnd  Gesellschaft,  passim;  G.  Simmel,  TJber  soztalc  Diffcrcnzierung;  E.  Durkheim, 
De  la  division  du  travail  social,  pp.  103  fT.;  I.  G.  Ipsen,  "Das  Dorf  als  Beispiel  einer 
echten  Gruppe,"  Archiv  jttr  angewandte  Soziologie,  1928,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  4-5.  At  the  same 
time,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  contemporary  American  village  is  nearer  to  the 
cumulative  stage  than  the  city  populations.  A  study  of  the  investments  o£  Minnesota 
villagers  showed  that  they  are  closely  related  to  the  farmers  because  they  also  invest  in 
farm  lands  either  personally  or  at  second  hand  through  local  banks.  That  is  exactly  why 
a  farm  depression  affects  villagers  more  than  city  people. 


328  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tered  and  separated  farmsteads.  (See  above  the  paper  of  A.  De- 
mangeon.)  Even  though  the  families  of  the  homesteads  of  a  given 
locality  were  probably  bound  together  by  kinship,  religion,  mu- 
tual need  for  protection,  and  other  ties,  we  cannot  assume  dog- 
matically that  this  would  be  true  for  all  the  families  of  a  given 
locality  or  for  all  places  where  such  primary  settlements  existed. 
In  some  cases  the  ties  between  different  families  of  such  scattered 
homesteads  might  be  so  weak  that  the  totality  of  the  families 
would  not  constitute  a  strongly  bound  cumulative  community. 
Their  totality  would  resemble  rather  a  mere  sum  of  the  families 
who  were  territorial  neighbors,  but  who  had  in  common  only 
rare  and  sporadic  relationships,  unstable  groupings,  and  insignifi- 
cant common  activities.  Such  a  type  of  rural  population  is  neither 
the  cumulative  community,  nor  an  aggregate  with  differentiated 
groupings  (because  there  are  no  such  groupings).  Similar  inter- 
mediate types  have  existed  in  many  places  at  various  periods. 
For  these  reasons,  it  is  impossible  to  depict  the  evolution  of  the 
forms  of  rural  organization  in  a  rigid  rectilinear  way  as  a  per- 
petual transition  from  the  cumulative  community  to  the  rural 
aggregate  with  differentiated  groupings,  or  vice  versa.  Though 
the  latter  type  of  rural  organization  has  been  gaining  with  the 
increase  of  urbanization  and  industrialization,  nevertheless  the 
cumulative  community  type  is  still  widespread  in  various  coun- 
tries, especially  in  the  Orient.  Further,  while  in  almost  all  Euro- 
pean countries  the  cumulative  type  is  weakening  at  the  present 
moment,  in  Soviet  Russia  it  is  being  fostered;  the  policy  of  the 
Soviet  government  tends  to  create  so-called  "collective  farm  en- 
terprises," whose  members  are  bound  by  the  territorial  tie,  by 
collective  responsibility,  by  collective  work,  by  collective  produc- 
tion and  possession,  by  community  of  subjection  to  the  same  au- 
thorities, and  so  on.13  In  addition,  in  the  past  there  were  many 
types  of  rural  organization  which  were  nearer  to  the  aggregate 
with  many  groupings  along  different  lines  than  to  the  cumulative 
community  type. 

6.  Readings. — After  this  delineation  of  guiding  principles,  we 
present  several  fragments  taken  from  various  sources.  The  pur- 

18  See,  besides  the  sources  given  in  the  next  two  chapters  the  article,  "Soviets  in  the 
Districts  of  the  Complete  Collectivization  of  Farms,"  Isvestia  (official  paper  of  the  Soviet 
government),  August  31,  1929;  and  almost  every  copy  of  it  for  the  end  of  1929  and 
for  1930. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  329 

pose  of  these  readings  is  to  furnish  historical  cases  which  show 
in  a  more  detailed  form  and  with  historical  concreteness  the  types 
of  rural  organization  that  we  have  schematically  outlined.  They 
show  further  the  kinds  of  ties  that  have  bound  together  the  indi- 
viduals and  the  families  of  the  rural  population  in  various  times 
and  places.  In  addition  to  this,  they  give  several  types  that  are  in- 
termediate between  the  two  extreme  types  analyzed.  Finally,  they 
present  several  additional  details  which  are  not  mentioned  in  this 
introduction  but  which  are  worthy  of  notice.  In  accordance  with 
this  plan  the  subsequent  types  of  rural  organization  will  be  classed 
into  two  principal  groups:  first,  cumulative  rural  communities 
and  second,  rural  population  differentiated  into  functional  group- 
ings. It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  various  types  in 
each  of  these  groups  are  not  equally  cumulative  or  equally  dif- 
ferentiated, but  many  are  intermediate  between  the  two  extremes. 
In  the  first  part  of  the  readings  we  give  the  samples  of  the  rural 
cumulative  communities  in  ancient  Egypt,  China,  India,  early 
Europe,  and  relatively  recent  Europe.  The  readings  of  the  second 
part  give  various  specific  examples  of  the  rural  aggregates  differ- 
entiated into  special  groupings.  In  spite  of  some  disagreement 
(perhaps  mostly  in  terminology)  in  the  conclusions  of  Amer- 
ican investigators  in  the  field,  practically  all  the  studies  give  very 
clear  evidence  either  of  the  nonexistence  or  the  very  slight  ex- 
istence only  of  rural  cumulative  groups  (in  the  above  meaning 
of  the  phrase)  in  the  rural  population  studied.  If  Dr.  Charles  J. 
Galpin  found  something  similar  to  such  cumulative  groups  in  his 
sample,  he  found  it  only  in  the  sense  of  "the  rurban  community" 
but  not  for  the  rural  dwellers  outside  of  the  city  and  village 
centers.  Such  grouping  in  itself  is  an  indication  of  a  rather  spe- 
cial but  not  a  cumulative  type.  Furthermore,  his  maps  of  various 
groupings  of  the  population  along  the  trade,  banking,  school, 
church,  and  other  centers  do  not  coincide  with  one  another,  or 
coincide  only  to  a  slight  extent.  This  indicates  that,  even  in  the 
sense  of  "the  rurban  areas,"  the  groupings  of  the  farm  population 
are  cumulative  only  to  some  degree  and  are  divergent  or  special 
to  a  considerable  degree.14 

14  It  should  be  mentioned  that  in  a  somewhat  different  and  more  integrated  form  the 
"rurban1'  aggregate  existed  also  in  the  past.  Here  are  a  few  examples.  In  Greece,  Rome, 
and  Asia  "every  city  had  a  large  'territory,'  that  is  to  say,  a  large  tract  of  land  which  to- 
gether with  the  city  itself  formed  a  political,  social,  and  economic  unit.  ...  In  these 


330  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

In  the  numerous  studies  cited  for  the  United  States—those  by 

D.  Sanderson  and  O.  Thompson,  J.  H.  Kolb,  E.  H.  Morgan  and 
O.  Howells,  C  C.  Zimmerman  and  C.  C.  Taylor,  P.  P.  Denune, 

E.  A.  Taylor  and  F.  R.  Yoder,  W.  H.  Baumgartel,  B.  L.  Hummel, 
E.  A.  Wilson,  C.  Luther  Fry,  H.  P.  Douglass,  E.  de  S.  Brunner, 
L.  Nelson,  and  a  few  others— in  spite  of  the  desire  of  their  authors 
to  find  the  basis  and  the  boundaries  of  the  rural  community  in 
America,  factually  they  failed  to  find  the  cumulative  rural  com- 
munity in  any  real  sense.15  All  they  found  was  the  existence  of 
the  rural  population  divided  into  many  special  groupings  with  all 
the  characteristics  of  such  groupings  mentioned  above.  If,  at  the 
beginning  of  these  American  studies,  the  investigators  had  some 
hope  of  finding  a  cumulative  rural  community  as  a  prevalent  type 
of  social  organization  among  the  American  farmers,  later  on,  as 
the  investigations  continued,  such  hope  faded  more  and  more. 
As  a  result,  there  have  recently  been  published  several  studies  in 
this  field  which  have  explicitly  recognized  the  disappearance  of 
cumulative  communities  among  the  American  rural  population 
and  the  growing  replacement  of  them  by  the  special  functional 
groupings  or  "interest  groups."  One  of  the  most  conspicuous  sam- 

terntories  the  land  was  in  the  hands  of  the  city  bourgeoisie,  those  whom  Cicero  calls 
the  possessors  or  aratores.  ,  .  .  The  labor  employed  for  tilling  the  soil  and  herding 
the  sheep  was  probably  both  slave  and  free  labor  (furnished  by  small  tenants)  for  the 
fields,  almost  wholly  slave  labor  for  the  pastures.  ,  .  .  Besides  the  land  which  was 
divided  among  the  citizens,  many  of  the  ancient  Greek  cities  possessed  extensive  tracts 
which  were  cultivated  and  inhabited  by  natives  who  lived  in  their  old-fashioned  villages. 
From  the  Roman  point  of  view  these  villages  were  'attached'  or  'attributed'  to  the  city; 
from  the  Greek  point  of  view  the  villages  were  inhabited  by  'by-dwellers*  who  never 
had  had  and  were  never  destined  to  have  the  full  rights  of  municipal  citizenship." 

This  means  that  in  all  these  countries  there  were  clearly  cut  "rurban  areas";  the  culti- 
vators— free  or  unfree — of  each  of  these  areas  were  bound  together  and  to  the  city  by 
many  ties  and  in  this  way  composed  an  aggregate  more  integrated  than  the  contempo- 
rary "rurban  aggregate."  (M.  Rostovtzeff,  The  Social  and  Economic  History  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  pp.  180,  194,  237  and  passim.) 

The  same  is  true  of  the  medieval  cities  and  their  "rurban"  areas.  Each  of  the  cities 
had  its  own  trade  area,  which  it  kept  in  monopoly,  partly  even  in  a  compulsory  way: 
the  rural  population  of  the  surrounding  territory  was  obliged  to  buy  and  to  sell,  and  to 
pay  corresponding  duties  at  the  market  of  the  city  to  which  it  was  "attached."  Besides, 
such  a  city  was  an  administrative  center  and  the  military  center  and  the  refuge  and  the 
religious  and  cultural  center  for  its  rural  territory.  Add  to  this  that  the  rural  territory 
was  attached  to  the  city  through  the  landlords  of  the  rural  lands  who  dwelt  in  the  city. 
The  result  was  that  the  city  and  its  rural  hinterland  were  bound  into  one  "rurban"  com- 
munity probably  much  stronger  than  any  "rurban"  community  of  the  modern  time. 
See  about  this  in  the  excerpt  from  Sombart  given  in  chap.  iii.  See  also  H.  Pirenne, 
Medieval  Cities,  chaps,  ii-iv. 

15  See  the  introduction  to  this  chapter  and  footnotes  2,  8,  and  9,  where  the  titles  of 
these  studies  are  given. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  331 

pies  of  these  studies  is  that  of  J.  H.  Kolb  and  A.  F.  Wileden,  enti- 
tled Special  Interest  Groups  in  Rural  Society.  In  1920  Kolb 
thought  he  found  cumulative  communities  in  Wisconsin;  in  1925 
he  was  sure  that  such  did  not  exist.  Kolb's  most  recent  study 
shows  the  following: 

At  one  time  the  neighborhood  was  the  accepted  unit  for  organiza- 
tion. It  was  the  face-to-face  group.  It  was  an  area  in  which  everyone 
had  common  concerns.  The  very  proximity  of  life  made  for  group 
consciousness.  Consequently  the  school  district,  the  country  church 
parish,  the  exchange  threshing  ring,  or  the  alternation  of  social  parties 
followed  neighborhood  lines,  or,  as  the  case  may  have  been,  neighbor- 
hood boundaries  were  set  by  these  relationships.  There  were  many 
common  interests;  therefore,  group  organizations  could  be  few,  sim- 
ple, and  include  most  everyone. 

By  the  time  this  group  pattern  was  well  set,  factors  were  at  work 
breaking  down  these  locality  arrangements  and  setting  the  stage  for 
new  alignments.  This  neighborhood  pattern  was  found  in  some  of  its 
last  phases  in  1920  when  the  Rural  Primary  Groups  study  was  made 
in  Dane  County,  Wisconsin. 

Changes  were  evident  at  that  time.  Since  then,  a  new  chapter  in 
the  organization  history  of  the  county  has  been  enacted.  The  present 
study  of  five  other  Wisconsin  counties  shows  the  same  tendencies. 
Neighborhood  groups  are  no  longer  the  important  organization  units. 
Grouping  arrangements  are  along  new  lines.  These  groups  are  more 
largely  determined  by  the  interests,  the  deliberate  intent,  the  purposive 
action  of  people,  than  by  locality  relations.  Locality  groups  have  lateral 
or  geographic  dimensions.  Interest  groups  have  perpendicular  or 
psycho-cultural  dimensions.  Locality  groups  depend  upon  common  life, 
proximity,  residence  in  a  recognized  physical  area.  Interest  groups 
depend  upon  polarity,  promotion,  special  concerns,  leadership,  deliber- 
ate effort.  This  polarity  implies  fields  of  magnetic  influence.  When  thus 
released  from  locality  restrictions  certain  people  are  attracted  to  certain 
of  these  poles  of  interest.10 

A  study  of  these  special  interest  groupings  in  five  counties  of 
Wisconsin  has  shown  the  existence  of  351  organizations  among 
the  farmers  of  those  counties.  The  following  table  shows  the 
character  of  these  organizations  or  groupings : 

14  J.  H.  Kolb  and  A.  F.  Wileden,  Special  Interest  Groups  in  Rural  Society,  U.  of  Wise. 
Agric.  Exper.  Station  Research  Bull.  No.  84,  Madison,  December,  1927.  Reprinted  with 
permission  of  the  author  and  the  publisher.  See  also  Badger's  study  cited,  pp.  4-5. 


332  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


NUMBER 

PERCENTAGE 

Parent-teacher  associations 

.      47 

13.4 

Farmers'  clubs  . 

46 

13.1 

Community  clubs 

.     42 

12.0 

4-H  clubs          

34 

9.7 

Home-makers'   clubs 

20 

5.7 

Cooperative  creameries  .    . 

20 

5.7 

Spray  rings     

14 

4.0 

Breeders'  associations  . 

.     10 

2.8 

Horticultural  societies     . 

8 

2.3 

Cow-testing  associations 

7 

2.0 

Cooperative  shipping  associations     . 

.    .               7 

2.0 

Milk  producers'  associations  

5 

1.4 

Miscellaneous  (63  names) 

.     .   .        91 

25.9 

Total        .351  100.0 

It  is  comprehensible  further,  that  not  all  farmers  of  a  given 
territorial  neighborhood  are  members  of  each  of  these  organiza- 
tions, and  each  of  them  embraces  only  a  very  small  percentage  of 
the  total  population  of  a  given  neighborhood  (the  average  mem- 
bership of  the  organizations  is  about  forty).  The  membership  of 
the  organizations  is  naturally  fluid  or  changing  in  its  composi- 
tion. The  average  length  of  life  of  the  organizations  is  limited  and 
rather  short  (two  years  or  less).  In  brief,  the  study  shows  that  the 
rural  population  studied  is  not  a  cumulative  community  but  an 
aggregate  divided  into  many  functional  groupings  with  all  the 
fundamental  characteristics  of  such  a  confused  aggregate  (indi- 
cated above). 

The  factual  results  of  the  preceding  American  studies  were  very 
similar.  At  the  best  they  showed  the  existence  of  only  slight  traces 
of  the  cumulative  community  among  the  farmers  studied.17 

The  situation  in  Europe  is  somewhat  similar.  There  also  the 
cumulative  rural  community  tends  to  disappear  and  to  be  replaced 
by  the  functional  associations  of  the  farmers  and  peasants.  The 
subsequent  readings  about  European  countries  give  two  examples 

17  In  view  of  a  wide  circulation  of  these  studies  among  the  American  specialists,  their 
accessibility,  and  the  well-known  character  of  their  conclusions,  we  do  not  give  them 
in  the  subsequent  readings.  But  we  estimate  their  scientific  value  very  highly  and  regard 
this  type  of  study  as  indispensable  for  anyone  engaged  in  an  investigation  of  rural 
organization.  The  principal  conclusions  about  the  contemporary  type  of  rural  organiza- 
tion among  the  American  and,  partly,  among  European  farmers  and  peasants  as  given 
in  this  introduction,  arc  based  primarily  upon  the  results  of  these  studies. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  333 

of  groupings  of  the  intermediate  types  between  the  two  extreme 
types  outlined. 

As  an  introduction  to  the  papers  which  outline  the  types  of  the 
differentiated  rural  aggregates,  some  fragments  from  the  famous 
work  of  F.  le  Play  are  given.  These  fragments  depict  Le  Play's 
theory  of  the  general  characteristics  of  agricultural  social  organi- 
zation as  such  has  existed  in  all  prosperous  societies. 

Two  other  papers  give  a  picture  of  the  transition  from  the 
cumulative  rural  community  to  the  aggregate  with  functional 
groupings  among  the  rural  people  of  Germany  and  England. 
With  slight  variations,  a  similar  process  is  taking  place  among 
the  rural  populations  of  almost  all  Western  (and,  in  a  less  degree, 
Eastern)  countries. 

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BABEAU,  A.,  La  vie  rurale  dans  I'ancienne  France  (1885). 

,  Le  village  sous  I'ancien  regime  (1882). 

BEAUCHET,  L.,  Histoire  de  la  propriete  -fonder e  en  Suede  (Paris,  1904). 

BENE,  L.,  Gesellschaft  des  Dorfes  (Budapest,  1925). 

BLAHA,  A.,  Sociologie  Sedlaty  a  delnika  (1924). 

BOGISIC,  V.,  De  la  form  dite  ino\osna  de  la  famille  rurale  chez  les  Serbes 

et  Croates  (Paris,  1884). 
BRANSON,  E.  C.,  Farm  Life  Abroad  (1924). 
BRANTS,  V.,  Histoire  des  classes  rurales  aux  Pays-Bas  (1880). 
BRTJNNER,  H.,  Deutsche  Rechtsgeschichte  (1906),  Vol.  I. 
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,  Limanowa  (Krakow,  1902). 

BULL,  E.,  Vergleichende  Studien  uber  die  Kulturverhdltnisse  des  Bauern- 

tums  (Oslo,  1930). 

CAGGESE,  R.,  Classe  e  commune  rurali  nel  media  evo  Italiano  (1909),  2  vols. 
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Boranic,  21  vols. 

Cvijic,  JOVAN,  La  peninsule  bal^anique  (Paris,  1918). 
DENIS,  E.,  Huss  et  la  guerre  des  Hussites  (Paris,  1878). 
DITCHFIELD,  P.  H.,  Old  Village  Life  (New  York,  1920). 
FUSTEL  DE  COULANGES,  NuMA  D.,  Histoire  des  institutions  politiques  de 

I'ancienne  France  (Paris,  1887-1890),  Vols.  III-IV. 
GOMME,  G.  L.,  The  Village  Community  (London,  1890). 
GRAS,  N.  S.  B.,  and  GRAS,  E.  C.,  The  Economic  and  Social  History  of  an 

English  Village  (Cambridge,  1930). 


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GUNTHER,  A.,  Die  Alpenlandische  Gesellschajt  (Jena,  1930). 

HANSSEN,  G.,  "Ansichten  iiber  das  Agrarwesen  der  Vorzeit,"  in  the  Neues 

staatsburgerliches  Magazin,  Vol.  Ill  (1835),  and  Vol.  VI  (1837). 
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1929). 
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wandte  Soziologie  (1928),  Nos.  4-5. 

IRVINE,  HELEN  D.,  The  Making  of  Rural  Europe  (London,  1923). 
KACHAROVSKI,  K.,  Russian  Obschina  (Russ.)  (1906). 
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Growth  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1908). 
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1910),  6  vols. 

LAVELEYE,  EMILE  DE,  Primitive  Property  (London,  1878). 
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manen,  der  Kelten,  Romerf  Finnen,  und  Slaven  (Berlin,  1896),  4  vols. 
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(Paris,  1905). 

NOVAKOVITCH,  M.,  La  zadruga  chez  les  Serbes  (Paris,  1906). 
OLAFSEN,  O.,  Jordjaellessfyb  og  Sameie. 
PEAKE,  H.,  The  English  Village  (London,  1922). 
PHELAN,  JOHN,  Readings  in  Rural  Sociology f  chap.  i. 
ROLVAAG,  O.  E.,  Giants  in  the  Earth. 

SANDERSON,  DWIGHT,  The  Farmer  and  His  Community  (New  York,  1922). 
SEE,  H.,  Les  classes  rurales  et  le  regime  domanial  en  France  (Paris,  1901). 
SEEBOHM,  F.,  The  English  Village  Community  (London,  1890),  4th  ed. 
SIMS,  N.  L.,  A  Hoosier  Village. 
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America  (1927),  Vol.  L 
VINOGRADOFF,  P.,  The  Growth  of  the  Manor  (London,  1905). 

,  English  Society  in  the  Eleventh  Century  (Oxford,  1908). 

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,    Gesammelte  Aufsatze  zur   Social-   und    Wtrtschaftsgeschichte 

(Tubingen,  1924). 

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WILLIAMS,  J.  M.,  An  American  Town. 
WILSON,  WARREN  H.,  Quaker  Hill 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  335 

See  also  all  of  Volume  IV  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies  in 
History  and  Political  Science.  For  other  sources  see  the  papers  of  Deman- 
geon  and  Maunier;  also  the  works  quoted  in  chapters  vii,  viii,  and  ix,  and 
Part  III  of  Volume  II  on  the  family  and  other  institutions. 

41.  MORET  AND  DAVY:  EGYPTIAN  CUMULATIVE  RURAL 
COMMUNITIES* 

Among  uncivilized  peoples  the  first  social  organization  is  not  the 
family,  but  the  clan;  all  the  clansmen  believe  themselves  related,  not 
by  blood,  but  as  a  result  of  a  mystic  communion  of  all  with  one  totem. 
In  the  latter  resides  the  source  of  a  sacred  power,  of  a  universal  author- 
ity, which  the  Melanesians  call  mana.  This  authority  is  diffused  among 
all  the  clansmen,  this  regime  is  equalitarian  and  communistic.  The 
clan  chooses  for  itself  a  name  and  an  emblem.  .  .  .  Subsequently  the 
clans  settle  down  in  stable  villages  and  form  territorial  groupings.  .  .  . 
The  first  village  is  very  often  just  a  totemic  clan  which  has  settled  on 
the  soil,  and  then  the  development  of  this  village  and  of  the  tribe  or 
territorial  society  which  contains  it  results  from  the  interplay  of  these 
two  factors.  The  mystico-domestic  constitutional  law  and  territorial 
constitutional  law  mutually  interpenetrate  and  react  upon  one  another. 

Such  seems  to  have  been  also  the  early  rural  organization  among  the 
ancient  Egyptians.  Few  features  of  it  can  be  detected,  for  writing  did 
not  yet  exist  to  leave  behind  explicit  evidence  thereof.  Still,  on  clay 
vases  and  on  the  walls  of  tombs  ...  we  see  boats  and  buildings  sur- 
mounted by  heraldic  effigies — a  falcon,  an  elephant,  a  solar  disc, 
crossed  arrows.  .  .  .  Many  of  these  emblems  remained  in  use  down 
to  the  close  of  Pharaonic  civilization  as  the  names  of  provinces  or 
nomes.  .  .  .  These  ensigns  are  evidently  "ethnic  emblems."  ...  As  in 
all  agricultural  countries  exposed  to  sudden  attacks  from  nomads,  the 
sedentary  peasants  did  not  dwell  in  scattered  huts.  By  night  they  gath- 
ered behind  the  solid  walls  of  villages,  where  they  left  their  families 
and  treasures  in  safety  when  they  went  forth  to  their  fields.  Each  vil- 
lage planted  above  its  fortified  gates  an  ensign.  ...  In  these  villages 
the  hunters  and  tillers  had  come  together  for  reasons  of  defense, 
mutual  aid,  and  collective  safety. 

[Besides  these  bonds — totemic  or  blood  relationship,  community  of 
beliefs  and  ceremonies,  and  mores,  the  territorial  proximity,  commun- 
ity of  the  political  authority,  mutual  aidf  protection  and  safety — there 
were  many  other  purely  economic  ties  which  bound  the  villagers 
together^]  If  Nile  brings  "the  water  of  life"  to  the  soil,  we  must  not 

*  From  A.  Moret  and  G.  Davy,  From  Tribe  to  Empire,  New  York,  Alfred  A.  Knopf, 
1926,  pp.  62,  354,  125-130.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  Inc., 
and  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Trubner,  and  Co.,  Ltd.,  London,  the  publishers. 


336  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

forget  that  at  the  moment  of  the  overflow  it  drowns  and  destroys 
everything;  hence  the  need  for  raising  roads  and  villages  above  it  on 
causeways.  .  .  .  The  river  must  be  banked.  .  .  .  Yet  there  were  other 
essential  tasks:  to  drive  out  the  wild  beasts  from  the  valley;  to  choose 
the  animals  suitable  for  taming;  to  break  in  ox,  sheep,  and  ass;  to  till 
the  soil;  to  select  plant  species;  to  obtain  barley,  millet,  wheat,  and 
wine.  .  .  .  The  [rural  population]  which  had  achieved  it  lived  under 
a  social  system  of  which  the  tribal  ensigns  are  the  only  marks  to  tell 
the  tale. 

42.  LEE,  ASAKAWA,  Tsu,  KULP:  CHINESE  AND  JAPANESE 
RURAL  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITIES 

The  Tsing  Tien  System* — The  whole  history  of  the  government 
administration  of  agriculture  in  China  coincides  with  the  history  of 
the  Tsing  Tien  System.  .  .  .  What  then  was  the  Tsing  Tien  System? 
It  means  fields  laid  out  like  the  character  tsing.  .  .  .  For  each  tsing 
consisted  of  a  square  divided  into  nine  plots.  To  eight  families  were 
assigned  the  eight  exterior  plots,  and  the  center  plot  was  reserved  to 
be  worked  in  common.  The  word  tsing  also 
denotes  a  well,  for  within  the  limits  of  each 
tsing  four  roads  were  open  and  a  well  dug  in 
the  center.  The  tsing  unit  was  also  known  as 
1  Lin  (neighborhood);  3  Lins  =  l  Pung 
(friendship);  3  Pungs—\  Li  (village).  .  .  . 


The  advantages  of  the  system  were  thus  enumerated:  (1)  saving  of 
expense;  (2)  unifying  of  customs;  (3)  improved  production;  (4)  easy 
exchange  of  commodities;  (5)  mutual  protection;  (6)  close  social  rela- 
tions; (7)  general  cooperation.  This  organization  as  a  social  system  is 
readily  discerned  and  understood,  as  well  as  its  significance  as  a  system 
of  taxation  in  that  the  center  lot  of  each  tsing  was  cultivated  in  com- 
mon by  the  adjoining  landholders  for  the  government  as  a  tax. 

[With  some  variation  the  essentials  of  this  system  persisted  through- 
out many  centuries  of  the  history  of  China.  During  the  Ming  dynasty] 
ten  houses  formed  a  tya,  with  an  additional  house  of  the  group-chief; 
ten  \ia  formed  a  It  with  ten  additional  houses  of  heads.  Besides  there 
was  an  elder  in  each  It  who  at  first  exercised  a  considerable  moral  influ- 
ence. .  .  .  An  important  part  of  the  business  of  the  tya  was  periodi- 
cally to  take  the  census  of  its  members,  in  order  to  ascertain  that  none 
were  suspicious  characters  and  none  adhered  to  evil  religious  sects. 

*From  Mabel  Ping-Hua  Lee,  The  Economic  History  of  China,  pp.  33-34;  see  the 
details  of  the  Tsing  Tien  System  there  and  in  Chen  Huan-Chang,  The  Economic  Prin- 
ciples of  Confucius,  II,  507  ££,  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  publisher. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  337 

Once  in  every  month,  the  people  in  every  It  assembled  at  the  public 
hall  of  the  village,  where  amid  solemn  music  the  head  read  the  impe- 
rial instructions  to  the  people.  The  instructions  were  intended  to  incul- 
cate the  spirit  of  concord  and  mutual  service  among  peasant  members: 
obedience  to  parents,  concord  in  the  village,  mutual  cordiality,  assist- 
ance for  the  sick,  the  poor,  the  orphans,  and  at  funerals,  industry, 
abstention  from  evil  deeds,  etc.  The  village-elder  exercised  judicial 
power  over  minor  cases.  The  li  had  also  a  temple  for  the  deity  of  the 
earth  where,  besides  other  minor  rites,  sacrifices  were  offered  in  spring 
and  in  autumn,  followed  by  a  feast  for  the  peasants.  There  was  another 
periodical  occasion  for  conviviality  of  the  village,  at  which  venerated 
seniors,  ex-officials,  and  scholars  were  given  places  of  distinction,  and 
the  other  villagers  sat  in  the  strict  order  of  their  ages,  regardless  of 
wealth.  The  //  had  its  special  granary,  to  which  all  the  families  con- 
tributed according  to  their  means,  and  which  was  open  in  case  of 
a  famine.  The  village  supported  a  primary  school. 

Beginning  with  the  year  645,  Japan  *  entered  upon  the  great  work 
of  reorganizing  her  state  system  largely  on  the  basis  of  the  Chinese 
institutions  of  the  early  T'ang  period.  The  decree  of  the  Reform  of 
646  contains  the  following:  "For  the  first  time,  make  a  census  of  the 
families,  a  record  of  financial  accounts,  and  an  equal  allotment  of  land. 
Fifty  families  shall  form  a  sato  (Chinese  pronunciation,  It),  and  every 
sato  shall  have  a  chief  whose  duty  shall  be  to  examine  the  families  and 
their  members  (persons  living  in  near-by  houses  and  mostly  related 
to  one  another  by  blood  tie),  to  promote  agriculture  and  sericulture, 
to  forbid  and  examine  misdeeds,  and  to  collect  the  taxes  and  enforce 
forced  labor.  Further,  the  families,  the  five  houses  shall  be  mutually 
responsible."  It  was  the  fixed  rule  that  every  inhabitant  in  the  village 
should  belong  to  some  group.  .  .  .  The  whole  or  a  part  of  the  village 
was  held  responsible  for  the  receipt  and  transfer  of  the  official  cir- 
culars, for  the  payment  and  delivery  of  the  taxes,  for  the  good  behavior 
of  all  the  members,  for  the  arrest  and  surrender  of  robbers  and  in- 
cendiaries, for  the  maintenance  of  taxable  estates,  and  for  a  hundred 
of  other  affairs.  The  entire  village  was  made  to  be  actively  interested 
in  the  peace  and  in  the  maintenance  of  each  household.  The  peasants 
should  watch  and  correct  one  another's  behavior,  and  disputes  should 
be  adjusted  by  mutual  conciliations.  [In  a  similar  way,  there  were  the 
ties  of  the  common  religion,  temple,  mores,  exclusion  of  all  religiously 
heterogeneous  persons,  and  dozens  of  other  ties  which  made  the  village 
a  real,  many-bonded  community.] 

*  K.  Asakawa,  "Notes  on  Village  Government  in  Japan,"  The  Journal  of  American 
Oriental  Society,  XXXI,  192-195,  170,  161;  XXX,  275.  See  also  K.  Asakawa,  "The  Early 
Sho  and  the  Early  Manor,"  Journ.  of  Econ.  and  Business  History,  February,  1929. 


338  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Contemporary  Chinese  village* — After  the  clan  solidarity  the  next 
simplest  expression  of  social  consciousness  is  what  we  may  call  "local 
spirit"  or  localism.  It  is,  primarily,  an  attachment  to  a  locality,  and, 
secondarily,  the  attachment  of  members  of  the  locality  to  one  another. 
In  a  village  community  the  members  are  conscious  of  an  attachment 
for  the  place,  created  and  strengthened  by  generations  of  residence, 
by  associations  of  childhood,  and  by  identification  of  economic  inter- 
ests. The  occupation  of  a  common  locality  becomes  a  basis  upon  which 
the  members  build  their  social  intercourse.  Solidarity  may  be  strength- 
ened by  intermarriage  among  the  different  clans,  by  the  recognition  of 
common  interests,  which  are  symbolized  in  the  worship  of  local  deities. 
The  village  is  a  self-governing  group.  .  .  .  The  headmen  of  the  village 
are  elected  by  the  members  of  the  village.  Their  public  duties  consist 
in  the  maintenance  of  roads,  supervision  of  fairs,  building  and  upkeep 
of  public  edifices,  sinking  of  wells,  engagement  of  theatrical  companies, 
policing  of  the  place,  etc.  In  the  cultural,  economic,  and  industrial  life 
of  the  village,  cooperation  is  expressed  in  the  conduct  of  markets  and 
fairs,  in  the  communal  "village  hunts,"  in  the  associations  for  the 
watching  and  gathering  of  crops,  in  the  communal  education  of  the 
young,  and  in  public  maintenance  of  religious  worship  and  theatricals. 
For  charitable  purposes  there  are  local  societies  for  the  care  of  found- 
lings, poor  families  and  their  children,  mutual  loan  associations,  and 
mutual  providential  associations. 

Phenix  y/7/fl^.f— The  area  of  the  village  proper,  that  portion  of 
the  land  occupied  by  the  houses,  is  very  small,  about  seven  hundred 
feet  wide  and  two  thousand  feet  long.  To  this  must  be  added  two 
other  areas:  the  extensive  plots  of  land  comprising  farming  interests, 
pasture  and  fruit  orchard.  The  fields  contiguous  to  the  village  are  now 
cut  into  strips  that  belong  to  the  inhabitants  of  Phenix  Village.  .  .  . 
There  is  a  total  of  one  hundred  and  ten  buildings,  large  and  small,  in 
the  entire  village.  There  are  two  buildings  that  belong  only  to  Phenix 
Village,  of  a  strictly  public  nature.  They  are  the  village  temple  and  the 
Scholars'  Hall.  There  are  four  buildings  of  a  semi-public  nature:  the 
chief  ancestral  hall  of  the  entire  village;  the  ancestral  halls  and  schools 
belonging  to  two  different  branches  of  the  village  group;  and  the  small 
temple.  ,  .  .  The  population  of  Phenix  Village  in  1919  amounted  to 
six  hundred  and  fifty  (pp.  11-13).  The  early  settlers  belonged  to  the 
same  kinship.  At  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  whole  'kinship 
group  was  moved  and  established  in  its  present  location.  At  present, 

*  Yu  Yue  Tsu,  The  Spirit  of  Chinese  Philanthropy.  A  Study  in  Mutual  Aid,  Colum- 
bia University  Studies,  New  York,  1912,  pp.  83-85. 

t  From  Daniel  Harrison  Kulp,  Country  Life  in  South  China,  Teachers  College,  New 
York,  1925.  Reprinted  with  permission  o£  the  author. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  339 

with  the  exception  of  the  few  shopkeepers,  all  the  inhabitants  have 
the  same  surname  and  worship  a  common  ancestor  (pp.  68-69). 
There  are  two  types  of  spoken  language  in  the  district,  the  Ha^a 
tongue  and  the  Holo  tongue.  Phenix  Village  people  use  the  latter 
almost  exclusively.  When  exogamous  marriages  with  Ha^a  girls 
bring  these  new  brides  into  the  village,  they  are  faced  with  the  neces- 
sity of  learning  a  new  language  (p.  79).  The  villagers  look  upon  the 
Hakfa  somewhat  as  they  do  upon  foreigners.  .  .  . 

Besides  the  common  observances  and  cooperations  growing  out  of 
the  ancestral  worship  and  blood  relationship,  this  clan  (the  population 
of  the  Phenix  Village)  maintains  its  unity  and  differentiation  from 
other  clans  in  the  rural  district  by  the  fact  that  one  of  the  two  public 
temples  in  the  village  is  reserved  exclusively  for  the  worship  of  Phenix 
Village  folk,  while  the  other  temple  is  shared  with  two  other  villages 
in  the  immediate  vicinity.  There  are  also  the  annual  processions  for 
the  local  village  gods  in  which  the  villagers  alone  take  part  with  respect 
and  enthusiasm.  Certain  taboos  also  reenforce  clan  distinctions  and 
familist  unity.  So  do  the  people  of  the  village  preserve  their  conscious 
unity  of  blood  relationship,  maintain  their  line  of  inheritance  intact, 
establish  a  feeling  of  superiority  over  surrounding  villages,  and 
strengthen  their  own  solidarity  (81-83) . 

Farming  is  the  basic  industry  for  the  region.  The  village  has  its 
market.  There  are  three  kinds  of  land  ownership:  public,  the  income 
from  which  is  devoted  to  interests  of  the  village  as  a  whole,  to  schools, 
more  public  lands,  charity,  building  or  repair  of  roads,  and  so  on; 
village  (sib)  ancestral;  family  ancestral.  .  .  .  Theoretically  there  is 
private  ownership  but  in  reality  the  head  of  the  moiety  holds  in  stew- 
ardship for  those  kin  dependent  upon  him  the  resources  he  possesses. 
Public  lands  are  not  communistic.  They  are  not  shared  equally  or 
according  to  need  on  the  basis  of  individuals  but  of  groups.  They  are 
owned  collectively.  They  cannot  be  sold  unless  the  signatures  of  every 
male  who  holds  responsibility  for  other  members  of  the  village  kin- 
group  is  set  in  approval.  .  .  .  The  economic  system  of  Phenix  Village 
must  be  thought  of  as  neither  communistic,  private,  nor  socialistic,  but 
jamilistic  (pp.  101-102).  [Finally,  the  villagers  are  united  by  a  series 
of  additional  ties,  such  as  a  political  self-government  of  their  own 
affairs,  partly  by  collective  responsibility,  by  law— a  definite  distribu- 
tion of  the  rights,  privileges,  and  duties  among  the  members.*  Thus, 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — For  Chinese  rural  communities  see  further:  Arthur  H.  Smith,  Vil- 
lage Life  in  China,  pp.  312-315,  30,  44,  49,  179,  200,  204,  205,  226-227  and  passim; 
R.  F.  Johnston,  Lion  and  Dragon  in  Northern  China,  pp.  127-154;  a  series  of  papers  in 
the  Chinese  Economic  Journal,  1925,  1927,  1928;  A.  Poljakow,  "Formen  der  Pachtver- 
haltnisse  in  China,"  Agrar-Probleme,  I,  Part  IV,  691-721;  W.  Wagner,  Die  chinesische 
Landwirtschaft,  Berlin,  1926;  E.  E.  Jaschnow,  "Die  chinesische  Bauern-Wirtschaft  in 


340  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

blood,  land,  territorial  proximity,  community  of  the  ancestral  worship 
and  religious  and  ritual  practices,  community  of  the  temple,  the  school, 
charitable  and  other  social  institutions,  community  of  the  language, 
collective  responsibility,  the  common  and  the  statutory  juridical  dis- 
tribution of  the  rights  and  privileges,  and  so  on— such  are  the 
numerous  ties  which  created  and  maintained  the  cumulative  village 
communities  of  China  and  Japan.] 

43.  R.  MAUNIER:  VILLAGE  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITY  OF  THE 
KABYLES  (BERBERS)* 

The  village  is  a  real  social  unity,  the  foundation  of  the  Kabyle 
society.  Before  the  French  protectorate  the  feuds  between  the  villages 
and  the  clans  were  common.  So  among  the  Kabyles,  as  among  many 
other  peoples,  the  village  was  a  place  of  refuge.  The  average  size  of 
the  villages,  according  to  the  census  of  1921,  is  about  five  hundred 
inhabitants.  Each  village  is  separated  from  the  others  by  a  stream  or 
other  natural  boundary.  As  a  rule  the  population  of  each  village  is 
descended  from  the  same  ancestors  and  belongs  to  the  same  clan.  Each 
clan  and  each  village  lives  in  the  main  for  itself  and  by  itself.  It  is  only 
when  various  clans  or  villages  belong  to  the  same  larger  tribe  that 
they  have  relationships  with  one  another  in  the  form  of  intermarriage 
or  a  common  market  place.  As  a  rule  the  Kabyles  marry  only  within 
the  village  community.  Hence  the  village  is  not  only  a  group  of  terri- 
torial neighbors  but  in  addition  a  group  of  relatives  who  believe  that 
they  have  descended  from  the  same  remote  ancestors.  The  village  is 
thus  a  co-dwelling  community  which  originated  from  the  community 
of  blood  relatives.  Accordingly,  the  name  of  the  village  is  generally 
a  genealogical  name  which  means:  "The  Sons  of.  .  .  ."  Each  village 
has  its  own  territory,  separated  from  that  of  the  other  villages.  It  also 
has  public  property.  Further,  it  has  an  economic  unity  in  the  form  of 
cooperation,  mutual  aid,  and  the  collective  performance  of  many  tasks, 

der  nordhchen  Mandschurei,"  Wirtschajthche  Abhandlung  mit  einem  Vorwort  von  G.  N. 
Diki,  Charbin,  1926;  D.  Tarchanow,  Abhandhing  tiber  die  sozialo1{onomische  Structure 
von  Kwangsi,  1927;  S.  M.  Shirokogoroff,  Social  Organization  of  the  Manchus,  Royal 
Asiatic  Society,  Shanghai,  1924,  extra  volume  III,  chaps,  ii,  v;  Y.  K,  Leong  and  L.  K. 
Tao,  Village  and  Town  Life  in  China,  London,  1915,  p.  viii,  and  chap,  iii;  L.  Magyar, 
"Die  Okonormk  der  Bauernwirtschaft  in  China,"  Agrar-Problcmc,  1928,  I,  267-283; 
B.  Freier,  "Die  neuesten  Etappen  der  Bauernbewegung  in  China,"  Agrar-Problcme, 
1928,  I,  110-118;  H.  P.  Wilkinson,  The  Family  in  Classical  China,  London,  1926;  Yu- 
Tscht'ang,  "System  of  Land  Tenure  in  China/'  Chinese  Social  and  Political  Science  Re- 
view, October,  1928;  V.  A.  Riasanovsky,  Customary  Law  of  the  Mongol  Tribes,  Char- 
bm,  1929;  V.  A.  Riasanovsky,  The  Modern  Civil  Law  of  China,  Charbin,  1927-1928, 
2  vols. 

*  Adapted  from  Rene"  Maunier,  "Zur  Soziologie  der  Kabylen,"  in  Jahrbuch  fur  So%i- 
ologie,  1927,  III,  316-322,  G.  Verlag  Braun,  Karlsruhe. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  341 

such  as  sowing,  planting,  and  the  building  of  houses.  Besides  its  eco- 
nomic, territorial,  and  blood  unity  the  village  has  also  a  moral  unity. 
Each  village  has  its  "Code  of  Honor,"  Horma,  obligatory  for  every 
member  of  the  community.  Finally  the  village  is  a  juridical  unity. 
It  has  its  own  laws,  its  own  mores  and  customs.  Thus  through  its 
groupings  the  village  is  a  small  self-sufficient,  self-governing  com- 
munity. It  has  its  own  property,  its  own  interests,  its  own  laws;  its  own 
duties  and  its  own  honor,  It  has,  so  to  speak,  its  own  personality. 

44.  MAINE  AND  KRAUS:  HINDU  CUMULATIVE  VILLAGE  COMMUNITY 

At  the  outset  the  village  communities  seem  to  be  associations  of 
kinsmen,  united  by  the  assumption  (doubtless  very  vaguely  conceived) 
of  a  common  lineage.  Sometimes  the  community  is  unconnected  with 
any  exterior  body,  save  by  the  shadowy  bond  of  caste.  Sometimes  it 
acknowledges  itself  to  belong  to  a  larger  group  or  clan.  But  in  all  cases 
the  community  is  so  organized  as  to  be  complete  in  itself.  The  end  for 
which  it  exists  is  the  tillage  of  the  soil,  and  it  contains  within  itself 
the  means  of  following  its  occupation  without  help  from  outside.  The 
brotherhood  besides  the  cultivating  families' who  form  the  major  part 
of  the  group,  comprises  families  hereditarily  engaged  in  the  humble 
arts  which  furnish  the  little  society  with  articles  of  use  and  comfort. 
It  includes  a  village  watch  and  a  village  police,  and  there  are  organ- 
ized authorities  for  the  settlement  of  disputes  and  the  maintenance  of 
civil  order.  .  ,  .  There  is  the  arable  land  divided  into  separate  lots 
cultivated  according  to  minute  customary  rules  binding  on  all.  There 
are  the  reserved  meadows,  lying  generally  on  the  verge  of  the  arable 
mark.  There  is  the  waste  or  common  land,  out  of  which  the  arable 
mark  has  been  cut,  enjoyed  as  pasture  by  all  the  community  pro  indi- 
viso.  There  is  the  village  consisting  of  habitations,  each  ruled  by  a 
paterfamilias.  And  there  is  constantly  a  council  of  government  to  deter- 
mine disputes  as  to  custom.* 

The  greater  part  of  the  rural  population  of  India  dwells  in  closed 
villages  which  are  more  or  less  sharply  separated  exteriorly.  On  the 
village  square  there  is  usually  the  house  of  the  village  chief  or  head. 
In  the  center  of  the  village,  in  the  shade  of  the  trees,  there  is  the  village 
public  well.  Here  the  women  and  girls  wash  their  laundry;  from  it 
the  water  for  their  daily  needs  is  taken;  and  here  also  they  chatter  and 
gossip  in  a  peaceful  way.  At  the  same  well  the  men  talk  about  their 

*From  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  Village-Communities  in  the  East  and  West,  New 
York,  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1876,  pp.  176-177,  107.  On  the  ancient  Hindu  rural  com- 
munities and  their  self-government  and  political  organization  see  Benoy  Kumar  Sarkar, 
The  Political  Institutions  and  Theories  of  the  Hindus,  Leipzig,  1922,  pp.  50-60.  See  also 
in  the  next  chapters  the  excerpts  from  Baden-Powell  and  Altekar. 


342  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

work,  crops,  prices,  and  so  on.  Here,  too,  the  village  chief  with  the 
elders  decides  the  disputes  and  conflicts  between  the  members  of  the 
village.  .  .  .  The  greater  part  of  the  village  population  devotes  itself 
to  agriculture.  .  .  .  But  in  each  village  there  exists  also  a  certain  num- 
ber of  artisans  engaged  in  the  trades  necessary  for  agriculture  and  for 
the  village  (a  smith,  a  carpenter,  etc.).  Some  of  them  belong  to  the 
lower  castes,  while  some  are  outcastes,  and  have  their  dwellings  and 
their  own  separate  wells  at  the  outskirts  of  the  village.  Where  several 
different  castes  dwell  together  in  the  village,  they  are  separated  from 
one  another  by  streets.  The  houses  of  the  Brahmins  are  on  the  best 
location  and  compose  the  best  streets;  the  houses  of  the  lower  castes 
are  at  the  outskirts  of  the  village.  .  .  .  The  whole  socio-political  organ- 
ization of  the  village  undoubtedly  goes  back  to  the  clan  organization. 
.  .  .  The  clan  organization  disappeared  but  the  village  organization 
of  the  settled  clan  remains,  though  the  villagers  are  not  always  con- 
scious of  the  common  origin.  Common  life  and  cooperation  are  devel- 
oped among  the  villagers  to  a  great  degree.  In  all  cases  at  its  basis 
there  is  a  consciousness  of  a  common  origin  from  real  or  fictitious 
ancestors  who  left  to  their  descendants  the  territory  of  the  village 
lands.  This  community  consciousness  did  not,  however,  hinder  a  partial 
subdivision  of  the  property  among  the  descendants.  But  the  waste  and 
the  meadows  remain  a  common  possession.  This  consciousness  of  com- 
munity finds  its  expression  also  in  the  rule  that,  before  any  land  is  sold 
to  outsiders,  the  first  preference  must  be  given  to  the  members  of  the 
village  community.  .  .  .  The  state  addresses  its  demands  not  to  the 
cultivators  as  such  but  to  the  community  of  landowners  and  land- 
possessors.  .  .  .  The  community  is  responsible  collectively  in  many 
cases.* 

*From  Alois  Kraus,  "Das  Indische  Dorf,"  Jahrbuch  fiir  Soziologie,  1927,  III,  295-304. 
See  about  the  Hindu  village  further  in  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Community, 
London,  1896,  and  Land  Systems  of  British  India,  Oxford,  1892,  3  vols.;  P.  Padmanabha 
Pillai,  The  Economic  Conditions  in  India,  London,  1925;  S.  Keatinge,  Rural  Economy 
in  the  Bombay  Veccan,  1912;  Altekar,  History  of  Village  Community  in  West  India, 
University  of  Bombay  Economic  Series,  No.  5,  1927;  P.  R.  Venkatasu  Crahmanyan, 
Studies  in  Rural  Economics,  Madras,  1927;  Gopal  Advani,  ~&tudc  sur  la  vie  nirale  dans 
la  Sind,  Montpellier,  1926;  Some  South  Indian  Villages,  University  oC  Madras  Economic 
Series,  Oxford,  1918;  the  Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India,  Oxford,  1908;  Census  of  India, 
1921;  many  papers  in  Indian  Journal  of  Economics,  1919-1929;  Agricultural  Journal  oj 
India,  Pusa,  1905-1929;  Cambridge  History  of  India,  Vol.  I,  1922;  H.  M.  Leake,  Land 
Tenure  and  Agricultural  'Production  in  the  Tropics,  1927;  H.  H.  Mann,  Land  and  Labor 
in  a  Dessan  Village,  Studies  No.  1  and  No.  2,  Oxford;  B,  K.  Sarkar,  Economics  of  British 
India,  1927;  W.  Crooke,  North  Western  Provinces  of  India,  1897;  C.  Field,  Land  holding 
and  the  Relation  of  Landlords  and  Tenants,  Calcutta,  1885.  See  also  the  series  of  Punjab 
Village  Surveys  by  the  Board  of  Economic  Inquiry,  Punjab,  1928,  and  later.  The  first  is 
a  study  of  Gaggar  Bhana  conducted  by  S.  Gian  Singh  under  the  direction  of  C.  M.  King, 
Lahore,  1928.  A  dozen  others  are  forthcoming. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  343 

45.  P.  KROPOTKIN:  THE  RURAL  CUMULATIVE  COMMUNITIES  IN 
EUROPE  AND  ASIA* 

The  Teutons,  the  Celts,  the  Scandinavians,  the  Slavonians,  and 
others,  when  they  first  came  in  contact  with  the  Romans,  were  in 
a  transitional  state  of  social  organization.  The  clan  unions,  based  upon 
a  real  or  supposed  common  origin,  had  kept  them  together  for  many 
thousands  of  years  in  succession.  But  these  unions  could  answer  their 
purpose  so  long  only  as  there  were  no  separate  families  within  the 
gens  or  clan  itself.  However,  for  causes  already  mentioned,  the  separate 
patriarchal  family  had  slowly  but  steadily  developed  within  the  clans. 
.  .  .  The  barbarians  thus  stood  in  a  position  of  either  seeing  their  clans 
dissolved  into  loose  aggregations  of  families,  ...  or  of  finding  out 
some  new  form  of  organization  based  upon  some  new  principle. 
Many  stems  had  no  force  to  resist  disintegration:  they  broke  up  and 
were  lost  for  history.  But  the  more  vigorous  ones  did  not  disintegrate. 
They  came  out  of  the  ordeal  with  a  new  organization — the  village 
community — which  kept  them  together  for  the  next  fifteen  centuries 
or  more.  The  conception  of  a  common  territory,  appropriated  or  pro- 
tected by  common  efforts,  was  elaborated,  and  it  took  the  place  of  the 
vanishing  conceptions  of  common  descent.  The  common  gods  grad- 
ually lost  their  character  of  ancestors  and  were  endowed  with  a  local 
territorial  character.  They  became  the  gods  or  saints  of  a  given  locality; 
"the  land"  was  identified  with  the  inhabitants.  Territorial  unions  grew 
up  instead  of  the  consanguine  unions  of  old,  and  this  new  organization 
evidently  offered  many  advantages  under  the  given  circumstances.  .  .  . 

As  a  rule,  it  was  a  union  between  families  considered  as  of  common 
descent  and  owning  a  certain  territory  in  common.  But  with  some 
stems  and  under  certain  circumstances,  the  families  used  to  grow  very 
numerous  before  they  threw  off  new  buds  in  the  shape  of  new  families; 
five,  six,  or  seven  generations  continued  to  live  under  the  same  roof, 
or  within  the  same  enclosure,  owning  their  joint  household  and  cattle 
in  common,  and  taking  their  meals  at  the  common  hearth.  They  kept 
in  such  case  to  what  ethnology  knows  as  the  "joint  family,"  or  the 
"undivided  household,"  which  we  still  see  all  over  China,  in  India,  in 
the  South  Slavonian  zadruga,  and  occasionally  find  in  Africa,  in 
America,  in  Denmark,  in  North  Russia,  and  West  France.  With  other 
stems,  or  in  other  circumstances,  not  yet  well  specified,  the  families  did 
not  attain  the  same  proportions;  .  .  .  But,  joint  or  not,  clustered 
together  or  scattered  in  the  woods,  the  families  remained  united  into 
village  communities;  several  villages  were  grouped  into  tribes;  and  the 

*From  P.  Kropotkin,  Mutual  Aid,  New  York,  McClure,  Phillips  fie  Co.,  1902,  pp. 
119-152. 


344  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tribes  joined  into  confederations.  Such  was  the  social  organization 
which  developed  among  the  so-called  "barbarians,"  when  they  began 
to  settle  more  or  less  permanently  in  Europe.  .  .  .  The  village  com- 
munity was  not  only  a  union  for  guaranteeing  to  each  one  his  fair 
share  in  the  common  land,  but  also  a  union  for  common  culture,  for 
mutual  support  in  all  possible  forms,  for  protection  from  violence,  and 
for  a  further  development  of  knowledge,  national  bonds,  and  moral 
conceptions;  and  every  change  in  the  judicial,  military,  educational, 
or  economical  manners  had  to  be  decided  at  the  folkmoots  of  the  vil- 
lage, the  tribe,  or  the  confederation.  The  community  being  a  continua- 
tion of  the  gens,  it  inherited  all  its  functions.  It  was  the  universitas,  the 
mir— a  world  in  itself. 

Common  hunting,  common  fishing,  and  common  culture  of  the 
orchards  or  the  plantations  of  fruit-trees  was  the  rule  with  the  old 
gentes.  Common  agriculture  became  the  rule  in  the  barbarian  village 
communities.  .  .  . 

The  more  we  study  them  the  more  we  recognize  the  narrow  bonds 
which  united  men  in  their  villages.  Every  quarrel  arising  between  two 
individuals  was  treated  as  a  communal  affair — even  the  offensive  words 
that  might  have  been  uttered  during  a  quarrel  being  considered  as 
an  offense  to  the  community  and  its  ancestors.  They  had  to  be  repaired 
by  amends  made  both  to  the  individual  and  the  community;  and  if  a 
quarrel  ended  in  a  fight  and  wounds,  the  man  who  stood  by  and  did 
not  interpose  was  treated  as  if  he  himself  had  inflicted  the  wounds. 
The  judicial  procedure  was  imbued  with  the  same  spirit.  Every  dispute 
was  brought  first  before  mediators  or  arbiters,  and  it  mostly  ended  with 
them,  the  arbiters  playing  a  very  important  part  in  barbarian  society. 
But  if  the  case  was  too  grave  to  be  settled  in  this  way,  it  came  before 
the  folkmoot,  which  was  bound  "to  find  the  sentence,"  and  pronounced 
it  in  a  conditional  form;  that  is,  "such  compensation  was  due,  if  the 
wrong  be  proved,"  and  the  wrong  had  to  be  proved  or  disclaimed  by 
six  or  twelve  persons  confirming  or  denying  the  fact  by  oath,  ordeal 
being  resorted  to  in  case  of  contradiction  between  the  two  sets  of 
jurors.  Such  procedure,  which  remained  in  force  for  more  than  two 
thousand  years  in  succession,  speaks  volumes  for  itself;  it  shows  how 
close  were  the  bonds  between  all  members  of  the  community.  More- 
over, there  was  no  other  authority  to  enforce  the  decisions  of  the  folk- 
moot  besides  its  own  moral  authority.  .  .  . 

There  are  very  numerous  tribes  which  are  still  living  under  a  social 
organization  almost  identical  with  that  of  our  barbarian  ancestors. 
Here  we  simply  have  the  difficulty  of  choice,  because  the  islands  of  the 
Pacific,  the  steppes  of  Asia,  and  the  table-lands  of  Africa  are  real  his- 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  345 

torical  museums  containing  specimens  of  all  possible  intermediate 
stages  which  mankind  has  lived  through,  when  passing  from  the 
savage  gentes  up  to  the  state's  organization.* 

46.  M.  KOVALEVSKY:  OLD  SLAVIC  RURAL  CUMULATIVE 
COMMUNITY! 

In  various  parts  of  the  country  numerous  persons,  sometimes 
amounting  to  fifty  and  rarely  to  less  than  ten,  are  to  be  found  united 
in  a  common  household,  living  under  the  same  roof  and  taking  their 
meals  at  the  same  table.  A  family  constituted  after  this  fashion  is 
known  to  English  scholars  under  the  name  of  the  "Joint  Family"  or 
"House  Community.".  .  .  The  undivided  household  of  the  Eastern 
Slavs  is  a  very  ancient  institution.  In  the  so-called  Chronicle  of  Nestor, 
mention  is  made  of  the  gens  organization  of  the  Polians,  a  Slavonic 
tribe.  .  .  .  The  Polians  are  stated  to  live  "each  ruling  his  tyndred  or 
gens  and  occupying  distinct  localities!'  The  members  of  such  a  terri- 
torially located  gens  is  styled,  in  another  ancient  source,  by  the  term 
verv.  If  a  crime  is  committed  on  the  territory  of  the  verv,  the  whole 
verv  must  fay  in  common  a  fine  similar  to  that  which  was  inflicted  in 
England  in  such  cases  during  the  reigns  of  William  the  Conqueror 
and  the  early  Plantagenets.  A  verv,  paying  in  common  a  sort  of  pecu- 
niary composition  for  a  crime  supposed  to  have  been  committed  by  one 
of  its  members;  a  verv,  possessing  its  own  limits,  and  therefore  its  own 
territorial  possession,  corresponds  to  a  house  community  in  which  sev- 
eral persons,  living  under  the  same  roof  and  owning  land  in  common, 
are  jointly  answerable  for  the  crimes  and  misdemeanors  committed 
within  the  limits  of  their  possession.  .  .  .  All  over  Russia  communities 
of  persons  belonging  to  the  same  kindred  and  living  under  the  same 
roof  are  still  in  existence.  Among  them  we  find  the  grandfather  and 
grandmother,  the  father  and  mother,  grandsons  and  granddaughters, 
brothers  and  sisters,  nephews  and  nieces,  with  other  persons  as  may  be 
united  to  them  by  ties  of  marriage,  as  daughters-in-law  and  sons-in- 
law.  Persons  incorporated  into  the  family,  working  for  the  common 
good  and  having  shares  in  the  family  profits  are  often  mentioned.  Be- 
sides these,  others  may  perchance  have  become  members,  as  for  in- 
stance persons  adopted  into  it,  or  children  of  a  widow  contracting  a 
new  marriage  with  a  member  of  the  community.  .  .  .  Blood  relation- 
ship, in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  is  not  always  required;  it  suffices 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  further  in  Kropotkm's  work  a  rich  collection  of  concrete  cases 
of  what  we  style  "the  cumulative  community." 

f  From  M.  Kovalevsky,  Modern  Customs  and  Ancient  Laws  of  Russia,  London,  David 
Nutt  Co.,  1891,  pp.  47-54. 


346  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

that  the  members  be  considered  as  relatives;  adoption  (through  various 
religious  and  social  rites)  takes  the  place  of  actual  descent,  and  the  fact 
of  sharing  the  daily  work  very  often  gives  a  stranger  the  rights  of 
a  relative.  [Besides  these  ties  the  members  were  bound  by  community 
of  land,  general  political  assembly,  elected  head  of  the  group,  and 
so  on.]* 

47.  JOSEF  HOLECEK:  OLD  SLAVONIC  VILLAGE! 

The  word  ves,  village,  originally  comes  from  Sanscrit,  where  it 
means  tribe,  family,  etc.  We  find  the  word  ves  in  the  Czech,  Polish, 
Lithuanian,  Serbian,  Slovene,  and  Croatian  languages.  It  is  common 
to  all  the  western  and  southwestern  Slavs,  but  it  has  ceased  to  exist 
with  the  Serbians.  The  wide  occurrence  of  the  word  shows  us  that  in 
olden  times  all  these  Slavs  had  a  common  village  culture,  the  founda- 
tions of  which  have  never  been  lost.  It  shows  that  these  Slavonic  peo- 
ples built  their  dwelling  places  in  the  same  way  and  gave  them  names. 
They  certainly  had  the  same  manner  of  life,  the  same  customs,  the 
same  administration,  and  of  course  the  same  faith. 

Every  nation  thinks  that  the  oldest  period  of  its  life  was  a  golden 
age.  We  cannot  secure  any  answer  from  the  literary  documents  of 
those  vague  times,  but  we  may  receive  it  if  we  go  to  the  Serbs,  and 
especially  to  their  most  conservative  branch,  the  Montenegrins.  Until 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  the  Montenegrins  lived  free  in  tribes. 
These  tribes,  governed  by  their  hereditary  or  elected  dukes  and  other 
smaller  chiefs,  were  independent  of  one  another.  They  occasionally 
allied  against  a  common  enemy,  but  they  also  made  war  on  one  an- 
other. Montenegro  was  never  "a  country  abounding  in  milk  and 
honey."  It  was  a  poor  country,  but  the  poverty  was  the  foundation  of 
the  liberty  and  equality  of  the  people.  They  appreciated  this  liberty 
and  equality  above  all  else  and  were  always  able  to  defend  it  by  a 
bravery  that  made  them  famous.  They  did  not  lock  their  individual 
huts,  and  what  was  in  them  was  common  property  for  all  their  inhab- 
itants. Even  their  victories  over  the  Turk  were  in  common,  not  gained 
by  this  or  that  duke,  but  by  all  warriors,  all  brotherhoods,  or  the  entire 
tribe.  Only  the  trophies  borne  from  the  battlefield  became  the  per- 
sonal property  of  the  man  who  gained  them. 

The  Montenegrins  did  not  follow  written  laws.  In  cases  that  oc- 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — At  the  present  moment  these  communities  have  almost  disap- 
peared. With  regard  to  the  Russian  peasant  cumulative  community  of  the  sixteenth 
century  see  the  paper  o£  Pushkareff  given  in  the  chapter  on  religion  and  religious  or- 
ganization. See  also  Novakovic',  Sclo,  Belgrade,  1891. 

fFrom  Josef  Holec'ck,  Sehtvi  (Peasantry),  Czechoslovak  Academy  of  Agriculture, 
Prague,  1928.  Translated  and  published  with  the  permission  of  the  Czechoslovak 
Academy  of  Agriculture. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  347 

curred  frequently  they  judged  according  to  custom;  in  new  cases  they 
judged  according  to  common  sense  and  conscience.  The  judges  were 
either  chiefs  or  "good  people"  who  had  been  asked,  men  trusted  by 
both  parties.  There  was  a  tribal  or  large-family  collectivism  which 
lasted  in  its  full  strength  until  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. The  principle  of  tribal  collectivism  of  all  property,  both  material 
and  nonmaterial,  had  governed  the  entire  life  of  Montenegro  up  to 
this  time.  Some  are  puzzled  because  there  was  no  zadruga  in  Monte- 
negro. As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  was  no  such  community  there,  but 
mutuality  was  carried  out  in  broader  social  units  which  had  more 
value.  The  sense  of  mutuality  is  not  identical  with  the  idea  of  a  state; 
it  is  even  contradictory  to  it.  The  idea  of  state  only  appeared  in  Mon- 
tenegro in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  even  then  it  was 
not  general.  The  Montenegrins,  satisfied  with  an  ancient  social  order 
which  had  been  inherited  by  them  from  prehistoric  times,  did  not  like 
the  sacrifices  that  were  asked  of  them  by  a  state  or  nation,  which  re- 
mained to  them  a  vague  concept.  The  idea  of  a  state  did  not  make 
them  enthusiastic  when  they  observed  the  life  of  the  neighboring  states. 

The  uncompromising  faith  in  the  spirit  of  collectivism  by  which  the 
Montenegrins  had  lived  since  time  immemorial  proves  beyond  doubt 
that  they  saw  the  attainment  of  the  ideal  social  life  in  the  mutuality  of 
all  things  in  both  economic  and  moral  life.  Of  course  they  did  not 
create  this  ideal  by  speculative  thinking.  It  was  created  of  itself  by  the 
strength  of  their  social  instinct,  by  the  conquest  of  the  thought  of  the 
racial  genius.  Social  organization  arose  from  the  same  source  as  had 
language  and,  later  on,  the  first  notion  of  God.  As  has  been  shown 
they  feared  no  sacrifices  in  behalf  of  their  social  ideal.  For  its  sake  they 
suppressed  in  themselves  not  only  the  desire  for  wealth  and  personal 
ambition,  but  even  the  sense  of  love  for  woman. 

We  must  also  mention  the  strictness  with  which  they  disposed  of 
anything  that  could  corrupt  their  character  or  soften  their  mind  and 
custom.  They  despised  soft  clothes  and  comfort  of  all  kinds.  He  who 
distinguished  himself  by  bravery,  but  had  no  property  other  than  the 
shirt  on  his  naked  body,  lost  nothing  of  his  honor  on  account  of  his 
poverty.  The  Montenegrins  rendered  him  high  homage  and  reproved 
in  this  manner  those  who  displayed  their  fine  dress.  Their  sexual  absti- 
nence was  and  is  unusual  up  to  the  present  time.  This  was  necessary 
to  preserve  the  collectivistic  organization,  which  would  last  as  long  as 
the  equality,  self-denial,  and  severity  with  which  everybody  watched 
both  himself  and  others. 

I  have  described  the  Montenegrin  collectivism  in  such  detail  in  order 
to  make  it  easier  to  understand  that  only  such  a  collectivism  as  this  can 
last  and  not  degenerate  into  anarchism.  Compare  the  Montenegrin 


348  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

collectivism  with  the  communism  of  Soviet  Russia!  The  Soviet  com- 
munism is  of  quite  a  different  and  contrary  type.  It  denies  itself  noth- 
ing, but  it  takes  and  appropriates  everything.  It  is  hard,  cruelly  hard, 
but  only  to  its  adversaries  or  to  people  who  have  lost  their  lives  in  its 
eyes  because  they  have  something  valuable  of  which  a  communist  de- 
sires to  take  possession.  Family  life  was  pure  in  Montenegro.  The 
Soviet  communism  destroyed  the  family  in  order  to  destroy  the  liberty 
of  self-determination  of  woman,  whom  it  urges  to  be  as  accessible  to 
all  as  a  harlot.  The  Montenegrin  collectivism  was  built  on  voluntary 
poverty,  while  the  Soviet  communism  is  not  disgusted  with  any  crime 
in  order  to  enable  anyone  to  get  rich  individually.  In  Montenegro, 
there  was  severe  morality;  in  Soviet  Russia,  there  is  abominable  de- 
moralization. 

The  social  morality  of  the  village  stood  and  continued  on  three  prin- 
ciples: (1)  one  for  all  and  all  for  one;  (2)  an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth 
for  a  tooth;  (3)  unanimity  in  all  collective  meetings. 

48.  W.  H.  RIEHL:  GERMAN  CUMULATIVE  RURAL  COMMUNITY* 

Formerly,  at  least,  the  neighbors  were  still  reckoned  more  or  less  as 
part  of  the  household.  The  people  of  the  neighborhood,  in  accordance 
with  old  custom,  carried  the  dead  to  the  grave.  In  some  places  if  poor 
people  could  not  pay  the  boys'  choir,  the  neighbors  of  the  deceased 
would  get  together  and  sing  at  the  open  grave  as  well  as  at  the  funeral 
services.  Each  event  of  the  household  had  to  be  reported  to  the  neigh- 
bor; he  had  to  be  invited  to  every  important  festival  of  the  household. 
Shortly  after  a  successful  delivery  the  neighbors'  wives  gathered  at  the 
home  of  the  recently  confined  woman  and  drank  the  Kindsbier. 
"Neighbor"  is  for  the  peasant  the  friendly  form  o£  address  which 
stands  next  to  cousin  (Vetter)^  it  is  a  degree  higher  than  "country- 
man," and  two  degrees  higher  than  a  mere  "good  friend." 

This  inclusion  of  the  neighbor  in  the  entire  household  has  its  good 
basis  in  the  history  of  the  German  family.  In  ancient  times  the  more 
distant  members  of  the  clan  gradually  settled  about  the  estate  of  the 
patriarch,  and  when  finally  a  parish  was  formed  out  of  the  original 
estate,  all  the  inhabitants  were  relatives,  all  the  neighbors  were  at  the 
same  time  cousins.  In  the  Jachen  canton  in  upper  Bavaria  the  custom 
of  inviting  one  person  from  each  home  in  the  village  to  a  wedding 
reigned  until  most  recent  times;  all  members  of  the  parish  were 
counted  in  the  family,  all  houses  to  the  "household."  And  today  there 
remain  in  Germany  secluded  little  villages  in  which  all  the  families 
are  really  related  to  each  other,  all  neighbors  are  cousins,  and  the 

*From  W.  H.  Riehl,  Die  Familic,  Berlin,  1904,  pp.  165-170.  Translated  and  printed 
with  the  permission  of  the  publisher. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  349 

"household"  has  expanded  into  the  whole  parish.  Not  only  are  most  of 
the  original  customs  preserved  in  such  villages,  but  the  most  happy 
economic  prosperity  reigns  in  such  places.  But  when  country  parishes 
are  expected  to  adopt  every  strange  tramp  into  their  group  without 
having  looked  him  over,  then  ordinary  people  will  refuse  to  look  on  all 
neighbors  almost  as  cousins. 

One  of  the  most  peculiar  villages  in  which  the  family-like  association 
of  all  the  neighbors  in  the  village  makes  it  nearly  an  entire  household 
is  Gerhardsbrunn  on  the  Sickingen  heights  in  the  Palatinate.  Lying  in 
the  midst  of  a  territory  that  has  been  deeply  affected  by  the  influence 
of  French  domination  in  eradicating  all  distinctions,  it  has  been  able 
to  preserve  its  uniqueness,  chiefly  because  of  the  family  solidarity  pre- 
served there.  And  at  the  same  time  it  has  become  wealthy,  despite  an 
indifferent  location.  Nearly  all  families  of  the  village  are  related  to 
each  other;  and  for  all  economic  interests  the  village  appears  as  a  closed 
fraternity.  According  to  law,  no  closed  estates  are  permitted,  neither 
are  primogeniture  nor  ultimogeniture.  But  in  order  that  each  family 
may  keep  its  wealth  and  resplendence,  the  people  of  the  village  stand 
together  as  one  man  and  make  the  law  illusory  through  a  well-pre- 
served custom.  The  family  decides  which  of  the  children  is  to  inherit 
the  property.  An  attempt  is  made  to  purchase  a  piece  of  land  in  one 
of  the  near-by  villages,  where  land  is  cheaper,  for  those  who  do  not 
inherit;  or  they  find  something  to  do  in  their  home  village.  If  anyone 
who  had  come  off  badly  in  this  disposal  of  the  property  wished  to 
bring  suit,  he  could  force  a  division  of  the  property  into  equal  parts. 
But  no  one  dared  bring  such  a  suit,  for  it  would  bring  down  upon  him 
the  contempt  of  the  entire  household  as  well  as  of  the  entire  parish. 
And  that  is  in  the  midst  of  the  "enlightened"  Palatinate.  The  parish 
hangs  together  so  strongly  that  it  has  preserved,  and  practices,  a  private 
custom  from  ancient  times,  alongside  the  official  parish  statutes.  In 
order  to  have  a  vote  in  the  parish  meeting  there,  it  is  necessary  to  be 
the  father  of  a  family.  Until  recently  the  inhabitants  made  their  own 
provisions  for  a  field  constable,  who  had  the  right  of  requiring  mod- 
erate sums  from  trespassers  against  the  regulations  of  the  field  mark 
without  keeping  any  records  of  such  transactions.  It  was  believed  that 
such  internal  parish  police  matters  had  best  be  settled  quietly  and  not 
brought  into  the  publicity  of  the  police  court.  This  family  parish  built 
itself  a  church  and  a  schoolhouse,  according  to  its  own  plans,  with  its 
own  labor,  and  with  an  almost  unbelievably  small  expenditure  of 
money.  It  cultivates  the  fields  according  to  the  traditional  common 
plan,  and  these  fields  bear  as  though  there  were  a  special  blessing  upon 
them.  It  is  the  blessing  which  arises  out  of  family  solidarity  and  good 
neighborliness  in  a  parish  which  stands  as  a  united  "entire  house- 
hold." 


350  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

49.  FREDERIC  LE  PLAY:  THE  AGRICULTURISTS:  GENERAL  TRAITS 
OF  THEIR  ORGANIZATION* 

Among  the  fundamental  institutions  (of  agricultural  peoples),  two 
groups  are  placed  in  the  first  rank  according  to  the  order  of  im- 
portance: in  the  first  place,  the  community,  individual  property,  and 
patronage,  that  is  to  say,  the  three  principal  forms  of  rural  properties; 
in  the  second  place,  the  customs  that  constrain  the  proprietors  (land- 
lords) to  make  good  use  of  these  properties  or  to  fortify  among  the 
populations  security  of  existence  and  the  practice  of  a  good  way  of 
living. 

The  regime  of  the  "community"  confers  on  a  group  of  agricultural 
families  the  exclusive  possession  of  certain  territories.  These  common 
possessions  are  very  profitable  to  the  agriculturists,  but  they  remain  un- 
tilled;  and  although  sometimes  they  may  have  a  great  importance,  they 
are  only  the  accessory  part  of  the  rural  domains  considered  in  their 
entirety.  They  are  the  remains  of  the  ancient  regime  of  spontaneous 
productions.  In  this  capacity  they  furnish  herbs,  fruits,  game,  fish, 
wood,  fuel,  and  minerals  as  an  accessory  resource  to  the  proprietors, 
usually  called  "commoners."  In  many  places,  their  most  useful  end  is 
to  furnish  some  means  of  subsistence  to  poor  families  completely  de- 
prived of  the  two  other  kinds  of  properties.  It  is  true  that  there  exist  in 
Russia  today  many  tillable  territories  that  are  possessed  in  common  by 
all  the  families  of  the  village  that  they  surround;  but  the  conditions 
under  which  this  exception  is  produced  only  serve  to  confirm  the  accu- 
racy of  the  preceding  observations.  The  portions  of  communal  soil  are 
here  divided  anew,  each  thirteen  or  fifteen  years  in  proportion  to  the 
number  of  hands  and  animals  that  each  family  can  devote  to  cultiva- 
tion at  the  moment  of  the  division.  But  two  families  have  never  found 
an  advantage  in  cultivating  a  single  portion  in  common. 

The  regime  of  "individual  property'*  assigns  exclusively  to  a  family 
the  rural  domain  that  it  is  able  to  cultivate  with  the  labor  of  its  own 
members,  supplemented,  if  need  be,  by  that  of  the  servants  perma- 
nently attached  to  the  domestic  hearth.  With  respect  to  extent,  these 
kinds  of  properties  are  in  two  extreme  forms.  The  smallest  are  called 
"borderies":  they  comprise  the  habitation  together  with  some  rural  de- 
pendencies which  are  exploited  by  the  women  and  children  and  furnish 
precious  resources  to  the  household.  The  head  of  the  family  and  his 
heir,  called  bordiers  [small  farmers  or  cottagers],  work  outside  for 
wages  at  diverse  industries  carried  on  in  the  vicinity.  The  largest  prop- 
erties constitute  the  "domains."  Their  extent  and  composition  are  fixed 

*From  F.  le  Play,  Ley  owners  europeens,  Paris,  Alfred  Mamc  8c  Son,  1879,  2d.  ed.  I. 
111-117. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  351 

in  each  rural  district  according  to  the  dominant  customs  in  regard  to 
the  fecundity  of  the  family,  the  transmission  of  traditions,  the  kind  of 
domestic  animals,  the  mode  of  grouping,  or  the  division  of  fields  and 
pastures.  The  domain  comprises  in  some  sort  what  there  is  that  is 
characteristic  in  the  family  type  of  the  agriculturist,  the  location,  and 
the  climate  of  the  country:  therefore,  the  proprietor  of  this  domain  is 
called  the  "countryman"  or  "peasant." 

The  regime  of  patronage  [lordship]  is  that  of  the  localities  where 
a  single  family  possesses  a  stretch  of  land  much  too  large  for  it  to  culti- 
vate, even  with  numerous  servants.  The  territory  of  the  patron  [lord] 
is  usually  subdivided  into  "tenures"  constituted  like  the  domains  and 
small  farms  that  in  the  same  district  are  attached  to  individual  prop- 
erty. The  tenants  pay  rent  to  the  proprietor  in  work,  money,  or  in 
kind,  which  is  in  proportion  to  the  importance  of  the  profits  that  the 
exploitation  of  the  rented  lands  procures  for  them;  but,  except  for 
that,  they  enjoy  all  the  rights  that  individual  property  would  give 
them,  and  it  is  thus,  especially,  that  tenure  is  entirely  transmitted  to 
successive  generations  in  the  case  of  tenants  as  well  as  in  the  case  of 
the  proprietors.  In  a  good  rural  organization  the  patron  is  not  limited 
to  consigning  the  soil  to  tenants.  He  is  held  by  custom  to  fulfil  cer- 
tain duties:  to  reside  permanently  in  the  locality;  to  give  at  his  hearth 
the  example  of  good  manners  and  morals;  to  cultivate  under  manage- 
ment "the  patrimonial  domain,"  where  the  best  methods  of  working 
are  applied  and  where  thoroughbred  animals  are  kept;  to  watch  over 
the  physical  and  moral  well-being  of  the  tenants,  and  to  extend  this 
patronage  to  the  individual  properties  of  the  vicinity  around  him; 
finally,  to  exercise  gratuitously  the  functions  of  the  local  government. 
The  best  examples  of  rural  organization  are  those  which  include  in 
each  vicinity  a  patron  and,  when  communal  properties  abound,  coun- 
trymen and  small  farmers  in  an  almost  equal  number.  Each  class 
brings  to  the  local  union  the  qualities  that  are  natural  to  it.  The  small 
farmer  keeps  his  frugality,  his  simplicity  of  ideas,  and  aptitude  for  the 
hard  working  of  the  land,  fecundated  by  respect  for  the  social  superi- 
ority around  him.  The  countryman  possesses  the  same  virtues,  raised 
by  a  higher  notion  of  the  duties  incumbent  upon  him  as  the  preserver 
of  the  communal  freedom.  The  patron,  finally,  is  stimulated  by  the 
control  of  the  population,  to  practice  his  characteristic  function:  he 
ministers,  then,  to  intellectual  loneliness,  which  is  the  principal  disad- 
vantage of  rural  life;  he  procures  for  the  neighboring  populations  the 
benefits  of  science  and  power  that  the  concentration  of  riches  gives  to 
the  cities. 


352  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  rural  hierarchy  always  assures  this  prosperity  to  a  vicinity  where 
and  when  each  class  preserves  the  constitutive  elements  of  a  model 
society:  submission  to  the  Decalogue  and  to  paternal  authority;  respect 
for  religion  and  sovereignty;  stability  of  the  family  based  on  the  trans- 
mission in  full  of  the  patrimonial  estate.  This  preservation  is  assured, 
and  prosperity  is  raised  to  the  highest  degree  when  the  good  example 
is  given  by  the  patron.  Unfortunately  this  is  not  always  the  case,  espe- 
cially with  nations  that  are  rich,  lettered,  and  powerful.  History  shows 
us  no  nation  thus  constituted  that  has  remained  faithful  for  a  long 
time  to  these  customs  of  the  prosperous  societies;  and  sooner  or  later 
it  allows  itself  to  be  invaded  by  corruption.  The  evil  always  begins 
with  the  governors.  From  there  it  first  spreads  to  the  cities.  Then, 
when  the  country  has  in  its  turn  been  invaded,  the  weak  point  has  al- 
ways been  the  home  of  the  patron;  but  the  strong  point  has  been  the 
dwelling  of  the  peasant.  This  characteristic  quality  exists  especially  in 
the  agriculturist  peasants  placed  under  the  regime  of  the  integral  trans- 
mission of  the  patrimonial  domain.  It  is  among  them  that  I  have  found 
in  my  traveling  the  best  examples  of  a  wholesome  life  and  a  beauti- 
ful death.  Nothing  has  touched  me  more  profoundly  than  the  spec- 
tacle offered  by  the  peasants,  who,  keeping  until  the  last  minute  their 
lucidity  of  mind,  call  upon  their  numerous  posterity,  brought  together 
at  this  supreme  moment,  to  subordinate  all  this  life  to  the  conquest 
of  the  life  eternal.  I  have  still  better  understood  the  causes  for  the 
solidity  of  a  society  upon  seeing  in  Switzerland  and  in  the  Basque 
country  the  old  men  recommending  to  their  heirs  to  unite  always  in 
their  thoughts  aspiration  to  an  eternal  life  with  the  solicitude  that 
will  assure  the  temporal  well-being  of  their  descendants. 

The  fruitfulness  of  this  solicitude  is  shown  as  well  by  the  observa- 
tion of  contemporary  society  as  by  the  teachings  of  history.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  prosperity  of  nations  is  summed  up  in  three  axioms.  Rural 
life,  more  than  city  life,  guarantees  peace  and  stability.  Rural  patrons 
are  necessary  to  the  intellectual  development  of  a  society  of  men,  but 
the  peasants  are  most  apt  to  perpetuate  virtue.  The  benefits  of  the  rural 
hierarchy  are  so  much  the  more  permanent  as  the  country  is  less  fitted 
for  the  production  of  wealth.  One  can  especially  verify  the  accuracy 
of  these  axioms  for  the  regions  that  constitute  the  four  oases  of  virtue 
in  Europe  at  the  present  time:  the  mountains  and  forests  of  Scan- 
dinavia, the  heaths  and  woods  of  the  Saxon  plain,  the  Alpine  pastures 
of  the  six  little  Swiss  cantons  of  Oberland,  the  hills  and  river  banks 
of  the  Basque  provinces  of  Spain.  In  these  model  countries,  the  cus- 
toms of  the  hierarchy  harmonize  perfectly  with  the  feeling  of  union 
arising  out  of  local  patriotism.  In  each  locality,  public  opinion  favors 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  353 

the  elevation  of  the  naturally  superior,  even  though  they  may  be  born 
in  the  lowest  ranks  of  society.  In  each  class,  the  families  enjoying  the 
best  name  consecrate,  as  a  matter  of  honor,  at  least  one  of  their  chil- 
dren to  the  ranks  of  the  clergy,  who  preserve  "the  peace  of  God"  in 
their  souls,  or  to  the  services  of  the  army,  which  subordinates  temporal 
interests  to  "the  peace  of  the  sovereign." 

50.  HERBERT  RUSSEL:  THE  VILLAGE  NEIGHBORHOOD  IN  GERMANY 
(RECENT,  PAST,  AND  PRESENT  SITUATION)* 

The  neighborhood  takes  an  active  interest  in  the  individual  from 
the  day  of  his  birth.1  As  soon  as  a  woman  is  in  childbed  the  women  of 
the  neighborhood  come  in  to  look  after  her  affairs.  After  the  child  is 
born  the  women  of  the  neighborhood  lend  a  hand  in  the  household, 
attend  the  christening — in  Catholic  territory  they  accompany  the 
mother  to  the  priest  for  his  blessing—,  and  above  all  give  aid  and  advice 
at  the  christening  festival.  At  less  important  festivities,  such  as  first 
communion,  confirmation,  or  engagement,  one  sends  gifts  and  receives 
a  piece  of  the  festal  cake  in  return.  If  a  villager  wants  to  build  his  own 
home,  he  can  definitely  expect  aid  from  the  neighborhood.  As  a  rule, 
every  person  who  owns  a  team  of  horses  brings  a  load  of  wood  or 
stones  free  of  charge,  others  furnish  the  manual  labor  for  excavating 
or  unloading.  And,  naturally,  all  these  helpers  are  present  when  the 
hostess  brings  out  the  lunch.2 

But  the  neighbors  are  present  not  only  on  joyful  occasions;  illness 
and  death  find  them  there  as  well.  In  such  cases  the  neighbors  are 
notified,  and  they  count  it  an  honor  to  summon  physician  and  minis- 
ter. However,  shortly  before  death,  they  retire  to  leave  the  dying  per- 
son alone  with  his  family.  After  death  they  appear  again  in  order  to 
assist  with  preparations  for  interment  and  the  funeral  feast.3 

The  neighborhood  is  in  evidence  in  the  minor  affairs  of  everyday 
life  as  well  as  in  the  important  events.  In  nearly  all  parts  of  the  region 
covered  by  this  study,  the  custom  of  borrowing  tools  and  supplies  pre- 
vails. But  Max  Weber  was  correct  when  he  pointed  out  that  this  bro- 
therliness  and  willingness  to  lend  aid  is  entirely  non-sentimental,  and 
merely  a  matter  of  tit  for  tat. 

In  a  certain  sense,  the  cattle  are  a  part  of  the  village  community. 

*From  Herbert  Riissel,  "Die  Nachbarschaft,"  in  Das  Dorf  ah  soziahs  Gebilde, 
Munchen,  Duncker  &  Humblot,  1928,  L.  von  Wiese,  editor.  Translated  and  printed  with 
the  permission  of  the  editor  and  the  publisher. 

1  Compare  W.  Diener,  Hunsruc^er  Vol\s\undst  pp.  143E;  Adam  Wrede,  Rhtinische 
Vol\s\unde,  p.  106. 

2  Compare  W.  Diener,  op,  tit.,  p.  49;  A.  Wrede,  op.  tit.,  p.  48. 
"Compare  Wrede,  op.  ciL,  pp.  135,  141, 


354  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  aid  and  sympathy  of  the  neighborhood  is  directed  toward  them 
also,  be  it  at  calving  time,  a  time  of  sickness,  or  the  party  given  when 
a  pig  is  killed.  Thus,  for  instance,  when  a  horse  of  my  landlord  had 
broken  through  the  decayed  boards  covering  a  hole  filled  with  stale 
water,  the  alarm  was  spread  immediately  through  the  entire  neigh- 
borhood, and  the  men  appeared  ready  to  lend  good  advice,  ropes,  and 
muscular  effort  for  several  hours  to  pull  the  horse  out.  Generally  such 
a  heroic  deed  is  fittingly  concluded  with  treats  all  around. 

Such  economic  aid  to  the  neighbors  is  primarily  the  concern  of  the 
man;  the  familial  and  household  aid  is  that  of  the  woman;  but  all  those 
expressions  of  the  relationships  existing  here  that  we  may  designate 
as  village  festivals  are  primarily  the  concern  of  youth.  All  these  festi- 
vals (rifle-matches;  the  placing  of  May  Poles,  or  perhaps  chaff,  before 
the  doors  of  the  girls  the  night  of  the  first  of  May;  or  Kirmes)  are 
neighborhood  festivals,  a  fact  that  becomes  especially  evident  in  the 
case  of  Kirmes.  On  this  occasion  all  former  residents  who  have  main- 
tained some  connection  with  the  village  return  to  visit  and  renew  old 
ties  at  the  happy  reunion.  The  dead  are  also  remembered  on  such  an 
occasion;  their  graves  are  decorated  and,  in  Catholic  regions,  mass  is 
read  for  them.  Other  evidence  of  the  official  neighborlmess,  such  as 
the  spinning  room,  have  been  crowded  out  through  the  progress  of 
technique.  But  the  frequent  discussions  concerning  them  are  not  en- 
tirely free  from  expressions  of  regret  over  the  fact  that  they  no  longer 
exist.  .  .  . 

Of  course,  not  all  the  relationships  of  the  neighborhood  are  of  a 
friendly  nature.  Living  together  at  such  close  quarters,  envy  and  jeal- 
ousy are  often  the  causes  of  embittered  enmities.  Nevertheless,  the 
power  of  public  opinion  is  generally  sufficient,  even  in  more  serious 
cases,  to  prevent  men  from  carrying  personal  matters  to  court.  If  we 
remember  the  role  that  gossip  plays,  in  the  absence  of  conversational 
topics  in  the  village,  we  need  not  be  surprised  that  a  personal  enmity 
remains  purely  personal  only  rarely,  but  almost  automatically  affects 
the  families  and  often  splits  the  village  into  two  inimical  parties.  Such 
a  split  may  be  continued  through  several  generations.  The  apparent 
pettiness  of  the  causes  of  such  conflicts  seems  worthy  of  note.  There 
is  little  room  in  the  village  for  tragic  conflicts  but  all  the  more  for  idle 
gossip.  Frequently  the  members  of  conflicting  parties  have  forgotten 
the  reason  for  the  original  split. 

Our  next  task  will  be  an  attempt  to  trace  the  line  of  development  of 
the  neighborhood  relations  described  above.  This  partially  dynamic 
discussion  becomes  possible  through  the  fact  that  villages  of  the  most 
divergent  types  were  available  to  us:  forest-villages,  wine-growing  vil- 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  355 

lages,  purely  peasant  and  markedly  industrialized  villages,  and  villages 
with  a  pronounced  urban  character. 

In  one  of  the  wine-growing  villages  we  found  a  form  of  neighbor- 
hood organization  that  harks  back  to  a  medieval  closed  corporation, 
the  village  corporation,  or  guild.  This  has  been  preserved  only  in  the 
wine-growing  villages  of  the  Rhineland.  The  following  is  the  charter 
of  such  a  corporation  in  Waldlaubersheim.  It  was  recorded  in  1925 
from  the  memory  of  older  residents,  for,  unfortunately,  the  original 
has  been  lost.  The  village  is  divided  into  four  guilds,  whose  names 
correspond  approximately  to  the  names  of  the  village  streets. 
CHARTER  OF  THE  MAIN  GUILD  (Oberzunjt) 

1.  Every  member  must  participate  in  the  annual  guild  meeting,  which 
shall  always  take  place  on  the  last  Saturday  in  the  month  of  February.  Ill- 
ness or  extremely  important  business  may  serve  as  excuse.  Whoever  fails  to 
appear  without  such  an  excuse  will  be  excluded  from  membership  in  the 
guild.  The  master  of  the  guild  may  appoint  two  members  to  determine 
whether  the  excuses  are  true.  In  case  a  false  excuse  is  presented  the  guild 
assembly  determines  what  action  is  to  be  taken. 

2.  One  adult  member  of  every  household  whose  members  belong  to  the 
guild  must  attend  the  funeral  of  a  member  of  the  guild.  The  master  of  the 
guild  must  invite  the  members  to  the  funeral,  or  have  them  invited,  and 
appoint  the  pallbearers. 

3.  If  the  guild  member  in  a  home  has  died,  another  male  member  of  the 
household  must  perform  the  guild  duties.  If  there  are  no  males,  the  persons 
in  the  home  are  freed  of  guild  duties  but  must  pay  the  sum  of  one  mark 
at  the  annual  guild  meeting. 

4.  Should  a  death  occur  in  a  home  in  which  no  one  is  a  member  of  the 
guild,  the  guild  may  not  bury  him.  Attendance  at  the  funeral  is  permitted. 
If  a  guild  brother  participates  as  pallbearer  in  such  a  case,  he  will  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  guild. 

5.  Upon  being  accepted  into  the  guild  the  new  member  must  pay  a  bottle 
of  wine  to  the  assembly  as  an  initiation  fee.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  meet- 
ing this  will  be  drunk  in  common. 

6.  The  master  of  the  guild  is  required  to  convene  the  annual  assembly  on 
the  last  Saturday  in  February,  and  to  invite  the  members  to  it.  Every  mem- 
ber must  appear  at  the  designated  time  and  place  in  a  clean  suit.  Every 
member  must  conduct  himself  properly.  Offensive  language  against  any 
guild  brother  is  prohibited.  As  long  as  the  assembly  has  not  been  adjourned, 
every  guild  brother  must  follow  the  orders  of  the  master  of  the  guild. 

7.  On  every  guild  day  the  master  of  the  guild  must  deliver  the  charter, 
in  good  condition,  to  his  successor.  He,  in  turn,  must  deliver  it  to  the  next 
guild  master  on  the  first  of  September.  In  every  case,  it  must  be  accom- 
panied by  a  notation  of  the  names  of  the  pallbearers  at  the  last  funeral. 

8.  It  is  urgently  requested  that  the  members  who  are  participating  m  the 
burial  of  a  brother  or  his  relatives,  stand  as  close  together  as  possible  at  the 
house  from  which  the  funeral  is  being  conducted.  This  is  requested  espe- 


356  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

daily  of  the  pallbearers  that  they  may  be  easily  accessible.  They  will  be 
present  at  the  house  ten  minutes  before  the  ceremony  begins,  if  possible. 

9.  According  to  a  majority  of  the  guild  brothers,  any  member  who  loans 
to  a  non-member  or  his  relatives,  or  borrows  from  him,  will  be  reported  to 
the  next  guild  assembly  and  fined  three  marks. 

Here  follow  the  signatures  and  a  list  of  the  charter  members. 

We  also  gathered  from  the  accounts  of  early  villagers  that  earlier 
guild  regulations  were  much  more  stringent  and  more  binding  on  the 
members.  For  example,  these  were  permitted  to  address  each  other 
only  as  Herr  Zunftbruder,  and  when  a  guild  brother  was  visiting  an- 
other, a  non-member  was  not  permitted  to  enter  the  room.  A  large 
share  of  community  activities,  such  as  fire  fighting  and  road  building, 
and  economic  tasks,  such  as  operating  the  wine  press  and  transporting 
wine,  were  performed  by  the  guild.  They  also  exerted  moral  censor- 
ship to  some  extent. 

[This  old  form  was  able  to  persist  only  in  Waldersheim,  an  isolated 
and  religiously  homogeneous  peasant  village.  In  other  less  isolated  vil- 
lages these  forms  of  neighborhood  organization  have  been  disinte- 
grating. The  introduction  of  new  economic  associations  seems  to  have 
little  influence  on  the  progressive  disintegration  of  these  relationships. 
It  is  true  that  the  workingmen's  associations  took  over  a  portion  of  the 
work  that  had  earlier  been  done  with  the  aid  of  neighbors,  but  they 
had  no  important  effect  on  the  attitudes  of  the  villager,  for  they  were 
purely  functional  organizations,  which  were  utilized  only  when  abso- 
lutely necessary.] 

A  much  more  important  factor  for  the  disintegration  of  the  neigh- 
borhood communities  is  the  progressive  industrialization  and  the  ac- 
companying mingling  of  officials  and  laborers  with  the  original  peasant 
populations.  Where  there  are  less  than  20  per  cent  as  many  laborers  as 
peasants  little  change  is  noticeable.  The  laborers  generally  adapt  them- 
selves to  the  peasants  and  are  regarded  as  neighbors  on  equal  terms. 
They  have  more  free  time  than  the  farmers,  but  they  feel  an  urge, 
partly  internal,  partly  external,  not  to  spend  this  time  in  idleness.  They 
may  spend  their  time  in  developing  their  craft,  practicing  another,  as- 
sisting the  peasant,  or  cultivating  a  small  plot  of  ground  for  them- 
selves. But  when  the  percentage  of  laborers  rises,  they  have  no  oppor- 
tunity, and  frequently  no  desire,  to  practice  agriculture  as  a  side  line. 
Then  the  peasant  may  see  the  laborer  enjoying  leisure,  while  he  is  still 
working  late  in  the  evening.  This  makes  neighborliness  almost  impos- 
sible and  stresses  the  political  differences.  Not  infrequently,  also,  it 
accentuates  the  conflict  between  youth  and  age,  for  youth  is  constantly 
more  inclined  to  the  views  of  the  seemingly  more  progressive  laborers. 

The  religious  split  and  its  accompanying  organizational  life  must  be 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  357 

mentioned  as  the  third  disintegrating  factor.  True  confessional  hatred 
is  on  the  decline  and  is  met  only  infrequently.  But  the  Catholic  Church 
attempts  to  unite  all  believers  into  secular  organizations,  besides  the 
parishes,  in  order  to  give  the  secular  social  life  its  supernatural  sanc- 
tion and  glorification.  It  has  a  negative  attitude  toward  every  non- 
religious  organization,  even  those  on  so  neutral  a  basis  as  athletics. 
Thus  the  Protestants  are  indirectly  compelled  to  organize  evangelical 
or  neutral  organizations.  This  does  not  permit  the  neighborhood  to 
reach  its  fullest  development,  especially  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
societies,  with  their  frequent  activities,  tend  constantly  to  monopolize 
the  social  life.  In  all  these  organizations,  however,  the  inevitable  village 
gossip  is  perpetuated;  jealousy  and  envy  play  their  disintegrating  roles 
and  lead  to  the  founding  of  competitive  organizations.  While  the  or- 
ganizations grow  and  prosper,  the  original  neighborhood  languishes. 
In  general,  one  may  set  up  the  rule:  the  greater  the  religious  split,  the 
greater  the  number  of  organizations;  and  the  more  organizations,  the 
less  important  the  neighborhood. 

The  same  laws  of  integration  and  disintegration  are  repeated  in  the 
neighborly  relations  of  villages.  An  industrialized  parish,  in  which 
about  half  of  the  population  consists  of  laborers  and  officials,  is  looked 
upon  with  ill  will  by  the  surrounding  villages.  This  antipathy  is  trans- 
ferred to  the  peasants  of  that  village,  who  are  termed  "white  collar 
farmers"  (Manse  hettenbauern).  And?  in  general,  the  relations  between 
villages  in  which  farmers  predominate  and  those  in  which  laborers  pre- 
dominate are  unfriendly.  The  former  are  accused  of  reactionism,  the 
latter  of  levity  and  extravagance.  Villages  that  differ  in  their  religious 
affiliation  have  practically  no  intercourse  with  each  other.  But  even 
where  all  these  drawbacks  are  absent,  where  there  is  a  lively  inter- 
course between  villages,  where  persons  from  one  village  frequently 
marry  into  the  other,  an  undisturbed  harmony  does  not  exist.  For  each 
village  has  some  degree  of  local  patriotism,  which  is  expressed  most 
generally  in  calling  the  residents  of  foreign  villages  by  jolly  nicknames, 
which  often  persist  from  generation  to  generation.  .  .  . 

We  do  find  a  certain  antagonism:  that  which  is  the  festival  of  great- 
est integration  in  one  village  frequently  becomes  the  source  of  conflict 
in  the  relations  between  villages.  These  conflicts  are  often  smoothed 
over  by  the  same  factors  that  have  been  active  in  the  disintegration  of 
the  neighborhood  within  the  village:  industrialization,  intermingling 
of  peasants  with  laborers  and  officials,  organizational  activities,  espe- 
cially those  of  the  athletic  organizations.  The  line  of  development  is 
probably  toward  a  greater  mutual  understanding  and  adaptation  of  the 
villages,  but  we  must  not  overlook  the  factors  that  have  an  influence 
similar  to  the  disintegrating  factors  in  neighborhood  life. 


358  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

51.  HAROLD  PEAKE:  THE  ENGLISH  VILLAGE  OF  TODAY* 

We  have  seen  that  during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  the 
manorial  system  was  decaying  throughout  the  land.  In  many  places 
the  common  fields  and  waste  were  becoming  enclosed  and  passing 
from  commonalty  to  severalty,  and  in  these  cases  the  manor  courts 
were  no  longer  necessary  and  ceased  to  be  held.  Even  where  the  en- 
closure had  not  taken  place  the  jurisdiction  of  the  courts  had  become 
in  practice  curtailed,  and  the  courts  had  more  and  more  taken  the  form 
of  a  rent  audit.  The  manorial  system  as  such  had  disappeared,  the  vil- 
lage community  system  was  gone  also  in  some  regions,  while  in  others 
it  was  but  a  shadow  of  its  former  self. 

Up  to  this  time  all  local  government,  excepting  the  business  of  the 
county  and  hundred,  had  been  performed  by  the  manorial  lords,  either 
with  or  without  the  assistance  of  their  courts,  and  the  administration 
of  the  hundreds  had  gradually  become  merely  a  replica  of  manorial 
jurisdiction,  and  the  lord  of  the  hundred  held  a  court  which  was 
scarcely  distinguishable  from  a  manorial  court.  Thus  with  the  disap- 
pearance of  these  courts  there  was  no  person  or  body  on  which  might 
be  thrust  the  responsibility  of  dealing  with  matters  of  strictly  local 
concern.  If  some  change  had  not  taken  place  public  business  of  this 
type  would  have  been  at  a  standstill,  or  would  have  been  handed  over 
to  the  earl  and  the  viscount,  or  to  the  lord  lieutenant  and  the  sheriff, 
as  they  were  now  being  called. 

Meantime  under  the  Tudor s  the  population  and  the  prosperity  of  the 
country  were  increasing  rapidly,  the  conditions  of  society  were  chang- 
ing, and  fresh  problems  arose  which  called  for  local  solution.  Thus 
public  business  was  on  the  increase,  though  it  differed  considerably 
from  that  of  former  centuries. 

For  instance,  in  the  self-contained  manor  of  earlier  times  the  com- 
munity had  provided  for  the  necessities  of  all  its  members.  It  is  true 
that  this  meant  a  bare  subsistence  only,  but  under  the  manorial  system 
no  member  of  the  community  could  be  homeless,  unclad,  or  starving. 
Everyone,  save  a  few  outlaws,  was  a  member  of  a  township,  be  it  a  vil- 
lage or  a  town,  and  as  such  a  member  of  its  community  and  dependent 
on  the  other  members  in  sickness  or  old  age. 

But  as  the  manorial  system  decayed  all  this  was  changed.  The 
peasants  were  no  longer  bound  to  the  soil  and  labor  became  mobile, 
and  there  arose  a  number  of  wandering  laborers,  who  traversed  the 
country  offering  their  services  to  the  highest  bidder,  and  so  lost  their 
connection  with  the  township  of  their  origin.  These  became  known  as 

*  From  Harold  Peake,  The  English  Village,  London,  Benn  Brothers,  Ltd.,  1922,  pp. 
178482,  185,  203-206,  214-215.  Reprinted  with  permission  of  the  publishers. 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  359 

rogues  and  vagabonds,  terms  which  originally  bore  no  adverse  mean- 
ing but  merely  indicated  the  mobile  nature  of  the  men  to  whom 
they  were  applied.  While  some  bettered  their  prospects  and  became 
prosperous  farmers  or  traders,  others  fell  upon  evil  times  and,  having 
no  community  to  support  them,  were  frequently  on  the  verge  of  star- 
vation. This  condition  led  them,  as  starvation  always  does,  to  be  a  ter- 
ror to  their  more  prosperous  neighbors  and  a  menace  to  law  and  order, 
and  so  the  terms  rogue  and  vagabond  grew  to  have  a  sinister  meaning. 

Many  enactments  were  made  between  1390  and  1600  to  control  the 
actions  of  these  vagrants  and  to  provide  them  with  at  least  a  bare 
sustenance;  these  enactments  became  the  basis  of  the  Poor  Law.  .  .  . 

Now  the  original  community  responsible  for  the  support  of  the  poor 
was  the  manor,  or  more  properly  speaking,  the  township  out  of  which 
it  arose.  But  manors  were  fast  disappearing,  and  their  administrative 
machinery  was  decaying  even  where  they  survived.  The  township,  too, 
was  losing  its  community  and  its  communal  spirit,  and  even  its  bounds 
were  disappearing,  except  in  the  west  of  England,  where  these  units 
still  in  a  great  measure  survive. 

Yet  an  area  was  needed  to  which  these  rogues  and  vagabonds  could 
be  sent,  and  upon  which  the  responsibility  of  their  maintenance  could 
be  thrust.  As  the  manor  and  township  became  more  and  more  impos- 
sible, a  new  area  was  necessary,  and  by  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury it  became  customary  for  this  and  other  like  responsibilities  to  be 
placed  on  the  parish.  Thus  by  slow  degree  the  parish  became  a  civil 
unit  and  succeeded  to  the  functions  formerly  performed  by  township 
or  manor,  while  the  vestry,  the  one  meeting  of  all  the  parishioners, 
came  to  undertake  certain  public  dudes  similar  to  those  formerly  per- 
formed by  the  manorial  courts.  .  .  . 

As  in  the  case  of  the  manor,  the  parish  was  in  theory  the  township, 
and  was  and  still  is  frequently  coterminous  with  that  area.  But  just  as 
the  township  is  the  area  from  the  community's  standpoint,  and  the 
manor  that  from  the  lord's,  so  the  parish  was  the  same  area  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Church  and  the  priest.  Though  this  was  the  case  in 
theory,  it  was  by  no  means  always  so  in  practice.  As  in  the  case  of 
manors,  the  parish  might  consist  of  a  number  of  townships  or  a  frac- 
tion of  one.  If  the  district  was  poor,  the  township  small  or  the  manors 
large,  it  was  usual  for  the  parish  to  contain  a  number  of  townships, 
and  this  was  more  particularly  the  case  in  the  western  counties,  where 
forest  communities  were  common,  and  where  parishes  exist  containing 
as  many  as  thirty  townships.  .  ,  . 

As  the  manor  decayed  and  the  township  lost  its  communal  conscious- 
ness, the  ancient  parish  gradually  took  their  place  and  became  the  ad- 
ministrative unit.  It  remains  so  still,  though  during  the  nineteenth 


360  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

century  there  have  been  some  changes,  a  few  amalgamations,  and 
many  subdivisions.  In  some  of  the  western  counties,  especially  in 
Cheshire,  the  townships  became  converted  into  parishes  for  adminis- 
trative purposes  and  are  termed  civil  parishes,  and  in  some  of  these 
cases  the  bounds  have  been  more  recently  rectified  to  provide  more 
compact  units.  The  same  change  has  taken  place  to  a  lesser  degree  in 
other  parts  of  England,  and  during  the  nineteenth  century  three  such 
civil  parishes,  Winterbourne,  Leckhampstead,  and  Cold  Ash,  have  been 
created  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  Newbury.  .  .  . 

Hitherto  we  have  been  tracing  the  rise  and  the  gradual  decay  of  the 
village  community  in  England;  in  the  last  chapter  we  left  it  in  a  mori- 
bund condition,  and  in  the  nineteenth  century  we  witness  its  decease. 
We  have  seen  that  since  1730  the  economic  conditions  of  the  times 
were  encouraging  the  enclosure  of  the  common  fields;  the  high  prices 
realized  by  grain  during  the  time  of  the  Peninsular  War  hastened  this 
process.  Few  of  them  were  left  in  1820,  and  most  of  these  were  enclosed 
during  the  next  few  years;  so  that,  when  the  General  Enclosure  Act 
was  passed  in  1845  there  were  scarcely  any  common  fields  in  existence 
except  in  the  counties  of  Hertfordshire  and  Oxfordshire. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  change  was  not  good  for  the  small  owner  and 
the  small  tenant,  as  the  expenses  of  fencing  were  disproportionate  in 
these  cases.  It  is  important  to  ascertain  the  fate  of  these  two  classes  of 
the  population. 

The  more  intelligent  of  the  small  owners  lost  no  time  in  selling  their 
land  and  investing  their  proceeds  in  the  War  Loan,  the  five  per  cents 
of  those  days,  and  in  the  education  of  their  sons.  Many  had  already 
been  engaged  in  outside  occupations  and  had  become  in  a  small  way 
surveyors,  lawyers,  and  bankers;  they  had  sent  their  sons  into  liberal 
professions,  which  were  already  growing  in  importance.  They  and 
their  sons  now  definitely  entered  the  ranks  of  professional  men,  and 
their  descendants  became  clergy,  officers  in  the  army  and  navy,  bankers, 
solicitors,  and,  to  a  less  extent,  doctors;  many  entered  the  higher  ranks 
o£  the  Civil  Service,  then  growing  rapidly  as  department  was  added  to 
department,  and  later  became  civil  servants  in  India  and  the  Colo- 
nies. .  ,  . 

Others  again  of  these  small  owners,  perhaps  the  less  intelligent,  re- 
mained on  the  land  as  tenant-farmers,  but  even  now  these  may  be  dis- 
tinguished from  their  neighbors  by  a  certain  indefinable  "landowning" 
tradition.  Others  in  time  sank  lower  and  lower  in  the  scale,  until  they 
became  landless  laborers;  but  the  sense  of  freedom  still  survived  in 
them,  and  their  descendants  may  be  distinguished  from  the  general 
mass  of  farm  laborers,  They  now  demand  and  get  small  holdings,  on 
which  they  are  successful,  and  they  are  leaders  of  public  opinion  in 


SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION  361 

village  society.  The  small  tenant  disappeared  more  slowly.  ,  .  .  Many 
of  these  men  and  their  sons  migrated  to  the  towns  and  joined  the  ranks 
of  the  skilled  workers.  .  .  .  Some  remained  in  the  villages  as  black- 
smiths, wheelwrights,  thatchers,  and  hay-tiers.  They,  too,  became  lead- 
ers of  local  opinion,  and  sometimes  found  seats  on  the  Parish  Council. 
When  the  movement  for  small  holdings  began,  they,  too,  applied  for 
allotments,  and  in  many  cases  have  become  very  successful  small 
holders. 

The  landless  man  had  long  been  sinking.  The  maladministration  of 
the  Poor  Law  at  the  hands  of  the  parish  authorities,  the  indiscriminate 
doles  and  charities  of  squire  and  parson,  had  been  sapping  his  inde- 
pendence and  initiative.  .  ,  . 

The  descendants  of  these  men  are  the  lower  type  of  agricultural 
laborers,  with  no  stake  in  the  land,  no  interest  in  the  work  they  are 
doing.  Wandering  from  farm  to  farm,  and  from  village  to  village,  they 
are  hired  for  the  year  at  the  annual  fair,  and  are  in  some  parts  known 
as  "Michaelmassers."  As  each  autumn  goes  by,  one  may  see  their  small 
stock  of  furniture,  yearly  becoming  less  from  constant  moves,  being 
carried  from  one  village  to  another  in  a  farm  wagon.  Subject  to  these 
constant  moves,  they  never  make  a  home  or  live  on  terms  of  intimacy 
with  their  neighbors,  nor  do  they  ever  cultivate,  except  most  perfunc- 
torily, the  garden  attached  to  their  cottage.  Their  children  are  ill-nour- 
ished, and  profit  little  by  an  education  received  each  year  in  a  different 
school  from  different  teachers.  Altogether  their  lot  is  a  wretched  one, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  steps  are  to  be  taken  to  mend  it.  The  best 
members  of  this  type  leave  for  the  towns,  or  sometimes  for  the  Colo- 
nies, where  some  of  them,  perchance,  succeed;  many  end  their  days  in 
the  back  courts  and  alleys  of  the  slums.  .  .  . 

Thus  with  the  enclosure  of  the  common  fields  and  waste  the  com- 
munity life  of  the  village  came  to  an  end.  Village  society  became  di- 
vided into  two  camps,  often  two  hostile  camps;  the  squire  and  the 
farmers  in  the  one,  and  often  the  parson  too,  while  in  the  other  were 
the  farm  laborers  and  perhaps  a  few  small  holders.  Thus  there  were 
the  Haves  and  Have-nots,  with  no  bond  of  association  between  them 
but  an  ever  widening  gap;  this  gap  yawned  still  wider  as  the  parish 
ceased  to  count  as  a  civil  unit.  .  .  . 

There  is  little  of  such  community  life  left  in  the  villages  now.  The 
parish  councils  were  designed  to  improve  matters,  and  in  some  villages 
which  are  not  wholly  agricultural  they  have  done  something;  but  in 
truly  rural  parishes  they  are  at  present  valueless,  .  .  .  The  ordinary 
farm  laborer  takes  little  interest  in  these  attempts  to  improve  village 
life;  he  has  lost  all  ambition,  and  in  only  too  many  cases  he  is,  if  not 
actually  feeble-minded,  at  least  subnormal. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  OF  THE  AGRICULTURAL 
POPULATION 

The  rural  population  is  not  only  differentiated  horizontally  into 
numerous  cumulative  communities  and  functional  associations, 
but  there  are  also  various  occupational,  economic,  and  political 
strata  superimposed  one  upon  another.  The  agricultural  popula- 
tion consists  of  a  social  pyramid  with  several  economic,  occupa- 
tional, and  sociopolitical  layers.  It  is  stratified  economically  from 
the  standpoints  of  wealth,  income,  and  economic  standard  of  liv- 
ing; occupationally  from  the  standpoint  of  domination  and  con- 
trol on  the  one  hand  and  subjection  and  execution  on  the  other; 
and  politically  from  the  standpoint  of  social  and  political  privi- 
leges and  prestige.1  Although  the  rural  pyramid  is  much  less 
stratified  than  the  urban  (see  chapter  iv  and  the  chapter  "Farmer- 
Peasant  Class  in  Its  Relationship  to  Other  Classes"),  nevertheless 
stratification  has  always  existed  to  some  extent  among  the  agri- 
cultural population. 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  to  analyze  the  principal  forms 
of  rural  stratification,  to  examine  the  essential  fluctuations  and 
trends  in  the  heightening  and  lowering  of  the  pyramid,  and  to 
grasp  both  the  contemporary  situation  and  the  probable  trends  in 
the  near  future.  An  adequate  analysis  of  these  problems  with  their 
many  complex  subproblems  would  give  an  idea  of  the  vertical 
aspect  of  the  morphological  structure  of  the  rural  population.  As 
we  shall  see,  these  problems  are  very  closely  connected  with  sev- 
eral other  problems  which  would  require  an  additional  chapter 
for  their  analysis.  However,  in  this  chapter  we  shall  consider  only 
the  fundamental  problems  of  rural  social  stratification  enumerated 
above. 

1  Concerning  the  fundamental  forms  and  bases  of  social  stratification,  see  P.  Sorokin, 
Social  Mobility,  chap,  iii  and  passim. 

[362] 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  363 

I.  FUNDAMENTAL  STRATA  OF  THE  AGRICULTURAL  POPU- 
LATION 

The  most  common  classification  of  the  fundamental  strata  of 
the  rural  population  is  the  threefold  division  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion into  farmer-owners,  tenants,  and  hired  laborers.  This  classifi- 
cation is  based  simultaneously  on  economic,  occupational,  and 
socio-political  bases,  for  the  farmer  or  peasant  owners  are  usually 
more  privileged  economically,  occupationally,  and  socio-politically 
than  either  the  tenants  or  the  laborers.  The  tenants  are  likewise 
more  privileged  than  the  laborers  in  all  these  respects.  Although 
this  classification  is  essentially  valid,  it  is  too  general  and  must  be 
developed  further.  Not  all  landowners  or  all  tenants  or  all  hired 
laborers  occupy  the  same  social  position.  A  farmer  who  owns  five 
acres  and  one  who  owns  five  thousand  acres  are  both  landowners, 
but  it  is  quite  obvious  that  they  have  very  different  economic,  oc- 
cupational, and  socio-political  status  and  occupy  very  different 
positions  in  the  social  pyramid.  Similar  distinctions  are  true  for 
various  classes  of  tenants  and  hired  laborers.  Hence  it  is  necessary 
to  discriminate  between  various  groups  of  landowners,  tenants, 
and  hired  laborers.  Such  discrimination  can  be  made  easily  on  the 
bases  of  the  type  of  the  agricultural  enterprise  with  which  they 
are  connected  and  the  role  that  they  play  in  each  type.  In  the  lit- 
erature there  exist  several  classifications  of  agricultural  enterprises. 

Early  investigators  of  the  problem  took  relatively  simple  traits 
as  a  basis  of  their  classification,  such  as  the  size  of  the  farm,  the 
value  of  the  cattle  and  means  and  instruments  of  production,  the 
amount  of  the  invested  capital,  or  whether  the  enterpriser's  family 
hired  or  lent  labor,  etc.  Enterprises  have  been  grouped  into  a 
series  of  classes  on  the  basis  of  each  of  these  criteria.  At  the  present 
moment  almost  all  investigators  agree  that  such  a  classification  on 
the  basis  of  one  of  these  simple  traits  is  too  mechanical  and  only 
imperfectly  grasps  the  type  of  the  socio-economic  organization  of 
the  enterprise.  They  have  begun  to  use  a  complex  or  composite 
basis  for  classification.  In  details  these  complex  bases  differ  some- 
what, but  in  their  essentials  they  are  similar  and  include  the 
same  elements,  namely:  size  of  farm;  the  objective  of  the  engage- 
ment in  agriculture  (profit  or  mainly  obtaining  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence) ;  whether  the  work  is  done  by  the  family,  or  with  the 
help  of  hired  labor,  or  whether  the  family  lends  the  labor  of  some 


364  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  its  members;  the  value  of  the  cattle,  machinery,  and  the  inven- 
tory of  the  enterprise;  the  extensive  and  the  intensive  type  of 
cultivation,  either  in  capital  or  in  labor  or  in  both,  etc.  (The 
purely  technical  side  of  the  enterprise,  what  kind  of  produce  it 
cultivates,  etc.,  is  unimportant  for  us  just  now.)  Combining  these 
criteria,  the  investigators  give  several  classes  of  agricultural  enter- 
prises, and,  correspondingly,  several  strata  of  the  agricultural 
population.  In  details  these  classifications  are  different,  in  essen- 
tials they  are  similar.  The  following  table  gives  a  fairly  representa- 
tive type  of  these  classifications.2 

1.  Prohtarianizing  or  decaying  farm  enterprise. — Very  small  land  holding. 

Surplus  of  labor  hands  in  the  family  who  cannot  find  application  for 
their  labor  in  the  family  holding  and  must  look  for  employment  else- 
where. The  consumption  needs  of  the  family  are  only  partly  derived 
from  the  farm.  The  family  supplies  hired  labor  for  other  agricultural 
or  nonagricultural  enterprises. 

2.  Peasant-consumptive  farm  enterprise. — The  agricultural  enterprise  em- 

ploys all  the  labor  of  the  members  of  the  peasant  family.  The  family 
has  no  surplus  of  working  hands  among  its  members  who  have 
to  find  employment  outside  the  family  enterprise.  Migration  of  the 
members  from  the  farm  somewhere  else  is  nil  or  insignificant.  The 
consumption  needs  of  the  family  are  covered  through  agricultural 
family  enterprise.  Medium  size  landholding.  Good  return  per  unit  of 
land,  and  low  return  per  units  of  labor  and  capital. 

3.  Farmer-productive  farm  enterprise. — It  is  similar  to  the  preceding  type, 

but  differs  from  it  through  the  fact  that  it  is  not  only  and  not  so  much 
a  consumption  farm  economy  as  a  production  economy.  Profit-making 
is  more  conspicuously  expressed  in  it.  Contact  with  the  market  is 
closer  and  money  economy  plays  a  much  greater  part  than  in  the 
peasant  consumption  economy.  Thanks  to  an  investment  of  a  greater 
capital  and  the  introduction  of  labor-saving  machinery,  the  farmer- 
family  cultivates,  without  any  hired  labor  or  with  an  insignificant 
portion  of  it,  a  much  larger  landholding  and  has  a  much  better  chance 
to  accumulate  some  wealth  than  in  the  purely  consumption  economy 
of  the  peasant.  Good  return  per  unit  of  land  and  fairly  good  per  unit 
of  labor  and  capital. 

4.  Farmer-capitalistic  farm  enterprise. — Agricultural  enterprise  cannot  be 

run  with  the  labor  of  the  family  members  only,  but  needs  some  hired 
labor.  The  family  not  only  derives  its  means  of  subsistence  from 
farming  but  besides  makes  some  savings  and  accumulation  of  wealth 

*For  an  analysis  of  the  fundamental  differences  between  the  farm  family  and  the 
capitalist  types  of  agricultural  enterprise  see  in  Part  III  the  chapter  on  the  economic 
organization  of  the  agricultural  population. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  365 

in  its  economic  activity.  Landholding  is  usually  above  medium  size. 
The  objective  of  the  farm  activity  is  partly  a  satisfaction  of  the  needs 
of  the  family,  partly  profit-making  and  accumulation  of  wealth. 
Better  return  per  unit  of  labor  and  capital,  but  somewhat  lower  per 
unit  of  land. 

5.  Capitalistic  farm  economy. — The  agricultural  enterprise  is  so  large  that 

the  entrepreneur  performs  only  the  organizational,  managerial,  and 
controlling  functions.  The  whole  manual  work  and  subordinate  half- 
manual,  half-organizational  work  is  done  through  hired  labor.  The 
objective  of  the  farming  enterprise  is  obtaining  the  maximum  return 
on  the  invested  capital  and  the  maximum  profit  for  the  entrepreneur 
per  unit  of  capital  and  labor,  and  low  per  unit  of  land. 

6.  The  latijundia  type  of  farm  economy. — The  amount  of  land  in  the 

enterprise  is  so  great  that  the  entrepreneur  needs  the  help  of  qualified 
employes  for  performance  of  the  managerial,  organizational,  and 
controlling  functions.  Usually  there  are  several  centers  for  the  man- 
agement of  various  and  somewhat  autonomic  estates  into  which  the 
whole  land  is  divided.  The  enterprise  is  a  large  capitalistic  organiza- 
tion. In  rationally  organized  latifundia  (in  contrast  to  extensive  and 
idle  exploitation  of  vast  stretches  of  land  in  the  form  of  primitive 
economy)  there  is  a  high  return  per  unit  of  capital  and  labor,  and  a 
very  low  one  per.  unit  of  land.3 

The  above  classification  is  only  one  of  the  several  possible.  It 
may  have  several  variations.  It  also  has  several  intermediary  types. 
But  in  its  essentials  it  outlines  the  fundamental  types  of  the  socio- 
economic  organization  of  farm  enterprise.  Of  course  each  of  these 
types  is  not  equally  diffused  in  various  countries.  In  Russia,  for 
instance  (and  still  more  in  China  and  India)  the  types  No.  2  and, 
in  much  less  degree,  No.  3  and  No.  4  have  been  predominant.  In 
the  United  States,  on  the  contrary,  No.  3  and  No.  4  have  been 
most  common. 

In  accordance  with  these  types  of  enterprises  it  is  possible  to 
discriminate  the  following  principal  strata  of  the  agricultural 
population: 

8Cf,  N.  Makaroff,  Organization  of  Farm  Economy  (Russ.),  Berlin,  1924,  pp,  20  ff.; 
P.  I.  Liaschenko,  Outlines  of  the  Agrarian  Evolution  of  Russia  (Russ.),  Leningrad,  1924, 
pp.  58$.;  N.  Lenin,  Evolution  of  Capitalism  in  Russia  (Russ.),  Moscow,  1924,  chap,  ii; 
N.  Lenin,  "Capitalism  and  Agriculture  in  the  United  States,"  Works  (Russ,),  Moscow, 
1925,  IX,  183-260;  V.  Kavraiski  and  I.  Nusinojff,  Classes  and  Class  Relationships  in 
the  Soviet  Village  (Russ,),  3929,  chap,  ii;  A,  N.  Tschelinzeft,  Theoretical  Foundations 
of  Organisation  of  Peasant  Economy  (Russ.),  Kharkov,  1919;  H,  H.  Tschernenkofif, 
The  Characteristics  of  the  Peasant  Economy,  Moscow,  1918;  P.  Maslov,  Agrarian  Prob- 
lem in  Russia  (Russ.),  St.  Petersburg,  1908,  Vol.  I,  Part  II. 


366  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

1.  Proprietors  of  large,  latifundia-type,  agricultural  enterprises. 

2.  Proprietors  of  smaller  capitalist  agricultural  enterprises. 

3.  Managers  and  tenants  of  large  capitalistic  enterprises. 

4.  Proprietors  of  farmer-capitalist  agricultural  enterprises. 

5.  Proprietors  of  farmer  agricultural  enterprises. 

6.  Tenants  of  capitalist  agricultural  enterprises. 

7.  Tenants  of  farmer-capitalist  agricultural  enterprises. 

8.  Tenants  of  farmer  agricultural  enterprises. 

9.  Higher  employes  of  capitalist  and  farmer-capitalist  enter- 

prises. 

10.  Proprietors  of  the  peasant-consumptive  agricultural  enter- 

prises. 

11.  Tenants  of  peasant-consumptive  agricultural  enterprises. 

12.  Proprietors  of  proletarianizing  or  small  decaying  agricultural 

enterprises. 

13.  Hired  laborers  of  various  types. 

Of  course,  this  hierarchy  is  only  approximate.  Sometimes  some 
of  the  tenants  of  the  capitalist  enterprises  are  much  more  wealthy 
and  have  much  more  social  influence  and  prestige  than  the  pro- 
prietors of  the  farmer-capitalist  or  farmer  enterprises.  Sometimes 
there  are  employes  whose  economic  and  social  position  is  more 
enviable  than  that  of  the  owners  of  medium-size  holdings.  In 
brief,  the  relative  position  of  some  of  these  rungs  on  the  agricul- 
tural ladder  may  be  somewhat  different.  Nevertheless,  in  essen- 
tials their  hierarchical  sequence  is  practically  that  given  above, 
and,  what  is  more  important,  all  these  strata  actually  exist  within 
the  total  agricultural  population  of  various  countries.  Each  of 
these  strata  is  divided  further  into  a  series  of  substrata  according 
to  the  amount  of  income,  prestige,  and  occupational  function. 
Thus  the  whole  agricultural  population  gives  a  rather  high  pyra- 
mid of  social  stratification.  Its  highest  stratum,  the  largest  and 
richest  owners  of  the  capitalist  latifundia,  and  its  lowest  stratum, 
the  unskilled  and  poorly  paid  farm  laborers,  are  separated  by  an 
enormous  social  distance  of  economic,  occupational,  and  socio- 
political privileges,  rights,  and  disfranchisements.  Passing  from 
the  top  to  the  bottom  of  this  hierarchy  we  find,  as  a  rule,  a  lower 
income,  a  lower  standard  of  living,  less  education,  decrease  of  the 
organizational  functions  and  increase  of  manual  work,  less  pres- 
tige, less  social  influence,  less  domination  and  fewer  privileges, 
and  more  juridical  or  factual  disfranchisements. 

However,  the  proportion  of  the  agricultural  population  that  be- 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  367 

longs  to  the  first,  second,  and  third  strata  is  quite  insignificant  in 
comparison  with  the  total  agricultural  population.  Besides,  the 
individuals  composing  it  dwell  more  often  in  the  city  than  in  the 
country.  For  these  reasons  we  may  omit  them  from  our  analysis. 
The  bulk  of  the  agricultural  population  in  almost  all  countries  is 
composed  principally  of  proprietors  of  the  strata  Nos.  5,  10,  4, 
and,  in  a  less  degree,  of  No.  12;  of  tenants  of  Nos.  7,  8,  and  11; 
and,  finally,  of  hired  laborers  (No.  13).  This  means  that,  even  if 
we  exclude  the  large  capitalist  owners,  managers,  and  lessees  of 
such  large  enterprises  from  the  agricultural  population,  the  bulk 
of  it,  composed  of  the  persons  and  families  who  participate  di- 
rectly in  the  work,  still  remains  stratified.  More  than  that,  each  of 
these  "labor  agricultural  strata"  is  again  divided  into  several  sub- 
strata. Not  all  agricultural  enterprises  "of  the  farmer-productive" 
or  "the  peasant-consumptive"  or  "the  farmer-capitalist"  type  are 
identical  in  size,  amount  of  income,  equipment,  number  of  labor 
hands  employed,  etc.  The  socio-economic  position  of  the  various 
classes  of  tenants  or  hired  laborers  and  employes  is  again  not 
identical.  A  detailed  analysis  of  social  stratification  even  within 
the  bulk  of  the  "labor  classes"  of  the  agricultural  population 
would  have  to  include  a  consideration  of  these  substrata  within 
each  of  the  above  strata. 

The  existence  of  these  strata  is  important  in  two  respects,  par- 
ticularly from  the  standpoint  of  a  sociologist.  Since  a  rural  aggre- 
gate is  composed  of  several  strata  with  division  of  labor  between 
them,  no  one  of  them  is  self-sufficient  but  must  cooperate  with 
the  others.  The  upper  stratum,  performing  predominantly  or- 
ganizational and  managerial  functions,  needs  the  cooperation 
of  the  lower  stratum  performing  manual  work,  and  vice  versa. 
This  binds  these  strata  together  and  serves  as  a  basis  for  their 
mutual  solidarity.  On  the  contrary,  no  one  of  them,  lacking  self- 
sufficiency,  could  carry  on  its  economic  activity  and  satisfy  its 
needs.  Thus,  since  a  division  of  labor  calls  forth  some  "organic 
solidarity"  between  the  members  of  an  aggregate,4  it  is  unavoid- 

*  Studies  o£  G.  Simmcl,  E.  Durkheim,  F.  Tonnies,  and  others  have  shown  that  there 
are  two  principal  forms  of  solidarity:  that  based  on  similarity  of  the  members  of  the 
group  and  that  based  on  their  dissimilarity,  or  division  of  labor.  The  first  form  of  soli- 
darity is,  so  to  speak,  natural:  we  are  inclined  to  have  greater  sympathy  with  those  who 
are  similar  to  us  in  race,  nationality,  religion,  culture,  occupation,  economic  status,  family 
affiliation,  etc.  The  second  form  of  solidarity  flows  from  the  fact  that  in  a  group  with 
division  of  labor  between  its  members,  no  individual  is  self-sufficient  but  needs  coop- 


368  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

able  in  the  rural  aggregate  also,  though  less  developed  than  in  the 
urban  aggregate.  At  the  same  time,  thanks  to  the  fact  that  rural 
stratification  and  differentiation  is  less  developed  than  urban,  vari- 
ous strata  of  the  rural  population  still  resemble  each  other  more 
than  do  the  various  urban  strata.  For  this  reason  rural  people  con- 
tinue to  be  bound  into  a  "solid"  group  by  this  similarity  to  a  de- 
gree greater  than  the  urban  strata,  where  the  solidarity  based  on 
similarity  already  plays  a  much  less  important  role  in  view  of  the 
greater  development  of  social  differentiation  and  stratification  in 
the  city  aggregate.  Thus,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  ties  of  soli- 
darity, the  rural  aggregate  with  its  strata  is  a  group  whose  mem- 
bers are  solidarized  by  both  fundamental  factors  of  solidarity:  by 
the  division  of  labor  and  by  the  similarity  of  its  members. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  existence  of  different  social  strata  with 
their  differences  in  economic,  occupational,  and  social-political 
fields,  always  leads  to  greater  or  lesser  conflicts  of  interests  and  to 
psycho-social  and  economic  antagonism  between  these  strata.  The 
greater  the  stratification,  the  greater  become  these  conflicts  and 
antagonisms.  In  the  city,  where  stratification  is  greater  than  in  the 
country,  the  antagonisms  and  class  struggles  are  also  greater.  But 
since  the  stratification  exists  in  the  rural  aggregate  also,  it  follows 
that  such  an  aggregate  is  not  entirely  free  from  clash,  conflict,  and 
antagonisms  in  the  relationships  of  the  strata  that  constitute  the 
aggregate.  As  the  social  distance  between  the  very  top,  of  the  rural 
pyramid  (No.  1  in  the  above  classification)  and  its  lowest  stratum 
of  hired  laborers  or  poor  peasants  is  particularly  great,  the  an- 
tagonisms between  these  strata  are  particularly  conspicuous.  In  a 
latent  form  it  always  exists.  From  time  to  time  it  takes  the  form 
of  an  overt  explosion  in  a  revolutionary  movement  of  the  poorest 
rural  classes  against  the  large  landlords  and  landholders.  History 
is  filled  with  the  records  of  such  movements.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  more  numerous  strata  of  the  agricultural  population, 

eration  with  other  individuals  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  necessities.  The  first  form  of 
solidarity  is  more  widespread  among  less  complex,  less  stratified  and  differentiated  socie- 
ties; the  second  increases  with  the  growth  of  the  complexity  of  society.  At  the  present 
moment,  as  has  been  shown,  urban  society  is  more  stratified  and  differentiated  than 
rural;  therefore,  the  second  type  of  solidarity  is  more  predominant  in  the  city  while  it  is 
less  developed  in  the  country,  where  solidarity  based  on  similarity  plays  a  relatively  more 
important  part.  However,  as  the  text  shows,  the  existence  of  the  stratification  and  differ- 
entiation within  the  agricultural  population  gives  room  in  it  for  a  solidarity  based  on 
division  of  labor.  See  also  Herbert  Spencer's  theories  of  social  organization. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  369 

for  instance  layers  Nos.  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  and  11,  is  much  less  con- 
spicuous; they  gradually  merge  one  into  the  other.  For  this  reason 
the  antagonism  between  them  is  much  milder  and  less  intensive, 
though  it  exists  to  some  extent.  For  this  reason  the  rural  areas 
where  the  agricultural  population  has  been  composed  almost  ex- 
clusively of  farmers  and  peasants  and  where  neither  the  class  of 
big  landlords  nor  that  of  poor  hired  laborers  has  existed,  have 
been  marked  by  a  lesser  development  of  antagonisms  and  class 
struggle  between  their  members  than  the  areas  with  big  latifun- 
dia  and  estates  and  their  satellites,  the  large  stratum  of  poor  peas- 
antry and  hired  laborers.  (See  Siegfried's  paper  in  the  readings.) 
From  this  standpoint  it  becomes  of  primary  importance  to  inquire 
what  tendencies  toward  social  stratification  exist  in  the  rural 
population  at  the  present  moment.  Is  stratification  increasing? 
Are  the  middle  strata  of  peasants,  farmers,  capitalist-farmers,  and 
well-to-do  tenants  tending  to  decrease  in  favor  of  the  strata  of  big 
landlords  on  the  one  hand  and  landless  hired  labor  on  the  other  ? 
If  such  a  process  of  the  concentration  of  land  into  fewer  and 
fewer  hands  is  taking  place,  and  if  the  masses  of  farmer  and 
peasant  owners  tend  to  decrease  and  to  be  turned  into  farm  pro- 
letariat, then  evidently  the  class  conflicts  in  the  agricultural  popu- 
lation must  increase  in  the  future  and  follow  a  development  simi- 
lar to  that  which  has  occurred  in  the  cities.  If  the  process  is  the 
opposite  of  the  one  just  described,  and  if  the  strata  of  big  land- 
lords and  landless  laborers  are  stationary  or  decreasing,  then  rural 
antagonisms  may  remain  stationary  or  may  decrease. 

This  problem  is  closely  connected  with  the  problem  of  contem- 
porary tendencies  in  the  degree  of  survival  of  various  types  of 
agricultural  enterprise.  It  is  evident  that  if  we  have  a  manifest 
tendency  towards  a  decrease  in  the  proportion  of  the  peasant, 
farmer,  and  farmer-capitalist  types  of  enterprises  in  favor  of  the 
large-scale  capitalist  agricultural  enterprises,  the  result  will  be  a 
systematic  decrease  of  the  middle  strata  of  the  agricultural  popu- 
lation, an  increase  of  the  landless  rural  proletariat,  concentration 
of  land  in  the  hands  of  the  capitalist  entrepreneurs,  growth  of 
social  stratification  within  the  rural  population,  and  consequently 
an  increase  of  social  antagonisms  and  class  struggle  within  the 
agricultural  classes.  If  the  process  is  the  opposite,  then  the  results 
will  be  opposite  also. 


370  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Thus,  from  both  of  the  above  standpoints,  we  are  led  to  an  in- 
vestigation of  the  problem  as  to  which  types  of  agricultural  enter- 
prises show  themselves  as  stable  and  growing  and  which  types 
tend  to  be  driven  out  of  existence.  If  a  certain  tendency  exists  in 
this  field,  what  are  the  factors  responsible  for  it?  Investigation  of 
this  problem  is  at  the  same  time  an  investigation  of  the  problem 
as  to  whether  the  social  stratification  within  the  agricultural  popu- 
lation is  increasing,  or  remaining  constant,  or  decreasing.  A  solu- 
tion of  this  problem  is,  at  the  same  time,  an  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  the  class  struggle  within  the  rural  population 
tends  to  grow  or  not.  Let  us  turn  now  to  the  problems  mentioned. 

II.  PRESENT  TENDENCIES  IN  LAND  CONCENTRATION  AND 
RURAL  STRATIFICATION 

Historical  remarks.— A.  bird's-eye  view  of  the  history  of  many 
societies,  especially  those  which  have  lived  for  a  long  period, 
shows  the  existence  of  long-time  cycles  in  which  a  wave  of  con- 
centration of  land  (and  consequently  a  growth  of  social  stratifica- 
tion) is  replaced  by  a  wave  of  deconcentration  (and  a  decrease  of 
stratification),  to  be  superseded  by  a  new  wave  of  concentration, 
etc.  At  one  period  small-scale  peasant  enterprises  are  driven  out 
by  large  landholdings,  exploited  either  in  the  form  of  large  capi- 
talist enterprises  or  in  the  form  of  parasitical  leases  of  portions  of 
the  land  to  free  or  unfree  tenants.  At  another  period  the  process  is 
replaced  by  the  opposite  one,  by  a  growth  of  the  small  peasant  or 
farmer  landholdings  at  the  expense  of  the  large  estates  of  big 
landowners.  In  the  history  of  China  there  have  been  several  such 
cycles.  The  tendency  toward  latifundia  has  appeared  many  times, 
and  many  times  "it  has  .been  checked  by  the  government  with  a 
strong  hand"  by  various  means:  by  a  confiscation  of  the  large 
estates  and  the  distribution  of  their  land  among  the  peasants,  by 
many  laws  to  limit  the  size  of  the  landholdings,  by  excessive  taxes 
for  the  large  estates,  by  the  cancellation  of  the  debts  of  the  small 
peasants  and  tenants,  by  a  revolutionary  seizure  of  the  landlords' 
land  by  the  peasants,  etc.5  For  instance,  the  waves  of  land  con- 
centration were  followed  by  waves  of  its  disbursement  and  the 
consequent  checking  of  the  concentration  process  in  the  years 

cSee  particularly  M.  Ping-Hua  Lee,  The  Economic  History  of  China,  pp.  58,  60,  66, 
131  and  passim.  See  there  especially  the  selections  from  the  historical  records  of  China, 
pp.  139-451,  where  the  alternation  of  these  opposite  tendencies  is  shown  quite  clearly. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  371 

140  B.C.,  37-32  B.C,  9  A.D.,  210  A.D.,  220  A.D.,  and  by  many 
similar  waves  after  that  time.6 

Similar  waves  have  taken  place  in  the  history  of  ancient  Greece 
and  Rome.  In  Greece,  to  the  time  of  Solon,  the  concentration  of 
land  was  conspicuous.  "Land  was  in  the  hands  of  few,"  and 
"many  were  in  slavery  to  the  few,"  Aristotle  testifies.7  Solon's  re- 
form somewhat  checked  this  process  and  stimulated  the  process 
of  the  redistribution  of  land  through  the  cancellation  of  public 
and  private  debts  and  other  measures.8  After  Solon  the  alterna- 
tion of  the  process  of  concentration  with  that  of  redistribution  and 
parceling— though  the  last  was  always  less  successful— repeated 
itself  many  times  (e.g.,  measures  of  Pisistratus,  Cleisthenes,  Peri- 
cles, and  the  "equalization  and  revolutionary  measures"  of  nu- 
merous Greek  politicians). 

Similarly,  in  Rome  even  during  the  time  of  Servius  Tullius, 
there  was  some  inequality  in  the  distribution  of  land,  the  differ- 
ence between  the  poorest  and  the  richest  classes  being  that  be- 
tween two  and  twenty  jugera  of  land.  In  the  time  of  the  "Twelve 
Tables"  some  measures  to  check  it  were  again  taken.  The  process 
of  concentration  went  on  and  called  forth  an  effort  to  check  it  in 
the  form  of  the  laws  of  Licinius  and  Sextius,  which,  among  other 
things  such  as  the  cancellation  of  debts,  prohibited  one  man  from 
possessing  more  than  500  jugera  of  land  (ager  occupatorius}. 
This  period  again  was  replaced  by  a  period  of  concentration, 
which  was  again  somewhat  weakened  by  the  reforms  of  the 
Gracchi  and  especially  by  the  redistributions  of  the  Civil  War  of 
the  end  of  the  second  and  the  beginning  of  the  first  century  B.C. 
Up  to  the  second  century  B.C.  and  during  its  first  part 
"a  rapid  concentration  of  landed  property  was  steadily  taking  place. 
The  landowners  were  either  members  of  the  senatorial  and  equestrian 
classes  in  Rome  or  the  most  energetic,  shrewd,  and  thrifty  of  .the  resi- 
dents of  the  Italian  towns.  .  .  .  These  men  never  intended  to  take  up 
residence  on  the  farms  and  work  the  land  with  their  own  hands.  From 
the  very  beginning  they  were  landowners,  not  farmers.  .  .  ."  This 
facilitated  a  reaction  against  the  concentration  and  stimulated  the 
movement  in  favor  of  redistribution  of  the  land.  This  was  the  main 
object  of  the  Gracchi,  who  "were  supported  by  the  rural  population  of 
Italy  and  by  the  landless  proletariat.  ,  .  .  Redistribution  of  land  and 

9  Ibid,,  pp.  445-448. 

7  Aristotle,  On  the  Athenian  Constitution f  chap.  iv. 

8  See  ibid.,  chaps,  iv-vi. 


372  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  consequent  restoration  of  the  peasantry  and  of  the  army  formed  at 
once  the  starting  point  and  the  goal  of  their  reforms.  .  .  ."  However, 
"their  activity  did  not  produce  a  redistribution  of  land  on  a  large  scale. 
Some  new  peasant  plots  were  of  course  created,  some  landless  proletar- 
ians were  provided  with  holdings,  some  large  estates  were  confiscated. 
But  soon  the  process  was  first  arrested  and  then  finally  stopped."  But 
reaction  again  followed  in  the  time  of  the  war  with  the  Samnites — in 
which  the  land  question  played  an  important  part,  and  especially  in  the 
time  of  the  Civil  War  with  its  many  redistributions  of  land.  "Accord- 
ing to  careful  calculations,  not  less  than  half  a  million  men  received 
holdings  in  Italy  during  the  last  fifty  years  of  that  troubled  period."  9 

After  that,  such  waves  were  repeated  several  times,  though  all  the 
measures  of  redistribution  could  weaken  the  process  of  concentra- 
tion only  temporarily.  Pliny  tells  that  in  the  time  of  Nero  six 
landowners  possessed  half  of  the  territory  of  Africa.10  Followed 
by  the  war  cry,  "redistribution  of  land/'  this  process  of  concentra- 
tion, interrupted  for  moments  by  various  checks,  later  assumed 
the  form  of  a  concentration  in  the  hands  of  the  government 
rather  than  in  those  of  the  private  landlords.  "Land  became  more 
and  more  the  property  of  the  state,  withdrawn  from  the  market, 
and  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  the  emperors."11 

Somewhat  similar  cycles  have  occurred  in  the  history  of  Byzan- 
tium and  medieval  Europe.  In  the  early  centuries  of  Byzantium 
there  was  an  abundance  of  small  agricultural  enterprises,  stimu- 
lated and  protected  by  the  state.  Then  came  the  process  of  con- 
centration. Already  in  the  fifth  century  A.D.  there  were  large 
estates,  like  that  of  a  great  lady  Paula,  who  owned  the  territory 
of  Nicopolis  in  Epirus.  The  concentration  went  on  with  some 
fluctuations,  leading  in  the  tenth  century  to  the  appearance  of 
enormous  estates,  with  hundreds  and  thousands  of  slaves,  tens  of 
thousands  of  sheep,  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  cattle.  Subse- 
quently, there  were  periods  in  which  the  concentration  was 
checked,  but  only  temporarily  and  with  limited  success,  until  the 
disappearance  of  Byzantium,  when  the  small  peasant  holdings 
and  the  middle  peasant  farms  were  swallowed  by  the  feudal 
lords,  the  state,  the  church,  and  other  big  landowners.12 

9M.  Rostovtzeff,  The  Social  and  Economic  History  of  the  Roman  Empire,  pp.  18-19, 
23-24,  33. 

10  See  ibid.,  pp.  93-97,  183,  212,  297  and  passim. 

11  Ibid.,  p.  297. 

12  See  P.  Boissonade,  Life  and  Work,  in  Medieval  Europe,  chaps,  iii,  xi. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  373 

In  western  Europe  the  centuries  from  the  seventh  to  the  tenth 
were  marked  by  the  growth  of  large  domains  and  the  decrease  of 
small  freeholdings,  in  brief,  by  a  marked  concentration  of  the 
land.  The  centuries  from  the  eleventh  to  the  fifteenth  (in  some 
countries  up  to  the  seventeenth)  were  marked  by  rather  an  op- 
posite trend,  by  dissolution  of  the  large  estates.,  a  liberation  of  the 
rural  classes,  an  enormous  rise  of  their  standard  of  living,  and  an 
extension  of  their  holdings  at  the  expense  of  the  large  feudal- 
private  and  corporational — latifundia.13  Subsequent  centuries  up 
to  the  nineteenth  were  marked  in  the  main  by  the  opposite 
process  of  the  dispossession  of  the  peasants  from  the  land  in  prac- 
tically all  European  countries,  especially  in  England  and  Den- 
mark. In  some  countries,  like  Italy  and  England,  they  lost  only 
the  land  and  did  not  lose  their  personal  freedom;  in  other  coun- 
tries of  the  northeast  of  Europe  they  lost  their  freedom  also.  Only 
in  France  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  the  peasant  holdings 
not  falling  but  rather  growing  at  the  expense  of  the  large  feudal 
estates.14 

Since  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  and  during  the  nineteenth 
century  the  trend  was  rather  reversed.  This  period,  to  a  different 
degree  in  various  countries  (and  not  without  exceptions),  was 
characterized  by  a  decrease  of  the  large  estates  in  favor  of  the 
small  holdings.  The  process  went  on  in  different  forms  in  dif- 
ferent countries  but,  all  in  all,  it  was  opposed  to  the  process  of 
land  concentration  of  the  preceding  centuries.  At  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  before  the  World  War  of  1914-1918  this 
tendency  became  still  clearer  until  it  assumed  the  form  of  a  vio- 
lent dispersal  of  land  in  the  postwar  period.  (See  W.  Schiff's  pa- 
per in  the  readings.)  Such,  in  the  most  general  form,  has  been  the 
alternating  process  of  the  concentration  and  dispersion  of  land 
and  social  stratification  in  various  countries,  and  in  the  history 
of  Europe  up  to  the  present  moment. 

The  next  question  to  be  discussed  is  the  situation  in  the  last 
decade.  What  is  taking  place  at  the  present  moment,  and  what 
are  the  prospects  for  the  future  in  regard  to  this  problem  ? 

Principal  theories  and  recent  present  tendencies. — As  is  well 

18  P.  Boissonadc,  ibid*,  passim, 

"  See  ^particularly  J.  L.  Loutchisky,  Uttat  des  classes  agricoles  en  France  h  la  vcillr 
de  la  Revolution,  chaps,  i,  ii  and  passim;  H.  S£e,  Esquisse  tfunc  histoire  dn  regime 
agrazre,  cited. 


374  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

known,  theories  in  regard  to  present  and  future  prospects  in  con- 
nection with  the  comparative  advantages  of  the  large-  and  small- 
scale  farming  have  been  discussed  very  extensively.15  Two  oppo- 
site theories  have  been  set  forth.  One  theory  recently  was  set  forth 
in  its  sharpest  form  by  Karl  Marx.  Marx  believed  that  the  devel- 
opment of  capitalism— in  industry  as  well  as  in  agriculture — 
tended  to  a  progressive  concentration  of  wealth,  including  land, 
in  fewer  and  fewer  hands,  to  a  systematic  pauperization  of  the 
labor  classes,  to  a  replacement  of  the  small  proprietors  by  the 
propertyless  and  landless  proletariat,  and  to  the  disappearance  of 
the  middle  social  classes.  In  agriculture  this  meant  a  tendency 
toward  the  progressive  replacement  of  small — peasant  and  farmer 
— enterprises  by  large  capitalist  estates;  a  systematic  and  ever 
increasing  stratification  of  the  peasant  and  farmer  population 
into  a  small  group  of  capitalists  in  agriculture  and  landless  prole- 
tariat, to  which  class  the  bulk  of  the  rural  population  would  have 
to  be  degraded.  This  meant  that  the  processes  of  a  progressively 
increasing  stratification  and  differentiation  of  the  rural  population 
had  to  be  expected  as  an  inevitable  outcome  of  the  development 
of  capitalism.  As  symptoms  of  such  a  trend  Marx  tried  to  show 
a  decrease  of  the  small  independent  farmers  and  peasants  among 
the  population  engaged  in  agriculture,  and  an  increase  of  the 
tenants  and  hired  laborers.  Likewise  he  believed  that  the  large 
estates  were  driving  out  the  small  landholdings  in  agriculture. 
The  reason  for  such  a  tendency  was,  according  to  Marx,  the  same 
that  led  to  a  replacement  of  the  handicrafts  in  industry  by  the 
large  factory  system,  that  is,  the  economic  advantages  of  large- 
scale  over  small-scale  production.  (See  the  readings  from  N.  Lenin 
and  J.  Schafir,  in  which  this  theory  is  developed  in  an  orthodox 
Marxian  spirit.) 

This  theory  was  accepted  by  many,  and  especially  by  many  of 
the  socialist  parties  of  various  countries.  In  their  programs  they 
regarded  the  class  of  farmers  and  peasants  as  the  class  doomed  by 
capitalism  to  become  a  proletariat  class,  and  in  the  interests  of 
socialism  they  rather  welcomed  it  as  a  necessary  condition  for  the 
realization  of  socialism  itself.  (See  in  the  readings,  the  papers  of 
Tugan-Baranovsky,  Sombart,  and  Schafir,  in  which  the  past  and 
the  present  attitudes  of  the  socialists  are  described.)  According  to 

"See  a  survey  of  the  theories  in  M.  Hainisch,  Die  Landflucht,  pp.  1178. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  375 

their  beliefs,  the  process  of  the  concentration  of  the  land  in  fewer 
and  fewer  hands  was  really  taking  place;  the  small  enterprise 
could  not  resist  the  large  capitalist  enterprises  in  agriculture  and 
was  doomed;  the  social  stratification  and  differentiation  of  the 
agricultural  population  into  capitalists  and  proletarians  was  cer- 
tain; in  brief,  Marx's  theory  was  accepted  without  any  serious 
questioning. 

The  other  theory,  supported  by  a  great  many  economists,  states- 
men, historians,  and  even  by  some  of  the  socialist  parties  of  the 
non-Marxian  type,  maintained  rather  an  opposite  claim.  It  has 
contended  that  the  economic  evolution  in  industry  and  in  agricul- 
ture has  been  different  and  that  what  has  been  true  for  industry 
has  not  necessarily  been  applicable  to  agriculture.  It  claimed  fur- 
ther that  K.  Marx's  theory  of  the  concentration  of  wealth  has  been 
fallacious  even  in  regard  to  industry  and  is  still  more  fallacious  in 
its  application  to  agriculture.  Further  arguments  of  the  partisans 
of  this  theory  were  as  follows.  Thanks  to  the  peculiarities  of  agri- 
culture, the  advantages  of  large-scale  over  small-scale  enterprises 
are  by  no  means  so  great  there  as  in  industry.  Though  existing  in 
some  forms  they  are  counterbalanced  by  many  disadvantages, 
from  which  it  follows  that,  economically,  the  small  agricultural 
enterprises  possessed  by  peasants  and  farmers  can  resist  quite  suc- 
cessfully the  large  capitalist  enterprises.  Its  adherents  have  at- 
tempted to  prove  this  claim  by  a  series  of  factual  data  which  have 
shown  that  in  various  countries  the  process  of  land  concentration 
has  not  been  taking  place  at  all  in  agriculture  for  the  last  few 
decades.  Side  by  side  with  this,  the  adherents  of  this  theory  have 
contended  that  the  Marxian  thesis  of  an  increasing  stratification 
of  the  agricultural  population  has  not  been  taking  place;  that  the 
proportion  of  the  peasant-  and  farmer-owners  has  not  been  de- 
creasing, and  that  the  proportion  of  tenants  and  especially  of 
hired  farm  labor  has  not  been  increasing  systematically.  Proceed- 
ing in  this  way  they  have  contended  that  there  are  no  serious  rea- 
sons to  believe  that  the  small  and  independent  producers  in  agri- 
culture are  doomed  to  disappear,  but  rather  that  the  future  be- 
longs to  the  class  of  peasants  and  farmers  no  less  than  to  the  class 
of  the  agricultural  capitalists.  Such  being  the  factual  situation,  it 
is  to  be  welcomed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  theory  discussed, 
because  of  its  social  and  political  and  other  beneficial  effects  for 


376  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  whole  society.  (See  the  readings  from  Tugan-Baranovsky 
and  Sombart,  in  which  this  theory  is  developed  and  defended.) 
Which  of  these  theories  is  to  be  recognized  as  more  correct,  in  the 
light  of  contemporary  knowledge?  If  we  disregard  several  sec- 
ondary traits  of  each  of  the  theories,  the  second  one  seems  to  be 
more  valid  and  accurate  than  the  Marxian  theory,  so  far  as  it,  in 
its  turn,  does  not  pretend  to  be  exclusive.  The  seventy-five  years 
that  have  passed  since  Marx  set  forth  his  theory  have  shown  that 
even  in  regard  to  the  industrial  evolution  his  fundamental  claims 
have  not  been  substantiated.  Neither  the  process  of  the  concentra- 
tion of  wealth  in  fewer  and  fewer  hands,  nor  that  of  a  systematic 
decrease  of  the  middle  classes,  nor  their  degradation  into  the 
class  of  the  proletariat,  nor  a  progressive  impoverishment  of  the 
labor  classes  has  been  realized.16 

If  Marx's  predictions  have  failed  in  regard  to  industry,  they 
have  shown  themselves  to  be  still  more  inadequate  as  to  agricul- 
ture. Contrary  to  his  expectation  (and  the  claim  of  Lenin)  no 
definite  tendency  toward  a  concentration  of  land  in  fewer  and 
fewer  hands  has  been  manifest;  no  trend  toward  a  progressive  re- 
placement of  small-scale  farms  by  large  capitalist  "farm-fac- 
tories"; no  clear-cut  trend  toward  an  increasing  proportion  of 
farm  laborers  at  the  expense  of  independent  farmers  and  peasants; 
no  systematic  increase  of  social  stratification  within  the  agricul- 
tural population.  It  is  true  that  some  symptoms  of  such  processes 
have  been  present  temporarily  in  some  countries.  But  these  symp- 
toms have  been  successfully  counterbalanced  by  the  opposite  proc- 
esses. 

If  the  problem  was  not  quite  clear  up  to  19174920,  since  that 
time  the  situation  has  been  greatly  clarified  in  regard  to  Europe 
by  the  present-day  agrarian  revolution  in  the  majority  of  Euro- 
pean countries.  One  of  the  main  items  of  this  revolution  has  con- 
sisted in  a  dissolution  of  the  large  estates  and  in  a  transfer  of  land 
from  the  large  landowners  to  the  small  farmers  and  peasants.  As 
will  be  shown  (see  particularly  the  paper  of  W.  Schiff),  the  post- 
war years  have  been  the  years  of  an  ascendancy  of  small-scale  pro- 
duction in  agriculture  over  large  capitalist  latifundia.  This  has 
been  so  clear  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  Russian  Communist 

16  Social  Mobility,  pp.  38-45,  117-128;  see  there  the  literature  o£  the  problem  and 
principal  data. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  377 

party,  practically  all  socialist  parties  had  to  abandon  their  previous 
Marxian  standpoint,  to  recognize  that  this  standpoint  was  wrong 
in  its  essentials,  and  to  replace  it  by  rather  an  opposite  standpoint, 
very  similar  to  that  of  the  second  theory.  (See  the  reading  from 
Schafir,  who,  being  a  Communist,  recognizes  such  a  change  and 
assails  it.)  The  data  and  the  figures  given  further  in  this  intro- 
duction and  in  the  readings  of  this  chapter,  among  which  is 
Schafir's  paper,  supply  a  sufficient  basis  for  the  verification  of 
these  statements.  Though  they  are  not  quite  complete,  neverthe- 
less they  give  the  essentials  of  the  data.  The  farmer  and  peasant 
enterprise,  contrary  to  the  expectation  of  their  disappearance,  have 
shown  themselves  very  stable  and  capable  of  competing  with 
capitalist  enterprises  in  agriculture. 

What  will  happen  in  the  future  nobody  can  answer;  but  so  far 
as  the  last  century  and  the  present  moment  are  concerned,  espe- 
cially in  Europe,  there  is  no  valid  basis  to  believe  in  the  accuracy 
of  Marx's  prediction.  All  in  all,  we  are  not  living  in  an  age  of  the 
concentration  of  land  in  fewer  and  fewer  hands  but  rather  in  one 
of  the  dissolution  of  large  agricultural  estates  in  favor  of  peasant 
and  farmer  enterprises. 

This  is  rather  certain  in  regard  to  Europe.  And  it  is  important 
to  note  that  such  a  tendency  did  not  arise  suddenly  during  the 
World  War  period  but  was  manifest  in  many  countries  several 
decades  before  the  war.  For  instance,  since  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  in  Russia,  the  land  of  the  landed  nobility  has 
been  passing  systematically  into  the  hands  of  the  peasants  and 
farmers;  the  large  estates  have  been  decreasing  while  the  small 
peasant  farms  have  been  increasing.  From  1875  to  1911  the  land 
of  the  nobility  in  European  Russia  decreased  from  76.6  millions 
of  dessiatins  to  43.2  millions,  while  the  "private"  (as  distinguished 
from  the  land  of  the  peasant  land  communities,  which  is  taken 
as  constant)  lands  of  the  peasants  increased  from  5.3  millions  of 
dessiatins  to  30.4  millions.  In  a  similar  way  the  large  latifundia  de- 
creased in  their  number  as  well  as  in  the  amount  of  their  land.17 
The  years  of  the  Revolution  from  1917  to  1927  only  consummated 

17  P.  I.  Liaschenko,  "The  Economic  Pre-Conditions  oi:  the  1917th,"  Agrarian  Rcvolu« 
tlon  (Russ.)>  ed.  by  V.  P.  Miliutin,  Moscow,  The  Communist  Academy,  1928,  II,  51-52. 
Sec  other  figures  and  details  in  the  papers  of  N,  Oganovski  in  the  volume  Struggle  for 
land  (Russ.),  Moscow,  1908,  I,  727,  252-253,  264,  319  ft;  and  P.  Maslov,  Agrarian 
Problems  (Russ.),  I,  226. 


378  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

this  process  and  led  to  the  dissolution  of  the  large  estates  and 
to  the  creation  of  25  million  peasant  enterprises,  as  compared  with 
15  millions  before  the  Revolution. 

Since  1928  the  Soviet  government  has  pursued  a  very  violent 
policy  aimed  at  eliminating  the  individual  peasant  farms  and 
merging  them  into  so-called  "large  collective  farms,"  which  will 
be  managed  as  one  unit  by  the  officials  and  members  of  the  Com- 
munist party.  The  peasants  who  have  opposed  this  dispossession 
of  their  land  by  the  Soviet  government  have  been  coerced  piti- 
lessly by  means  of  arrests,  executions,  banishments,  confiscation 
of  property,  overtaxation,  and  hundreds  of  similar  measures. 
This  policy  has  been  successful,  at  least  temporarily,  in  forcing 
the  peasants  to  follow  the  orders  of  the  Soviet  government  and 
to  "collectivize"  their  individual  farms.18  The  Soviet  authorities 
expect  three-fourths  of  all  the  farms  to  be  collectivized  by  the  end 
of  1930.  As  the  collective  farms  are  large-scale  farms,  this  would 
mean  the  annihilation  of  family-scale  production  and  the  victory 
of  large-scale,  government-managed  production.  We  cannot  enter 
into  the  realm  of  prophecy  here,  but  we  can  say  that  it  remains  to 
be  seen  how  successful  and  permanent  this  policy  will  be.  If,  con- 
trary to  our  expectations,  the  Soviet  government  should  be  suc- 
cessful in  establishing  and  maintaining  this  system  for  a  long 
period  of  time,  it  would  have  two  significant  results.  First,  it 
would  mean  the  existence  of  state  serfdom,  quite  similar  to  that 
in  Egypt  under  the  Ptolemies  and  in  Rome  under  Diocletian  and 
his  successors.  Second,  it  would  mean  the  end  of  the  preceding 
cycle  in  the  deconcentration  of  land  in  Russia  and  the  beginning 
of  the  new  cycle  of  land  concentration  and  its  correlated  increase 
of  social  stratification  in  that  country. 

The  dominant  trend  in  other  European  countries  in  the  latter 
nineteenth  and  the  twentieth  centuries  has  been  toward  the 
dissolution  of  large  estates  and  the  growth  of  small  and  middle- 
sized  farms.  This  is  seen  from  the  following  data,  which  supple- 
ment those  given  in  the  readings.  In  Denmark  during  the  nine- 
teenth and  early  twentieth  centuries  the  number  of  freeholdings 
increased  from  91,000  to  184,000,  mostly  at  the  cost  of  the  previ- 

18  See  Prokopovitch's  and  Sorokin's  papers  in  chapter  ix  of  this  work.  Since  March, 
1930,  however,  the  Soviet  government  has  been  forced  to  moderate  this  policy,  with  the 
result  that  by  July,  1930,  the  percentage  of  "collectivized"  peasant  farms  had  decreased 
by  20  to  30  per  cent,  as  compared  with  the  number  in  March,  1930. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION 


379 


ously  existing  latifundia.19  In  Belgium  from  1910  to  1920  the 
number  of  proprietors  in  agriculture  increased  from  244,957  to 
252,457,  while  the  number  of  employes  decreased  from  1,164  to 
769,  and  the  number  of  farm  laborers  from  270,696  to  224,438.20 
In  Sweden  the  situation  can  be  seen  from  the  following  table:21 

ACREAGE  (IN  HECTARES)  IN  FARMS  OF  SPECIFIED  SIZE  OPERATED: 


BY  OWNERS 

BY  TENANTS 

No.  OF 

YEAR 

Less 
than  2 

2-20 

20-100 

100  and 
More 

Less 
than  2 

2-20 

20-100 

100  and 
More 

OTHER 
TENANTS 

1890 

.     61,559 

183,221 

23,263 

2,035 

10,140 

27,949 

9,231 

1,084 

164,537 

1900 

66,348 

191,109 

23,219 

2,042 

9,429 

29,745 

10,074 

1,175 

167,652 

1911 

79,738 

199,912 

22,677 

(  2,046 

9,229 

30,565 

10,512 

1,117 

138,677 

This  table  shows  no  decrease  in  the  course  of  twenty-one  years, 
but  rather  a  more  rapid  increase  of  small  landholdings  operated 
by  owners  than  of  large  landholdings.  It  shows  further  not  an 
increase  but  rather  a  decrease  of  tenants  in  comparison  with 
owners. 

Somewhat  similar  is  the  picture  given  by  the  Netherlands,  as  it 
is  shown  by  the  following  data.22 

FARMS  AND  FARM  ACREAGE  OPERATED  BY  OWNERS  IN  THE  NETHERLANDS 


i  P  §  $ « 

O   *  X     O   0 

t-  fe  se  H  « 

ss°ss 

H)   °  W      W    ft. 

3    o  S° 
£  g  g  £  S 


Pi  UCIiNTAGE  OF  FARMS  OF  SPECI-    PERCENTAGE  OF  ACREAGE  IN  FARMS 
HID  SIZE   (IN  HECTARES)  OF  SPECIFIED  SIXE  (IN  HEC- 

OPERATED  BY  OWNERS  TARES)  OPERATED  BY  OWNERS 


*  gsS  NS5  1(J-  2°- 

«    Ij5g   ggj*   1-5   5-10    20      50 


&KQ  &< 


10»    20-    50- 
100 


10-    20-    50- 
100    1-5  5-10    20      50     100     100 


1921  56,0  51,9  50,6  59.3  55.8  47.6  46.1  ..     55.8   57.6   54.1   46.2   46.2   67,5 

1910  50.8  47.2  50.4  55.7  52.4  43.9  37,4  ...    50.5   54.5   54.2   42.3   37.8   66.2 

1904  54.4  ...  54.3  58.5  56.7  46.9  40.8     

1898  56.6  ,,,  57.1  60.5  58.3  49.1  42.3     

1888  58.5  ...  59.2  61.7  59.9  51.8  44.7      

lttP.  Manniche,  'The  Rise  of  the  Danish  Peasantry,"  Sociological  Review,  1927,  XIX, 
35-36. 

20  Annuaire  stattstiqttc  de  la  Belgique,  1924-1925,  p*  Ixxi. 

*lStatistisk  Arsbok  for  Svcrigct  1928,  p.  90. 

n]aarcijjcrs  voor  Ncderlanden,  1925-1926,  pp.  194-195. 


380  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

If  before  the  census  of  1921  it  was  possible  to  talk  of  an  increase 
of  tenants  at  the  cost  of  owners  in  the  Netherlands,  and  of  a  tend- 
ency toward  the  concentration  of  land  in  fewer  and  fewer  hands, 
such  claims  became  impossible  after  1921.  We  see  that  the  census 
of  1921  shows  an  increase  of  owners — their  number  and  their 
acreage — in  all  sizes  of  farms,  and  in  addition  the  rate  of  the  in- 
crease in  small  landholdings  (5  to  50  hectares)  is  not  lower  than 
in  large  landholdings  (100  and  more  hectares). 

The  data  for  Germany  up  to  1920  are  given  in  Sombart's  paper 
in  the  readings.  Here  we  add  the  more  recent  data  from  1907  to 
1925.  In  1907,  of  all  the  land  cultivated  the  percentage  operated 
by  owners  was  86.3;  in  1925  it  was  86.6;  in  those  years  the  per- 
centages of  the  land  operated  by  tenants  were  12.6  and  12.3.  Fur- 
ther, of  100  hectares  of  the  total  acreage  the  acreage  occupied  by 
farms  up  to  2  hectares  composed  5.5  per  cent  in  1907  and  6.2  per 
cent  in  1925;  corresponding  figures  for  the  acreage  of  farms  from 
2  to  5  hectares  were  10.7  and  11.4;  for  that  of  farms  from  5  to  20 
hectares  they  were  33.4  and  35.8;  and  finally  the  percentage  of  the 
acreage  composed  of  farms  from  20  to  100  hectares  and  of  farms 
of  100  and  more  hectares  were  respectively  29.8  and  26.4;  and  20.6 
and  20.2  per  cent.  Thus  the  acreage  included  in  large  farms  (20 
hectares  and  above)  decreased  while  the  acreage  of  the  farms  un- 
der 20  hectares  increased  from  1907  to  1925.  Finally,  during  that 
period  the  number  of  landowners  (entrepreneurs)  increased 
from  2,476,345  to  3,578,839;  the  number  of  members  of  their 
families  steadily  occupied  in  agriculture  increased  from  4,063,353 
to  5,340,447,  while  the  number  of  unrelated  home  servants  de- 
creased from  1,368,782  to  1,306,081;  the  number  of  temporary 
unrelated  laborers  decreased  from  1,720,474  to  986,924;  only  the 
number  of  permanently  employed  laborers  increased  from  714,271 
to  907,054,  and  that  of  the  managers  and  superintendents  (a  small 
group)  increased  from  65,038  to  92,700.  All  in  all,  the  proprie- 
torial element  of  the  whole  population  engaged  in  agriculture 
increased  rather  than  decreased,  while  the  unrelated  labor  ele- 
ment decreased  rather  than  increased  relatively.23  These  data 
show  clearly  that  the  trend  was  not  a  Marxian  trend  but  quite  the 
reverse. 

In  brief,  as  we  shall  see  from  the  readings,  in  Europe,  especially 

23  Statistisches  Jahrbuch  fur  das  deutsche  Reich,  1928,  pp.  63-64. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  381 

during  the  post-war  period,  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  decon- 
centration  and  not  to  Marxian  trends  in  agriculture.24  In  a  similar 
way  in  some  of  the  non-European  countries  there  has  been  shown 
nothing  pointing  toward  Marxian  tendencies.  For  instance,  recent 
data  for  New  Zealand  show  that  from  1923  to  1927,  of  the  total 
number  of  the  landholdings,  the  landholdings  of  the  smallest  size 
(up  to  10  acres)  decreased  slightly  (from  18.07  to  17.76  per  cent) ; 
the  percentage  of  the  large  and  the  largest  landholdings  (from 
201  to  640  acres,  and  from  5,000  to  50,000  and  more  acres)  also 
decreased  slightly;  while  the  percentage  of  the  small  and  medium 
landholdings  (from  11  to  200,  and  from  641  to  5,000  acres)  in- 
creased slightly.  The  percentage  of  land  included  in  these  various 
landholdings  presents  a  similar  picture.  The  percentage  of  land 
in  small  landholdings  (from  1  to  200  acres)  increased  slightly; 
the  percentage  of  land  in  landholdings  from  641  to  5,000  acres 
and  from  20,000  to  50,000  acres  also  increased  slightly,  while  the 
percentage  of  the  land  in  the  largest  (50,000  and  more  acres)  and 
large  landholdings  (from  5,000  to  20,000  acres)  decreased  slightly. 
On  the  whole  the  situation  remained  without  any  trend  in  either 
direction.25 

The  situation  in  Canada  and  the  United  States  of  America  has 
been  more  complex  and  less  definite.  In  Canada  from  1911  to 
1921  the  area  operated  by  tenants  and  part  owners  and  part 
tenants  increased  much  more  (by  85.86  per  cent)  than  the  area 
operated  by  the  full  owners  (by  22.85  per  cent).  In  a  similar  way 
the  percentage  of  farms  operated  by  full  owners  increased  much 
less  (1.86  per  cent)  than  that  operated  by  part  owners,  part 
tenants  (64.58  per  cent),  and  even  by  tenants  (3.58  per  cent).26 
Somewhat  similar  is  the  picture  given  by  the  United  States.  At 
the  first  glance  these  data  seem  to  support,  at  least  in  regard  to 
these  countries,  the  Marxian  predictions.  However,  a  closer  analy- 
sis of  the  situation  changes  considerably  the  real  significance  of 
these  and  similar  data.  Let  us  see  this  in  the  case  of  the  United 
States. 

The  partisans  of  the  Marxian  hypothesis  (see  Lenin's  paper  in 
the  readings)  have  indicated,  as  evidences  of  the  validity  of  their 

24  See  the  readings  below,  especially  W.  Schiff's  paper.  See  also  Annmire  statistique 
de  Finland,  1928,  p.  81;  Annuaire  statistique  de  la  Roumanie,  3925,  p.  49;  Laur  and 
Konig,  Mesures  propres  a  lutter  contra  la  depopulation,  pp.  16-17. 

MNew  Zealand  Official  'Year  800%,  1929,  pp.  416-417. 

*The  Canada  Year  Book,  1927-1928,  ]p.  284. 


382  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

contentions  in  regard  to  the  United  States,  the  following  things: 
first,  that  among  the  total  population  engaged  in  agriculture  the 
proportion  of  owners  has  been  decreasing  while  the  proportion  of 
hired  laborers  and  tenants  has  been  increasing;  second,  that  the 
proportion  of  small-size  farms  has  been  decreasing  while  that  of 
large-size  farms  has  been  increasing;  third,  that  the  proportion 
of  mortgaged  farms  has  been  increasing;  fourth,  that  the  standard 
of  living  of  the  bulk  of  the  farmers  has  been  going  down:  and 
still  other  similar  proofs.  (See  Lenin's  paper  in  the  readings,  where 
these  and  similar  arguments  are  set  forth.)  These  contentions 
were  particularly  numerous  before  the  census  of  1920  and  the 
agricultural  census  of  1925.  The  results  of  these  last  censuses  dis- 
sipated many  of  these  arguments  as  evidently  fallacious.  In  the 
first  place  the  proportion  of  hired  labor  among  the  farm  operators 
has  not  been  increasing  since  1910,  but  has  been  decreasing.  Their 
number  was  3,323,876  in  1880;  3,586,583  in  1890;  4,410,877  in 
1900;  6,088,414  in  1910;  4,462,628  in  1920;  3,085,000  in  1925.  In 
percentages  of  the  total  population  actively  engaged  in  agriculture 
the  wage  laborers  composed  47.7  per  cent  in  1880;  46.0  in  1890;  44 
in  1900;  48.6  in  1910;  39.4  in  1920.27  Though  there  are  several  cir- 
cumstances which  make  these  figures  not  quite  comparable,  nev- 
ertheless it  is  certain  that  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the 
proportion  of  hired  farm  labor  has  been  increasing  among  the 
population  engaged  in  agriculture.  In  a  similar  way  there  has  not 
been  any  noticeable  trend  towards  a  decrease  of  the  proportion  of 
small-size  farms  to  the  total  number  of  farms  of  various  sizes.  The 
essentials  of  the  changes  may  be  seen  in  the  following  data 28  : 

PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMS  IN  EACH  CLASS  IN  SPECIFIED  YEARS 


SIZE  OF  FARM 
IN  ACRES 

1880 

1890 

1900 

1910 

1920 

1925 

Under  10          
10  to  19  

.    ..       3.5 
.  .  .  .      6.4 

3.3 
5.8 

4.7 
7.1 

5.3 
7.9 

4.5 
7.9 

5.9 
9.2 

20  to  49 
50  to  99  . 
100  to  499    .   .       .   . 
500  to  999 

19.5 

.      25.8 
42.3 
..      1.9 

19.8 
24.6 
44.0 
1.8 

21.9 
23.8 
39.9 
1.8 

22.2 
22.6 
39.2 
2.0 

23.3 
22.9 
38.1 
2.3 

22.8 
22.3 
36.5 
2.3 

IjOOO  and  more 

0.7 

0.7 

0.8 

0.8 

1.0 

1.0 

27  See  U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook,  1923,  p.  511. 

28  Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1926,  p.  586. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  383 

PERCENTAGE  OF  TOTAL  ACREAGE  IN  EACH  CLASS  OF  FARMS  IN 
SPECIFIED  YEARS 


SIZE  OF  FARM 
IN  ACRES 

ALL  FARM  LAND 

IMPROVED  FARM  LAND 

1900 

1910 

1920 

1925 

1900 

1910 

1920 

Under  20       ... 

0.9 

1.0 

0.9 

1.1 

1.6 

1.7 

1.6 

20  to  49 

5.0 

5.2 

5.1 

5.0 

8.0 

7.6 

7.7 

50  to  99 

11.8 

11.7 

11.1 

11.0 

16.2 

14.9 

14.4 

100  to  174  . 

23.0 

23.4 

20.4 

20.1 

28.6 

26.9 

25.5 

175  to  499.. 

27.8 

30.2 

29.0 

27.9 

32.7 

33.8 

33.8 

500  to  999 

8.1 

9.5 

10.6 

10.5 

7.1 

8.5 

9.6 

1,000  and  over 

23.6 

19.0 

23.1 

24.3 

5.9 

6.5 

7.5 

It  is  necessary  to  have  a  great  deal  of  imagination  to  see  in 
these  figures  the  existence  of  a  definite  trend  such  as  that  dis- 
cussed. Not  much  different  is  the  picture  given  by  the  data  that 
show  changes  in  the  acreage  of  all  farm  land  or  in  that  of  the 
improved  farm  land  by  size  of  farm.29 

Only  in  the  changes  in  the  distribution  of  improved  land  is 
there  a  slight  tendency  toward  concentration  noticeable,  but  even 
there  it  is  very  slight  and  does  not  affect  the  distribution  of  the 
total  of  the  farm  land  according  to  the  size  of  farms.  For  this 
reason  this  evidence  of  concentration  must  be  dropped  also  by 
the  partisans  of  the  Marxian  theory. 

INDEBTEDNESS  OF  FARM  OWNERS,  1890-1925 


CLASSES  OF  FARMS  OPERATED  BY 

DISTRIBUTION  BY  PERCENTAGES 

OWNERS 

1890 

1900 

1910 

1920 

1925 

Free  from  mortgage  ,  .    .  , 

..    70.9 

66.5 

65.6 

52.8 

Mortgaged  ...         

27.8 

30.0 

33.2 

37.2 

36.1 

Unknown    

1.3 

3.5 

1.2 

9.9 

Total    

,  .     100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

Ratio  of  debt  to  farm  value 

(land  and  buildings)  .  .  , 

..    35.5 

27.3 

29.1 

41.9 

Average  per  farm:  value 

of 

land  and  buildings  

.,$3,444 

$6,289 

$11,546 

$9,564 

Amount  of  debt  

.  $1,224 

$1,715 

$3,356 

$4,004 

Owner's  equity    

,  -$2,220 

$4,574 

$8,191 

384  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Among  other  arguments  in  favor  of  concentration  only  two 
classes  of  changes  may  have  some  significance.  The  first  is  that  the 
proportion  of  mortgaged  farms  operated  by  the  owners  has  been 
increasing,  and  the  ratio  of  the  debt  to  the  value  of  farms  (land 
and  buildings)  has  not  shown  a  definite  tendency  to  decrease. 
Neither  did  it  show  a  definite  tendency  to  increase.  This  may  be 
seen  from  the  data  given  in  the  table  on  page  383.30 

These  data  show,  to  some  extent,  a  tendency  toward  an  increase 
in  the  indebtedness  of  farm  owners.  But  again  the  sharp  increase 
of  the  percentage  of  farms  mortgaged  in  1920  was  a  result  of  the 
well-known  crisis  in  agriculture,  connected  with  the  war  and  the 
postwar  conditions.  As  the  crisis  is  passing,  the  trend  is  begin- 
ning to  change,  as  is  shown  by  the  data  of  the  census  of  1925.  Still 
more  irregular  is  the  trend  shown  by  the  ratio  of  the  debt  to  the 
value  of  the  farms  and  the  data  concerning  the  owner's  equity. 
Besides,  the  mere  fact  of  an  increase  or  decrease  of  mortgages  in 
themselves  does  not  mean  much;  the  essential  point  is  the  purpose 
of  the  mortgage.  If  it  is  for  an  improvement  of  the  farm  and  its 
implements  and  productivity,  an  increase  of  mortgage  does  not 
mean  any  tendency  toward  the  dispossession  of  the  farmer  but 
something  quite  opposite.  In  addition,  the  mortgage  evidence  may 
have  some  significance  only  when  it  is  shown  that  the  large  farms 
are  not  mortgaged  or  are  less  mortgaged.  The  data  for  Prussia 
show  that  in  1902  large  farms  were  mortgaged  much  more  than 
the  peasant  farms.  (Hainisch,  op.  cit.,  p.  106.)  Recent  investiga- 
tion of  the  largest  farms  in  the  United  States— mentioned  further 
—shows  also  that  twenty-one  of  seventy-eight  farms  had  net  losses 
and  four  had  neither  gain  nor  loss  for  the  period  of  1925-1928. 
For  these  reasons  these  data  do  not  necessarily  mean  the  dispos- 
session of  the  farmers  and  their  degradation  into  the  class  of  land- 
less proletarians. 

The  second  category  of  data  that  may  testify  in  favor  of  land 
concentration  are  those  that  show  an  increase  of  tenancy  in  the 
United  States.  The  proportion  of  the  farms  operated  by  tenants 
has  been  increasing  systematically,  being  25.6  per  cent  of  all  farms 
in  1880;  28.4  in  1890;  353  in  1900;  37  in  1910;  38.1  in  1920;  and 
38.6  in  1925.  Correspondingly,  the  percentage  of  farms  operated 

**lbid.,  p.  593-  see  also  U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook,  1923,  p.  1157;  1928,  p.  394;  U.  S. 
Census  of  Agriculture,  1925,  Part  I,  p.  16. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  385 

by  the  owners  and  managers  was  74.4  in  1880  and  subsequently 
71.6,  64.7,  63,  62,  and  finally  61.3  in  1925.31 

Taken  at  their  face  value  these  figures  may  be  used  as  very 
convincing  evidence  of  the  concentration  of  the  land,  disposses- 
sion of  the  farmers  from  their  land,  and  the  increase1  of  social 
stratification  within  the  rural  population.  A  more  detailed  analysis 
of  the  data  given  by  L.  Truesdell  ("Farm  Tenancy  Moves  West," 
Journal  of  Farm  Economics,  1926,  VIII,  443-450)  shows,  how- 
ever, that  the  situation  is  not  so  simple.  First,  the  figures  of  ten- 
ancy itself  show  a  definite  slowing  up  of  the  rate  of  its  increase 
after  1890;  second,  it  is  well  known  that  tenancy,  as  such,  is  not 
necessarily  a  sign  of  the  impoverishment  of  the  farmer;  third,  as 
Dr.  Truesdell's  analysis  shows,  its  increase  or  decrease  has  been 
largely  a  reaction  to  pioneer  conditions  and  the  liquidation  of 
the  southern  latifundia,  and  as  these  conditions  are  passing,  it 
shows  a  tendency  toward  a  decline.  In  those  eastern  states  where 
pioneer  conditions  were  over  by  1910,  tenancy  has  not  been  in- 
creasing but  decreasing  for  the  last  twenty-five  years. 

The  westward  movement  of  farm  tenancy  has  been  evident  for 
twenty  years,  but  it  stands  out  with  especial  clearness  in  the  returns  for 
the  1925  farm  census.  The  total  number  of  tenant  farms  has  increased 
very  little  since  1910,  and  the  net  gain  between  1920  and  1925  was  less 
than  8,000  (an  increase  from  2,454,804  to  2,462,528).  This  net  increase, 
however,  is  the  resultant  of  much  greater  changes  in  different  parts  of 
the  country — of  considerable  increases  in  one  section  almost  balanced 
by  decreases  in  another  section. 

Specifically,  in  23  states,  containing  slightly  less  than  one-half  the 
total  number  of  farms,  the  number  of  tenant  farms  increased  by  about 
150,000,  while  in  the  remaining  25  states  the  number  of  tenant  farms 
decreased  by  about  142,000*  The  23  states  showing  an  increase  in  farm 
tenancy  are  nearly  all  in  the  West,  while  the  25  states  showing  a  decline 
in  tenancy  are  all  in  the  East,  except  that  the  three  Pacific  Coast  states 
are  included  in  this  group.  The  net  increase  of  a  little  less  than  8,000 
tenant  farms,  already  noted,  carried  with  it  a  change  in  the  percentage 
o£  farms  operated  by  tenants  from  38.1  in  1920  to  38.6  in  1925. 

The  author  concludes: 

Certainly  the  results  of  our  latest  national  farm  inventory  give  no 
indication  of  a  wave  of  tenancy  sweeping  over  the  country,  nor  of  any 
general  or  extensive  increase  in  the  area  of  farm  land  held  by  non- 

1  Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1926,  p.  586. 


386  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

resident  landlords  and  operated  by  tenants  in  whom  the  landlords 
manifest  no  interest  beyond  the  collection  of  the  rent.32 

Fourth,  the  real  percentage  of  tenancy  is  much  lower  because, 
in  the  above  38.6  percentage  of  tenant  farms,  from  26  to  29  per 
cent  of  the  tenants  were  relatives  of  the  landowners.33  Finally,  it 
is  well  known  that  tenancy  for  a  great  part  of  the  tenants  is  but 
a  stage  in  the  transition  to  ownership. 

These  and  similar  reasons  enormously  weaken  the  use  of  the 
tenancy  data  as  an  unquestionable  sign  of  the  progress  of  capital- 
ism, the  dispossession  of  the  farmers,  and  land  concentration,  as 
was  assumed  by  the  partisans  of  this  theory.  However,  if  we  can- 
not claim  that  the  agricultural  evolution  of  the  United  States  for 
the  last  sixty  years  has  been  towards  a  concentration  of  the  land 
and  an  increase  of  the  stratification  of  the  population  engaged  in 
agriculture,  at  the  same  time  there  is  no  definite  evidence  that 
the  opposite  processes  have  been  taking  place. 

Among  the  Asiatic  countries  that  have  comparable  statistical 
data,  Japan  showed  a  very  slight  tendency  toward  land  concentra- 
tion during  the  years  from  1910  to  1920.  But  the  tendency  is  very 
insignificant,  and  the  predominant  types  of  landownership  and 
farm  enterprises  are  to  such  an  extent  small-scale  enterprises  that 
one  can  scarcely  use  this  tendency  as  evidence  for  any  sweeping 
generalization  concerning  the  capitalistic  dispossession  of  the  land 
cultivators  or  the  driving  out  of  existence  of  small  enterprises  by 
capitalistic  "grain-factories."  (See  in  the  readings  the  paper  of 

82  See  further,  TruesdelFs  analysis  of  the  situation  by  regions,  op.  cit.,  pp.  443,  450. 
See  also:  C.  J.  Galpin  and  Veda  B.  Larson,  Farm  Population  of  Selected  Counties,  Wash- 
ington, 1924;  L.  E.  Truesdell,  Farm  Population  of  the  United  States,  Census  Mono- 
graph VI,  Washington,  1926;  L.  C.  Gray,  C.  L.  Stewart,  J.  T.  Sanders,  H.  A.  Turner, 
"Farm  Ownership  and  Tenancy,"  in  U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook,  1923,  pp.  507-600;  E.  A. 
Goldenweiser  and  L.  E.  Truesdell,  Farm  Tenancy  in  the  United  States,  Census  Mono- 
graph IV,  1924;  E.  C.  Branson,  "Farm  Tenantry  in  the  Cotton  Belt,"  Journ.  of  Social 
Forces,  March,  1923;  J.  O.  Rankin,  Farm  Tenancy  in  Nebraska,  Neb.  Agric.  Coll. 
Exper.  Station  Bull.  No.  196;  C.  C.  Taylor  and  C.  C.  Zimmerman,  Social  and  Eco- 
nomic Conditions  of  North  Carolina  Farmers,  North  Carolina  Farm  Tenancy  Commis- 
sion, Raleigh,  1922;  C.  L.  Holmes,  Relation  of  Types  of  Tenancy  to  Types  of  Farming 
in  Iowa,  Iowa  State  Coll.  Agric.  Exper,  Station  Bull.  No.  214;  N.  S.  B,  Gras,  A  History 
of  Agriculture,  New  York,  1925,  chap,  xi,  xv;  R.  T.  Ely  and  C.  J.  Galpin,  "Tenancy  in 
an  Ideal  System  of  Landownership,"  The  Amer.  Economic  Review,  Supplement,  1919, 
IX,  180-212;  W.  J.  Spillman,  "The  Agricultural  Ladder,"  ibid.,  pp.  170-179;  J.  M.  Gil- 
lette, Rural  Sociology,  1928,  chaps,  xii-xiv;  N.  L.  Sims,  Elements  of  Rural  Sociology, 
1928,  chap,  vii;  C.  C.  Taylor,  Rural  Sociology,  1928,  chap,  via;  G.  A.  Lundquist  and 
T.  N.  Carver,  Principles  of  Rural  Sociology,  chaps,  xiii-xiv. 

88  U.  S.  Census  of  Agriculture,  1925,  Part  I,  p.  4. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  387 

Kawada  about  Japan.)  Neither  do  the  data  of  China,  after  long 
years  of  agriculture,  show  such  a  tendency. 

Taken  in  their  totality,  the  present  facts  offer  less  foundation 
and  support  to  the  predictions  of  Marx  and  his  followers  than 
did  the  facts  of  the  time  of  the  fabrication  of  the  theory,  some 
seventy  or  eighty  years  ago.  Our  time  has  been  rather  a  time  of 
the  opposite  processes,  the  processes  of  the  disbursement  of  the 
large  latifundia  into  small-scale  landholdings.  If  someone  should 
say  that  this  has  been  achieved  not  so  much  through  the  economic 
advantages  of  the  small  enterprises  as  through  the  political  action 
of  the  masses,  one  must  not  forget  that  the  large  latifundia  in  the 
past  were  established  also  not  through  their  economic  advantages 
over  the  small  enterprise  but  almost  exclusively  through  political 
coercion  and  similar  non-economic  measures  of  the  landlords. 
And,  besides,  one  must  not  forget  that  the  large  landholdings 
have  not  been  used  by  their  owners  generally  in  the  form  of  large 
capitalistic  agricultural  enterprises  but  almost  exclusively  in  the 
parcellation  of  large  tracts  into  small  lots,  the  leasing  of  these 
to  small  cultivators,  and  the  collection  of  rent  and  other  forms 
of  income  from  these  small  tenants.  This  fact  together  with  the 
comparative  advantages  of  the  small  and  the  large  enterprises 
in  agriculture  (discussed  further  in  the  readings  from  Tugan- 
Baranovsky,  Sombart,  and  others)  is  sufficient  to  give  one  a  skepti- 
cal attitude  towards  the  prophecies  of  land  concentration  and 
similar  theories.  Viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  a  long-time 
period,  all  that  we  have  in  this  field  is  an  alternation  of  the  long- 
time tendencies  of  concentration  and  deconcentration  and  con- 
sequently increase  and  decrease  of  social  stratification.  At  the 
present  moment  the  majority  of  the  European  countries  are  in 
the  stage  of  deconcentration;  other  countries,  particularly  the 
United  States,  do  not  show  a  clearly  expressed  tendency  in  either 
direction. 

III.  COMPARATIVE  ADVANTAGES  AND  DISADVANTAGES  OF 
SMALL-FAMILY  AND  LARGE-SCALE  CAPITALISTIC  TYPES 
OF  FARMING 

The  absence  of  a  perpetual  trend  in  the  field  discussed  is  par- 
tially explainable  when  we  consider  the  comparative  advantages 
and  disadvantages  of  large-  and  small-scale  farming.  This  prob- 
lem has  long  been  discussed  from  its  purely  economic  aspects,  and 


388  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

there  exists  a  large  body  of  theories  concerning  it.34  These  theories 
can  be  grouped  into  three  classes.  The  first  group  of  theories 
maintain  that  small  farms  are  generally  more  advantageous  than 
large  farms.  Dr.  E.  Laur  and  the  other  authors  quoted  above  are 
the  contemporary  representatives  of  this  group.  The  second  group 
of  theories  contend  that  large  farms  are  generally  more  advan- 
tageous economically  than  small  farms.  The  old  Marxian  theory, 
now  held  by  the  Communists,  is  representative  of  this  viewpoint. 
The  third  group  of  theories  believe  that  there  is  no  general  uni- 
formity in  this  field;  that  economic  success  in  agriculture  depends 
on  many  conditions.,  such  as  the  ability  of  the  manager,  the  char- 
acter of  the  farming,  the  soil,  the  climate,  the  social,  economic, 
political,  and  other  conditions  of  a  locality;  and  that  these  condi- 
tions are  so  diverse  in  different  localities  that  it  is  impossible  to 
say  that  either  small-  or  large-scale  farming  is  generally  more 
profitable  in  all  localities  and  under  all  conditions.  Each  locality 
has  its  own  optimum  size  of  farm  enterprise,  and  this  optimum 
differs  for  various  localities.  Large-scale  farming  may  be  more  ad- 
vantageous under  one  set  of  conditions  and  small-scale  farming 
under  another. 

Factually,  the  comparative  advantages  and  disadvantages  of 
each  type  of  farming  are  so  manifold  and  counterbalance  each 
other  to  such  an  extent  that  it  is  impossible  to  discover  any  uni- 
form and  universal  rule  in  the  field.  All  these  theories  and  their 
arguments  are  developed  in  the  subsequent  readings.  We  shall 
state  now  that  the  third  group  of  theories  seems  to  be  nearer  to 
the  reality.  Indeed,  if  either  one  of  the  extreme  theories  had  been 
generally  valid,  the  less  advantageous  form  of  farming  would 
have  been  driven  out  of  existence  long  ago.  The  struggle  "for  the 
survival  of  the  fit"  would  have  eliminated  the  less  advantageous 
form,  but  such  a  thing  has  not  happened.  Both  forms  existed  in 
the  distant  past  and  still  exist  today.  The  long  periods  in  which 
we  can  study  the  historical  changes  show  us  merely  trendless 
alternations  in  the  prevalency  and  dominance  of  the  two  forms. 
This  agrees  with  the  contention  of  the  third  group  of  theories, 
and  also  explains  why  the  Marxian  trend  of  land  concentration 
has  not  been  taking  place.  Neither  does  it  contradict  the  fact  that 
large  farms  still  exist  and  show  no  tendencies  to  disappear  in 

"See  a  survey  of  these  theories  in  Dr.  Hainisch's  work  quoted,  pp.  117  fi. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  389 

some  countries.  Other  data  and  arguments  are  given  further  in 
the  readings.  Here  we  will  mention  only  one  of  the  economic 
differences  between  the  family  type  of  enterprise  and  the  large- 
capitalist  enterprise  and  the  results  of  a  recent  study  of  the  com- 
parative economic  advantages  of  large-  and  small-scale  farming 
in  the  United  States.30  We  know  that  farm  economy  is  deter- 
mined by  a  combination  of  the  three  factors  of  production:  labor, 
capital,  and  land.  Different  combinations  of  the  amount  of  each 
of  these  factors  create  various  types  of  farm  economy,  particu- 
larly the  extensive  and  the  intensive  types.  The  extensive  type  of 
agricultural  enterprise  is  marked  by  an  abundant  use  of  land, 
and  by  a  small  investment  of  capital  and  labor  per  unit  of  land. 
The  intensive  type  is  characterized  by  the  opposite  combination 
of  these  factors:  by  a  relatively  great  investment  of  capital  and 
labor  per  unit  of  land.  The  intensive  types  may  be  either  inten- 
sive in  the  capital  invested  per  unit  of  land,  or  intensive  in  the 
labor  invested  per  such  a  unit,  or  intensive  in  both  respects. 

Side  by  side  with  this  rough  classification,  we  must  remember 
here  also  the  so-called  law  of  diminishing  returns,  according  to 
which  any  one  of  these  three  factors  brings  a  decreasing  return  as 
greater  and  greater  amounts  of  it  are  utilized,  assuming  it  to  re- 
main the  same,  qualitatively,  per  unit  of  the  other  factor  or  fac- 
tors; while  any  other  factor  invested  or  used  in  relatively  constant 
quantities  brings  much  higher  returns  because  of  its  full  utiliza- 
tion. In  accordance  with  this  law,  assuming  other  conditions  to 
be  equal,  in  an  agricultural  enterprise  that  has  an  abundance  of 
land  but  a  small  amount  of  labor  and  capital  invested,  the  pro- 
ductivity of  each  piece  of  land  will  be  low  while  the  productivity 
of  each  unit  of  labor  and  capital  will  be  high.  In  an  enterprise 
where  an  enormous  amount  of  labor  is  used  per  unit  of  land,  the 
productivity  of  each  unit  of  labor  (wages  per  hour  of  labor)  will 
be  low,  but  the  productivity  of  each  unit  of  land  will  be  high. 
In  a  system  where  an  enormous  amount  of  capital  is  invested 
per  unit  of  land,  or  per  unit  of  labor,  or  both,  the  productivity  of 
each  unit  of  capital  will  be  low  but  that  of  each  unit  of  land  or 
labor  will  be  high.  Such,  roughly,  are  the  principles  we  may  ex- 

38  Wm,  Harper  Dean  and  John  B.  Bennct,  Large-Scale  Farming,  Agricultural  Service 
Dept.,  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  United  States,  Washington,  July  29,  1929.  See  also 
The  Mechanization  of  Agriculture,  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  United  States,  August 
17,  1929. 


390  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

pect  to  find  in  operation  wherever  the  law  of  diminishing  returns 
is  applicable. 

The  noncapitalistic  family  agricultural  enterprise  is  character- 
ized by  a  relatively  small  amount  of  land,  by  an  investment  of  a 
proportionately  great  amount  of  labor,  and,  as  a  rule,  by  a  rela- 
tively high  investment  of  capital  per  unit  of  land.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  large  capitalistic  enterprise  is  marked  by  a  larger 
amount  of  land  and  less  investment  of  labor  and  capital  per  unit 
of  land.  Hence  we  may  expect  that  peasant  or  small-farm  enter- 
prise will  be  marked  by  a  relatively  high  gross  return  per  unit  of 
land  and  by  a  low  return  per  unit  of  labor  and  capital  invested, 
while  large  capitalist  economy  will  be  marked  by  a  low  return 
per  unit  of  land  and  by  a  relatively  high  return  per  unit  ,of  labor 
or  capital  invested.  This  expectation  has  been,  to  some  extent, 
corroborated  by  a  series  of  factual  studies.  Some  of  these  results 
are  presented  here.  Before  presenting  data  from  Professor  V. 
Brdlika's  excellent  studies  concerning  this  relationship  between 
the  type  of  economy  and  the  return  to  the  various  factors  of  pro- 
duction, we  may  say  that  he  defines  gross  return  as  total  return 
minus  all  expenses  of  production  with  the  exception  of  wages 
for  labor,  and  that  the  gross  return  as  thus  defined  is  given  in 
Czech  crowns  per  hectare.  In  the  enterprises  from  2  to  5  hectares 
in  size,  the  gross  return  per  unit  of  land  was  420  crowns  (which 
we  shall  take  as  100  per  cent) ;  from  5  to  20  hectares,  333  crowns 
(79  per  cent) ;  from  20  to  100  hectares,  305  crowns  (73  per  cent) ; 
and  100  and  more  hectares,  265  crowns  (63  per  cent).36 

In  Switzerland  from  1901  to  1921,  according  to  the  studies  of 
Professor  Laur,  the  gross  productivity  of  one  hectare  in  francs 
was  as  follows:  in  farms  of  from  3  to  5  hectares,  1,179;  from  5  to  10 
hectares,  1,007;  from  10  to  15  hectares,  902;  from  15  to  30  hectares, 
826;  from  30  and  more  hectares,  708.9.  These  data  show  that  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  national  income,  of  which  the  wages  of  the 
peasant  or  farmer  comprise  a  part,  the  productiveness  of  the  small 
peasant  or  farm  enterprise  is  greater  than  that  of  the  large  capi- 
talistic enterprise — in  other  words,  the  land  yields  a  greater  re- 
turn. However,  if  the  extra  peasants'  labor  found  a  high  remun- 

86  See  Vladislav  Brdlika's  studies  in  the  Zemed.  Arch.,  for  1919,  1922.  See  also  A, 
Tschelinzeff,  "Land  Reform  in  Czechoslovakia,"  in  Krestianskaia  Rossia  (Russ.),  Prague, 
1924,  Nos.  VTII-IX,  p.  130.  He  means  by  gross  return  all  the  income  per  unit  of 
land,  minus  the  expenses  of  production,  without,  however,  wage  expenses.  Income  in- 
cludes cash  income  plus  the  value  of  the  products  used  at  home  by  the  peasant  family. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  391 

eration  in  industry,  the  national  income  would  be  higher.  Similar 
data  for  1926-1927  are  given  in  the  following  table.87 


SIZE  OF  FARM 

GROSS 
PRODUCTION 

EXPENSES 

GROSS 
(SOCIAL) 

INTEREST 
ON  ACTIVE 

Per  Hectare 

(in  Francs) 

INCOME* 

CAPITAL 

3-5               .    . 
5-10 
10-15  . 

1,611 
.  .       1,250 
1,153 

2,077 
1,541 
1,373 

829 
501 
369 

57 
77 
115 

15-30     .     .     . 
30-70  . 

.       1,034 
964 

1,248 
1,107 

250 
135 

143 
126 

Similar  are  the  data  for  Denmark  ( 1924-1925)  .3 


SIZE  OF  FARM 
IN  HECTARES 

GROSS 
PRODUCTION 

EXPENSES 

GROSS  (SOCIAL) 
INCOME 

Per  Hectare  (in  Crowns) 

Less  than  10    

.       1,428 
888 
848 

1,342 
833 
799 
695 
644 
590 

633 
403 
391 
342 
293 
265 

10-20   
20-30     

30-50 

.     .  .  ,         729 

50-100 

660 

100  and  over  .  . 

591 

The  land  of  the  small  peasant  is  made  to  yield  a  greater  return 
because  of  its  complete  utilization,  the  investment  of  a  greater 
amount  of  labor,  the  more  careful  labor  of  the  small  proprietor 
and  his  family,  the  more  careful  and  proper  use  of  the  means  of 
production,  and  the  more  proper  use  of  the  products  of  the  land. 

Despite  the  fact  that  it  is  more  profitable  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  national  income,  the  small  peasant  or  farmer  enterprise 
gives  a  lower  return  for  each  unit  of  labor  and  capital  invested. 
This  is  shown  by  the  above  tables  and  by  the  data  of  Professor 
Brdlika.39 

37  Statistiche s  Jahrbuch  der  Schtueiz,  1927,  p.  152.  See  also  E,  Laur  and  R.  Konig, 
Mesutes  propres  &  hitter  centre  la  depopulation,  Brougg,  1919,  pp.  115-117.  See  a 
summary  and  analysis  of  the  data  of  the  Swiss  Farm  Bureau  in  Edward  Reich's 
Svycarsf{e  scmedehtvi;  sec  also  V.  Karataicff,  "Peasant  Farming  in  Switzerland ,**  in 
Krestians^ata  Rossia,  Nos.  VIII-IX,  p.  235;  O.  G.  Lloyd  and  L.  G.  Hobson,  Relation 
of  Farm  "Power  and  Farm  Organization  in  Central  Indiana*  Purdue  U.  Agric.  Exper. 
Station  Bull.  No.  332,  1929. 

*  Profit  and  wages  for  members  of  families  and  other  workers. 

**  Statistisk.  Aarbog  (Danish),  1928,  p.  42. 

*°  Krestiansfaia  Rossia,  Nos.  VIII-IX,  p.  131;  No.  VII,  p.  9. 


392 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


No.  OF 

COST  OF 
LABOR 

RETURN  YIELDEI 

>  BY  CAPITAL  Ii 

•JVESTMENT 

SIZE  OF  FARM 
IN  HECTARES 

LABORERS 

PER 

HECTARE 

PER 

HECTARE 
(IN  CROWNS) 

Per  100  Crowns 
of  Labor  Expense 
(in  Crowns) 

Per  Laborer 
(in  Crowns) 

Per  Cent  of 
Net  Return 

2-5     

.     .57 

329 

173 

933 

5-20          .    .. 

.     .27 

226 

205 

1,670 

20-100 

.     .22 

170 

260 

1,891 

100  and  over 

.     .17 

138 

286 

2,400 

Less  than  10 

4.2 

10-20 

6.0 

20-100 

6.1 

These  data,  typical  for  the  results  obtained  by  various  investi- 
gators, show  that  the  theoretical  deductions  from  the  law  of  di- 
minishing returns  are,  to  some  extent,  supported  by  facts.  The 
small  peasant  enterprise  often  absorbs  or  provides  an  application 
for  a  greater  amount  of  labor,  brings  a  higher  gross  return  to  the 
national  income  from  the  same  amount  of  land/0  but  yields  a 
lower  return  per  unit  of  capital  and  labor  invested  than  the  large 
capitalist  enterprise.  From  these  data  it  is  concluded  by  the  above 
investigators  that  if  land  is  scarce  and  if  it  is  impossible  to  find 
employment  in  industry  for  the  surplus  agricultural  population, 
the  small  type  of  farming  is  more  profitable  from  the  three  stand- 
points: of  the  national  income  (a  part  of  which  consists  of  wages), 
the  mitigation  of  unemployment,  and  the  provision  of  the  means 
of  subsistence  for  the  surplus  population.41 

40  This  is  manifested  also  m  the  greater  feeding  power  of  a  unit  of  land  in  small 
enterprises:  m  units  o£  food  1  hectare  yielded  443  food-days  in  the  farms  from  2  to  5 
hectares,  and  230  and  159  days,  respectively,  in  farms  from  5  to  20  and  20  to  50  hec- 
tares. In  crowns,  the  respective  figures  were  200,   104,  73.  Thus  the  unit  of  land  in 
small  enterprises  yields  thrice  greater  feeding  capacity.  These  conclusions  are,  however, 
questioned.  See  in  the  readings  for  this  chapter  the  paper  of  Dr.  M.  Hamisch,  which 
contains  a  criticism  of  Dr.  Laur's  theories. 

41  From  this  standpoint  it  is  comprehensible  that  in  the  densely  populated,  but  not 
industrialized,  Oriental  countries  (China,  India,  Japan,  Korea)  we  have,  as  a  rule,  a  small 
peasant-consumptive  type  of  farming,  but  not  a  large  capitalist  type.  The  first  farm,  with 
its  greater  productiveness  per  unit  of  land,  permits  the  squeezing  of  the   maximum 
means  of  subsistence  from  each  unit  of  land  and  the  maintenance  of  the  maximum 
population,  though  at  the  cost  of  an  enormous  amount  of  labor  invested  in  the  land 
and  consequently  a  very  low  return  per  unit  of  labor.  "Nearly  500,000,000  people  (in 
China,  Japan,   India,   Korea)    are  being  maintained  chiefly  upon   the   products   of   an 
area  smaller  than  the  improved  farm-lands  of  the  United  States,"  says  F.  H.  King, 
Farmers  of  Forty  Centuries,  pp.  17-23.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  yield  per  unit  of 
land  the  agricultural  system  of  those  countries  is  the  most  intensive,  exceeding  not  only 
American  agriculture,  which  is  very  extensive  from  this  standpoint,  but  that  of  almost 
all  European  countries.  "The  average  yield  for  the  wheat  crop  in  the  United  States  is 
15  bushels  per  acre;  but  in  China  it  is  about  25  bushels.  And  besides  this  one  crop  of 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  393 

Under  conditions  where  there  is  an  abundance  of  land,  and  the 
possibility  of  absorbing  the  surplus  population  in  industry  with  a 
better  return  per  unit  of  capital  and  labor,  the  larger  or  capitalistic 
farming  is  preferable.42  And  as  we  shall  see  from  the  readings 
this  peculiarity  of  small  farming  is  indicated  as  one  of  the  reasons 
for  its  successful  competition  with  capitalist  enterprises  in  agricul- 
ture. Other  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  small  and  large  farm 
enterprises  are  ably  discussed  in  the  readings.  Here  we  want  to 
outline  briefly  the  fundamental  results  of  the  American  study 
mentioned.  The  authors  studied  seventy-five  large  farms  with  an 
average  size  of  11,797  acres  and  an  average  capitalization  of 
$553,743.  The  following  quotation  summarizes  their  conclusions 
as  to  the  economic  differences  between  the  small  or  family  farm 
and  the  large  or  capitalistic  farm: 

wheat,  the  Chinese  fields  are  also  used  to  produce  other  crops  sowed  in  between  the 
wheat  crop  before  the  wheat  is  harvested,  thus  gaining  that  much  time  on  the  land. 
Thus  the  crop  and  annual  yield  per  acre  in  China  is  much  larger  than  those  in  the 
United  States,  yet  the  yield  per  man  (per  unit  of  labor)  is  much  smaller  in  China  than 
in  this  country."  Lee,  The  Economic  History  of  China,  pp.  24-25.  See  in  the  readings 
the  paper  of  Prof.  Kawada  about  Japan. 

43  Besides  those  comparative  advantages  and  disadvantages,  each  of  these  forms  has 
many  other  differential  effects  on  the  whole  social  life.  Since  the  capitalist  system  is  in- 
separable from  its  satellites,  tenancy  and  hired  labor,  all  the  important  effects  of  tenancy 
and  hired  labor,  stressed  by  many  investigators,  are  effects  of  the  capitalist  system.  Of 
these  effects,  the  most  important  are:  the  capitalist  system  in  agriculture  facilitates  the 
growth  of  social  antagonisms  and  class  struggle,  and  thus,  social  instability;  it  favors 
a  less  careful  and  more  wasteful  exploitation  of  the  land  because  the  hired  laborer  or 
even  the  tenant  does  not  have  the  same  stimulation  as  the  owner  for  careful  cultivation; 
it  gives  also  a  lesser  incentive  for  the  most  intensive  improvement  of  the  enterprise  and 
its  melioration;  it  often  tends  to  lower  the  standard  of  living  of  the  tenants  and  laborers 
— compared  with  that  of  an  owner — and  hinders  somewhat  their  education  and  mental 
development.  It  weakens  the  spirit  of  a  community  and  the  successful  functioning  of 
the  community  institutions  such  as  the  school,  the  church,  the  farm  organizations,  etc. 
It  also  lowers  the  standard  and  the  efficiency  of  the  political  activities  of  the  agricul- 
turists. It  leads  to  a  weakening  of  the  independence,  initiative,  and  democratic  spirit  of 
the  farm  tenants  and  laborers  compared  with  farmer  owners.  It  changes  their  psycho- 
social  traits,  replacing  thrift,  industriousness,  self-reliance,  initiative,  responsibility,  inde- 
pendence, organizational  talent,  self-respect,  and  so  on,  by  dependence,  servility,  pas- 
sivity, improvidence,  and  similar  traits. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  many  of  these  effects  are  really  connected  with  tenancy  and 
farm  labor,  that  is,  with  capitalism;  however,  there  are  many  exceptions  due  to  rela- 
tively satisfactory  forms  of  tenancy.  See  about  these  aspects  of  the  direct  or  indirect 
satellites  of  capitalism  in  agriculture:  J.  M.  Gillette,  Rural  Sociology,  1928,  chaps,  xii-xiii; 
N.  L.  Sims,  Elements  of  Rural  Sociology,  chaps,  vii,  viii;  C.  C.  Taylor,  Rural  Sociology, 
chap  viii;  G.  A.  Lundquist  and  T.  N,  Carver,  Principles  of  Rural  Sociology,  chaps,  xiii- 
xiv;  R.  T.  Ely  and  C.  T-  Galpin,  "Tenancy  in  an  Ideal  System  of  Landownership," 
The  American  Economic  Review,  Supplement,  1919,  Vol.  IX;  L.  C.  Gray,  C.  L.  Stewart, 
H.  A.  Turner,  J.  T.  Sanders,  and  W.  J.  Spillman,  "Farm  Ownership  and  Tenancy," 
U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook,  1923;  J.  D.  Black,  Agricultural  Reform  in  the  United  States, 
New  York,  1929;  see  also  the  bibliography  at  the  end  of  this  chapter  and  in  the  read- 
ings o£  this  and  the  preceding  chapter,  and  the  works  cited  in  this  introduction. 


394  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Taken  as  a  group,  the  large-scale  farms  apparently  have  been  no 
more,  nor  any  less,  successful  than  the  average  of  the  family-size  farms. 
Furthermore,  there  are  fully  as  great  variations  in  efficiency  among  the 
large  farms  as  have  been  found  in  numerous  surveys  of  family  farms. 
It  appears,  then,  that  mere  incorporation  or  organization  of  farming 
enterprises  on  a  large  scale  will  not  automatically  solve  the  problems  of 
the  agricultural  industry.  In  order  to  secure  greater  net  returns  than  are 
secured  from  the  family  type  of  farming,  large-scale  farms  must  achieve 
an  efficiency  considerably  greater  than  the  average  of  such  farms  now 
in  operation.  From  this  study  it  appears  that  large-scale  farms  may 
have  advantages  over  family  farms  in  superior  management  organiza- 
tion, more  efficient  utilization  of  machinery,  specialization  of  labor, 
buying  and  selling  in  wholesale  quantities,  and,  in  some  instances, 
reduction  of  overhead  expenses.  The  large  farms  also  have  certain  dis- 
advantages. They  experience  difficulty  in  securing  efficient  labor  and 
in  securing  the  degree  of  interest  of  the  laborers  in  the  success  of  the 
business  which  is  found  on  family  farms.  The  seasonal  character  of 
farm  work  and  uncertainties  in  weather  conditions  prevent  as  effective 
use  of  machinery  and  as  complete  division  of  labor  as  is  achieved  in 
some  other  industries  (pp.  1-2). 

These  conclusions  are  especially  significant  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  the  study  considered  only  purely  economic  factors  and  en- 
tirely neglected  its  demographic,  political,  and  socio-economic 
aspects.  The  investigators  compared  large  and  small  farms  only 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  net  income  and  the  amount  of  the 
net  return  on  the  net  investment.  The  large  farms  were  not  supe- 
rior to  the  small  or  family  farms  in  either  respect.  The  net  return 
on  the  net  investment  was  less  than  one  per  cent  in  both  cases. 
The  net  income  of  the  family  farms  was  $793,  while  that  of  the 
large  farms  was  $1,051.  Thus,  if  we  remember  that  the  large  farms 
were  more  than  20  times  as  large  as  the  typical  family  farm,  their 
net  income  was  rather  poor.  Even  when  all  necessary  corrections 
are  made,  the  large  farms  cannot  boast  a  better  income  than  the 
family  farms.  From  a  purely  financial  standpoint  many  of  the 
large  farms  had  only  losses  and  no  net  income.  The  social  and 
economic  advantages  of  large  farms  become  still  less  certain  if 
we  take  into  consideration  the  national  income,  the  gross  pro- 
ductivity per  unit  of  land,  and  the  comparative  number  of  people 
who  can  make  their  living  through  exploitation  of  the  same 
amount  of  land — the  aspects  Dr.  Laur  and  others  stress  so  con- 
spicuously. These  latter  factors  are  especially  important  in  coun- 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  395 

tries  that  do  not  have  abundant  land  resources  and  where  for 
some  reason  the  surplus  rural  population  cannot  find  employment 
in  other  industries  and  occupations. 

For  these  reasons  one  must  agree  with  the  conclusion  of  the 
study,  i.e.,  that  "the  future  development  of  large-scale  farming  in 
the  United  States  is  a  matter  of  conjecture."  It  may  increase  some- 
what or  it  may  not,  but  it  can  scarcely  replace  family  farming  in 
the  United  States.  The  chances  of  such  a  replacement  in  other 
countries  in  which  there  is  a  greater  scarcity  of  land  are  still  in- 
significant. However,  this  same  study  shows  that  a  considerable 
number  of  these  large  farms  have  been  quite  successful  and  have 
had  a  net  income  above  that  of  the  average  family  farm.  Large 
farms  may  be  more  advantageous  than  mediocre  small  farms  un- 
der certain  conditions.  Hence  we  do  not  expect  the  disappearance 
or  the  exclusive  dominance  of  either  type  of  farming  in  the 
future.43 

Subsequent  papers  give  the  development,  details,  and  elabora- 
tion of  the  problems  discussed  in  this  introduction.  The  papers 
by  Poljakow,  Kawada,  See,  Siegfried,  and  Schiff  give  a  survey  of 
the  forms  of  tenancy,  landownership,  large-  and  small-scale  farm- 
ing and  social  stratification  in  China,  Japan,  and  European  coun- 
tries. The  papers  by  Sombart,  Tugan-Baranovsky,  M.  Hainisch, 
and  W.  Schiff  analyze  further  the  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  the  small-  and  the  large-scale  farm  enterprise,  the  chances  for 
survival  of  each  of  these  forms  in  their  mutual  competition,  and 
the  present  and  the  future  situation  in  this  field.  Since  these 
present  the  anti-Marxian  standpoint  on  the  problem  of  land  con- 
centration and  stratification  of  the  rural  population,  they  are  con- 
fronted by  the  papers  of  N.  Lenin  and  J.  Schafir,  which  present 
and  try  to  defend  the  Marxian  standpoint.  The  paper  of  Lenin 
was  selected  because  it  attempts  to  present  the  Marxian  standpoint 
in  its  most  orthodox  form  in  an  application  to  the  American  agri- 
cultural situation.44  The  personality  of  Lenin  and  the  character 

43  See  also  O.  G.  Lloyd  and  L,  G.  Hobson's  study  cited  and  J.  D,  Black's  Agricultural 
Reform  in  the  United  States. 

M  Lenin  tried  to  defend  the  same  views  in  his  analysis  o£  the  Russian  agricultural 
situation  developed  in  his  book  Development  of  Capitalism  in  Russia  and  in  a  series  of 
other,  more  superficial,  papers  reprinted  in  volumes  III  and  IX  of  his  Wor\s.  We 
chose  his  American  paper  because  it  was  later  than  other  similar  works  of  Lenin  and 
because  the  American  data  are  better  known  to  non-Russian  readers  and  for  this  reason 
they  would  be  better  able  to  discover  all  the  faults  in  the  analysis  of  the  leader  of  the 
Communist  Revolution. 


396  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  his  analysis — it  is  not  worse  than  any  other  analyses  made  by 
the  partisans  of  the  Marxian  theory— are  sufficient  to  explain  why 
his  paper  was  chosen.  The  paper  of  J.  Schafir  was  chosen  because, 
besides  presenting  the  Communist  standpoint  on  the  problem,  it 
gives  a  concise  characterization  of  the  agrarian  programs  of  the 
contemporary  socialist  parties,  stresses  the  change  which  these 
programs  underwent  and,  trying  to  defend  the  Marxian  position, 
gives  a  series  of  statistical  data  which,  in  their  totality,  depict  the 
recent  tendencies  in  the  field  and  which,  let  us  say,  speak  rather 
against  the  standpoint  of  the  author.  The  paper  of  M.  Hainisch 
gives  a  criticism  of  Laur's  theories  and  some  data  contrary  to  the 
data  of  Laur  and  other  investigators.  The  paper  of  Dr.  W.  Schiff 
was  given  because  it  gives  in  a  concise  and  excellent  manner  all 
the  principal  changes  in  the  laws  and  economic  reality  in  the  field 
of  agrarian  problems  that  have  taken  place  before  and  after  the 
war.  It  acquaints  the  reader  with  all  the  essentials  of  the  contem- 
porary agrarian  revolution  in  Europe.  The  paper  of  Dr.  Kawada 
supplements  Dr.  Schiff 's  paper  by  depicting  the  situation  in  Japan. 
The  readings  given  in  the  next  two  chapters  are  also  closely 
related  to  the  problems  discussed  in  this  chapter  and  should  be 
consulted.  The  totality  of  these  papers,  together  with  our  intro- 
duction to  this  chapter,  give  the  reader  a  fairly  satisfactory  orien- 
tation in  the  problems  discussed. 

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AEREBOE,  F.,  Agrarpoliti^  (1928). 

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SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  397 

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SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  399 

WANTERS,  A.,  "L'avenir  de  la  petite  propriete*  agricole,"  L'avenir  social 

(April,  1928). 

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For  further  English  and  American  bibliography  see  the  references  in 
George  O'Brien,  Agricultural  Economics  (1928). 

2.  Modern  agrarian  reforms  and  peasant  movements. — A  systematic 
review  of  these  phenomena  from  the  Communist  standpoint  is  given  in 
Agrar-Probleme,  published  in  German  since  1928  by  the  International 
Agrarian  Institute  of  Moscow.  The  following  are  samples  of  the  papers 
published:  G.  Wermenitschew,  "Die  Agrarreform  in  Mittelasien,"  Agrar- 
Probleme,  1928,  I,  58-81;  W.  B,,  "Die  Lage  der  Landwirte  und  der  land- 
wirtschaftlichen  Arbeiter  in  den  englischen  Afrikabesitzungen,"  ibid., 
159-177;  Julio  Mella,  "Die  Bauernbewegung  in  Mexiko,"  ibid.,  213-215; 
A.  Nikolau,  "Der  Bauernaufstand  in  Rumanien,"  ibid.,  215-217;  Abuzjam 
and  Ali-Tarik,  "Die  Agrarfrage  in  Syrien  und  Palastina,"  ibid.,  217-219; 
S.  Timow,  "Die  Agrarfrage  in  Rumanien  vor  und  nach  dem  Kriege," 
ibid.,  324-352;  Banderas,  "Das  Agrargesetz  und  die  Bauernbewegung  in 
Mexiko,"  ibid.,  363-374.  (All  papers  published  in  the  A grar -Problems  view 
the  situation  from  the  Communist  standpoint). 

Another  publication  that  systematically  gives  papers  devoted  to  modern 
agrarian  movements  and  reforms  is  the  "Bulletin  du  Bureau  International 
Agraire  (published  in  Prague,  in  several  languages,  since  1924).  Each  vol- 
ume contains  several  papers  on  this  problem.  As  a  sample  see  N.  Lupu, 
La  panic  paysanne  roumaine,  1926,  I,  3-6;  G.  Volkoff,  "La  reforme  agraire 
en  Bulgarie,"  ibid.,  17-21;  K.  Krofta,  "Le  progres  social  dans  Thistoire  de 
la  classe  paysanne  Tcheque,"  ibid.,  21-30;  Sempronius,  "La  reforme  fon- 
ciere  en  Allemagne,"  ibid.,  30-33;  P.  V.  Kobyzeff,  "La  legislation  des 
Soviets  sur  la  terre  et  ses  resultats  economiques,"  ibid.,  34-48;  H.  Stahli,  "Le 
parti  Bernois  des  citoyens,  agriculteurs  et  artisans,"  ibid,,  1927,  II,  59-68. 
Without  enumerating  a  great  many  similar  papers  given  in  all  the  volumes 
of  the  publication,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  each  copy  contains  much  well- 
founded  description  and  analysis. 

A  third  publication  that  devoted  much  attention  to  these  phenomena 
was  Peasant  Russia  (Krestians\aia  Rossia),  published  in  Russian  in  Prague, 
during  the  years  1923-1926  (about  ten  volumes).  Each  volume  contains 
several  informational  papers  and  many  substantial  analyses  of  the  problems 
discussed.  Similarly,  among  German  journals,  see  the  Agrarpolitische  Rund- 
schau and,  especially,  Berichte  uber  Landwirtschajt  (8  vols.  published),  and, 
in  French,  the  Vie  agraire  et  rurale.  In  the  United  States  of  America,  see 
the  Journal  of  Farm  Economics  and  Rural  America.  In  the  Berichte  uber 
Landwirtschajt  each  of  the  eight  volumes  of  a  new  series  published  since 
1924  contains  many  papers  devoted  to  the  agrarian  situation,  reforms,  and 
movements  of  the  present  time  in  European  and  the  non-European  coun- 
tries, as  well  as  to  several  problems  of  rural  sociology. 

A  detailed  current  bibliography  of  these  topics  is  given  in  a  special  Index 
bibliographique  de  la  question  agraire  and  Yearbook  of  Agrarian  Litera- 


400  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ture,  published  by  the  Soviet  International  Agrarian  Institute  in  Moscow 
since  1927.  Possibly  the  best  bibliographical  compendium  for  Germany  is 
the  Literature  zu  den  Vorlesungen  uber  die  Wandlungen  der  deutschen 
Volfawirtschaft  (Kiel,  1927),  compiled  in  the  Institut  fiir  Weltwirtschaft 
und  Seeverkehr  of  Kiel  University. 
For  special  monographs  and  other  articles  see: 

ANTONIN,  A.,  La  question  agraire  en  Roumanie  (Paris,  1925). 
AUGE-LARIBE,  M.,  L' agriculture  pendant  la  guerre  (Paris,  1927). 

,  Le  paysan  fran^ais  apres  la  guerre  (1927). 

BAADE,  F.,  Entwicl(lungsmdglich^eiten   der  europdischen  Landwirtschajt 

(Berlin,  1927). 
BANNERJEA,  D.  N.,  "Landwirtschaft  in  Indien,"  Berichte  uber  Landwirt- 

schajt,  Vol.  IV,  Heft  3. 
BERGSTRAESSER,    A.,    "Landwirtschaft    und    Agrarkrise    in    Frankreich," 

Schmollers  Jahrbuch  (1928),  Vol.  LII. 

BLACK,  JOHN  D.,  Agricultural  Reform  in  the  United  States  (1929). 
BOLSHAKOFF,  A.  M.,  Soviet  Village  for  the  Years  1917-1924  (Russ.)  (Lenin- 
grad, 1924). 

BOUROFF,  J.,  Village  on  the  Crossroad  (Russ.)  (1926). 
BOYLE,  JAMES,  Farm-Relief  (New  York,  1928). 
BRUTZKUS,  B.,  Agrarentwicfyung  und  A grarr evolution  in  Russland  (Berlin, 

1924). 

BURGESS,  EUGENE,  La  "Non-Partisan  League"  (Paris,  1928). 
CARR,  LEWIS  F.,  America  Challenged  (1929). 
Committee  on  Land  Settlement  in  Scotland,  Report  (1928). 
DAMASCHKE,  Bodenrejorm  (Jena,  1923). 
DAMPIER-WHETHAM,  C.,  Politics  and  the  Land,  Cambridge  University 

Press. 
DANIEL,  A.,  "Das  Vordringen  der  Agrardemocratie  in  Europa  und  die 

Lage  des  Grossgrundbesitzes  in  Ungarn,"  Archiv  f.  Sozialwissenschajt 

(1929),  Band  LXII,  Heft  3. 

DECARIS,  A.,  Die  Agrarjrage  Dalmatiens  (Leipzig,  1928). 
Deutsche  Bauerntum  (Berlin,  1928-1929),  4  volumes  devoted  to  discussions 

of  important  problems  of  rural  sociology  by  various  authors. 
EVANS,  IFOR  L.,  The  Agrarian  Revolution  in  Roumaniat  Cambridge  Uni- 
versity Press. 
FINES,  N.,  Labor  and  Farmer  Parties  in  the  United  States  (New  York, 

1928). 
FRANCES,  O.,  "La  reforme  agraire  dans  les  pays  du  sud-est  de  1'Europe 

(Hongrie,  Roumanie,  Bulgarie,  Albanie,  Grece),"  Societe  beige  d'etudes 

et  dr expansion  (February,  1928). 
GAISTER,  A.,  Agriculture  of  Capitalistic  Russia  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1928). 

,  Differentiation  of  the  Soviet  Village  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1928). 

,  Achievements   and   Difficulties   of    Collectivization    of   Farms 

(Russ.)  (Moscow,  1929). 
GARGAS,  SIGISMUND,  Die  Grune  Internationale  (Halberstadt,  1927). 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  401 

GORDEEF,  G.  S.,  Agriculture  in   War  and  Revolution  (Russ.)   (Moscow, 

1925). 
GREEN,  F.  E.,  A  History  of  the  English  Agricultural  Laborer,  1870-1920 

(London,  1927). 
Handbuch  der  Landwirtschaft,  edited  by  F.  Aereboe,  J.  Hansen,  and  Th. 

Roemer  (Berlin,  1928),  5  vols. 
HOLLMAN,  A.  H.,  "Die  Agrarreform  in  Rumanien,"  Berichte  uber  Land- 

mrtschajt,  Vol.  I,  Heft  1. 

IVSCHITSCH,  MILAN,  Les  problemes  agraires  en  Jugoslavie  (Paris,  1926). 
JAKOVLEFF,  }.,  Village,  As  It  Is  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1923). 
JESSEN,  JENS,  "Das  Agrarproblem  in  Argentina,"  Jahrbuch  /.  Nationalofyn. 

und  Statisti^  (July,  1928). 
JONKHART,  L.,  Die  EntwicJ^lung  der  niederlandische  Landwirtschaft  sell 

der  Agrar\rise  der  1870er  Jahre  bis  zum  Ausbriiche  der  Welikrieges 

(Zurich,  1927). 

KOUBANIN,  M.,  Splitting  of  the  Peasant  Farms  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1929). 
LANDMANN,  J.,  Die  Agrarpolitik  der  schweizerischen  Industriestaaten  (lena, 

1928). 

LARIN,  J.,  Soviet  Village  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1925). 

MENDIETA  Y  NUNEZ,  L.,  El  problema  agrario  en  Mexico  (Mexico,  1926). 
METZGER,  "Zur  Landfrage  in  Finnland,"  Berichte  uber  Landwirtschajt, 

Vol.  I,  Heft.  L 
MICHAEL,   L.   G.,  Agricultural  Survey    of  Europe.    The  Danube   Basin 

(U.  S.  D.  A.,  Washington,  1924  and  1929),  Parts  MI. 
MILIUTIN,  V.  P.  (editor),  Agrarian  Revolution  (Russ.)   (Moscow,  1927- 

1928),  2  vols. 

,  Agrarian  Policy  of  the  U.  S.  S.  R.  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1929). 

PASVOLSKY,  L.,  Economic  Nationalism  of  the  Danubian  States  (New  York, 

1928). 
PHIPPS,  HELEN,  "The  Agrarian  Phase  of  the  Mexican  Revolution,"  Political 

Science  Quarterly  (1924). 
RADUCANO,  T.,  "Les  consequences  de  la  reforme  agraire  en  Roumanie," 

Revue  economique  Internationale  (January,  1928). 
RETINGER,  J.  H.,  Tierro  Mexicana  (London,  192"8). 
ROSE,  ADAM,  Le  probleme  agraire  en  Pologne  (Varsovie,  1926). 
Royal  Commission  on  Agriculture  in  India,  Report  (London  and  Simla, 

H.  M.  S.  O.,  1928). 
SCHMIDT,  "Die  Landwirtschaft  in  Polen,"  Berichte  uber  Landwirtschajt, 

Vol.  VIII,  Heft  1-2. 

SELIGMAN,  E.  R.  A.,  Economics  of  Farm  Relief  (1929),  Columbia  Univer- 
sity Press. 
SERING,  M.,  "Die  Umwalzung  der  osteuropaischen  Agrarverfassung,"  Ar- 

chiv  fur  inner  Kolonization  (1921),  Vol.  XIII. 
SERPIERI,  A.,  "Le  classi  rurali  nello  stato  corporative,"  Vita  nuova  (1928), 

.  Vol.  IV. 

STERN,  W.,  Die  Agrarreform  der  RepubliJ^  Polen  (Krakau,  1927). 
TAN-BOGORAS,  B.,  Revolution  in  the  Village  (Russ.)  (Leningrad,  1924). 


402  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

TANNENBAUM,  F.}  Agrarian  Revolution  in  Mexico  (New  York,  1929). 

TEXTOR,  L.  E.,  Land  Reform  in  Czechoslovakia  (London,  1923). 

THOMSON,  HANS,  Die  Verteilung  des  landwirtschajtlichen  Grundbesitzes  in 
Sudajrify  (Jena,  1927). 

VOSSBERG,  G.  H.,  "Die  Agrarreform  in  Polen,"  Preussische  Jahrbticher 
(December,  1927). 

WESTERMANN,  W.  L.,  "Egyptian  Agricultural  Labor  under  Ptolomy  Phila- 
delphus,"  Agricultural  History  (July,  1927),  Vol.  I. 

WILLY-RUMER,  Die  Agrarreformen  der  Donau-Staaten  (1917-1926)  (Inns- 
bruck, 1928). 

52.  ANDRE  SIEGFRIED:  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  REGIME  OF  LANDED 
PROPERTY  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  POLITICAL  OPINION* 

The  general  problem. — Landed  property  always  exerts  considerable 
if  not  decisive  influence  on  the  formation  of  political  opinion.  This  in- 
fluence, where  found,  tends  to  diminish  or  destroy  the  material  and 
moral  liberty  of  the  elector  in  so  far  as  it  creates  the  exceptional  inde- 
pendence of  a  social  landed  class  or  accentuates  the  dependence  of  the 
non-landed  on  other  classes.  Since  the  regime  of  property  in  a  given 
society  indicates  the  general  type  of  the  social  structure,  it  enables  us  to 
comprehend  the  characteristics,  temperament,  and  tendencies  of  a  so- 
ciety. We  will  first  consider  the  influence  of  small  holdings,  then  of 
large  holdings,  and  last,  that  of  the  average  and  intermediate  types.  In 
our  conclusion  we  will  then  be  able  to  determine  the  role  of  the  factor 
of  property  in  the  political  evolution  of  western  France. 

Influence  of  small  properties. — Property  is  the  most  solid  foundation 
of  political  liberty,  and  wealth  is,  in  a  general  way,  synonymous  with 
independence.  Among  the  peasant  people  particularly,  the  owner  alone, 
in  so  far  as  he  possesses  a  relatively  high  standard  of  living,  enjoys 
complete  political  liberty.  In  contrast  to  the  tenant,  who  incessantly 
fears  the  displeasure  of  his  landlord,  the  small  cultivator  living  mod- 
erately on  his  own  property  demands  nothing  of  anyone  and  is  little 
influenced  by  pressure.  When  the  time  arrives  for  him  to  cast  his  vote, 
he  is  able  to  do  so  without  injuring  his  essential  interests:  he  is  a  citizen 
in  full,  effective  possession  of  his  rights.  This  rule  does  not  always 
automatically  apply  to  all  proprietors.  In  order  that  they  may  be  truly 
independent  it  is  necessary  that  their  production  be  sufficient  to  main- 
tain them  and  enable  them  to  balance  their  budget,  otherwise  they 
are  obliged  to  hire  out  as  day  laborers  or  even  become  recipients  of 
relief,  and  thus  relapse  into  a  semisubjection.  I  will  make  an  analo- 

*  From  Andre  Siegfried,  Tableau  politique  de  la  Trance  de  V Quest  sous  la  troiiiemc 
republique,  Librairie  Armand  Colin,  Paris,  1913,  pp.  370-379.  Translated  and  printed 
with  the  permission  o£  the  publisher. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  403 

gous  observation  regarding  the  mill  worker  who  possesses  a  field.  At 
first  glance  it  would  appear  that  this  possession  would  give  him  the 
independence  he  deserves,  but  it  serves  rather  to  bind  him  to  his 
patron,  for  the  worker  is  bound  to  the  soil  and  it  is  practically  impos- 
sible for  him  to  seek  other  work.  Therefore,  it  is  the  full  cultivator- 
proprietor  especially  who  will  achieve  full  political  liberty. 

At  this  point  we  must  beware  of  drawing  conclusions  from  indi- 
vidual cases.  In  order  that  economic  liberty  may  create  a  corresponding 
sentiment  of  political  liberty,  it  is  necessary  that  a  certain  collective 
atmosphere  prevail.  A  small,  isolated  proprietor  among  a  group  of 
tenants  or  day  laborers  will  not  at  all  necessarily  be  a  spirited  citizen, 
immune  to  influence.  This  is  frequently  observed  in  French  Brittany, 
where  the  small  and  great  owners  are  almost  everywhere  in  unanimity. 
At  the  same  time  it  may  occur  that  an  isolated  tenant  in  the  midst  of 
free  proprietors  may  be  as  free  in  spirit  as  they.  It  is  important  to  know 
if  the  social  structure  of  the  group  is  equalitarian  or  hierarchical.  If  the 
mass  of  the  people  feel  perpetually  under  the  hand  of  those  upon 
whom  they  are  directly  or  indirectly  dependent,  it  is  very  evident  that 
it  will  be  difficult  for  them  to  attain  political  liberty,  and  they  will  fre- 
quently lose  it  entirely.  But  if,  on  the  contrary,  the  foundation  of  a 
population  is  composed  of  independent  and  equal  people,  a  democratic 
spirit  will  almost  inevitably  develop  between  them.  Almost  certain 
proof  of  this  lies  in  the  fact  that  an  equalitarian  society  habitually 
selects  for  the  mayoralty,  not  the  nobles  nor  bourgeoisie,  but  the 
peasants. 

The  political  reverberations  of  a  regime  of  small  owners  is  naturally 
deduced  from  the  preceding.  It  is,  without  exception,  a  rule  that 
regions  of  small  holdings — at  any  rate  when  they  are  not  the  clergy—- 
are associated  with  the  principles  and  the  work  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion (the  Republic)  and  irrevocably  hostile  to  the  Ancient  Regime 
(the  Empire).  The  Royalists  have  no  strength  there;  these  regions  be- 
long to  the  Republican-Democratics  or  Bonapartists. 

The  republican  regions  (I  should  say  republican  in  principles)  are 
those  of  small  rather  than  of  average  holdings,  and  the  property  there 
produces  political  effects  of  independence  much  more  than  social  ef- 
fects of  conservatism.  This  is  observed  even  in  regions  where  the  com- 
forts of  life  are  not  numerous,  or,  in  other  words,  where  the  small 
proprietors  are  relatively  poor.  As  a  result,  we  have  a  political  type  that 
is  clearly  defined:  equalitarian  people,  jealous  of  the  nobility  and  gen- 
erally anticlerical,  but  at  the  same  time  hostile  to  all  new  revolutions. 
The  common  formula,  "Neither  reaction  nor  revolution,"  upon  which 
the  Republic  lived  for  forty  years,  well  summarizes  the  tendencies  of 


404  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  French  peasants  when  considered  in  their  totality  and  applies  ex- 
actly to  their  idea  of  the  state. 

The  small  holding  creates,  therefore,  from  a  political  point  of  view 
a  democratic  atmosphere,  but  from  the  social  point  of  view  its  effects 
are  more  complex  and  rather  different.  In  a  general  way  it  produces 
independence  and  at  the  same  time  tends  to  make  the  individual  con- 
servative, because  it  is  necessary  that  the  whole  group  are  jointly  and 
severally  liable  for  the  existence  of  the  social  order.  The  peasant- 
proprietors  who  are  enemies  of  reaction  are  likewise  enemies  of  revolu- 
tion. Property  is,  therefore,  a  balancing  element  in  the  social  equi- 
librium. 

This  evolution  toward  a  sort  of  social  conservatism,  which  still  is 
often  ignored,  is  much  more  vital  than  one  would  be  tempted  to  be- 
lieve. It  suffices  the  French  peasant  to  possess  a  few  acres  and  thence 
to  become  primarily  interested  in  the  care  and  the  enlargement  of 
them.  Thus  he  becomes  very  easily  a  partisan  of  a  strong  government 
that  maintains  order  and  tradition  and  guarantees  him  the  conserva- 
tion of  his  possessions.  When  there  are  menaces  of  social  revolution  in 
the  air,  such  revolution  is  little  in  favor  with  the  peasants  we  have 
been  describing.  Rather,  we  see  the  origin  of  the  Bonapartistic  idea, 
which,  in  the  country,  is  essentially  an  idea  of  peasant  well-being, 
equalitarian,  neither  reactionary  nor  clerical,  but  above  all  conservative. 

The  political  and  social  influence  of  the  small  proprietor  would  be 
very  clearly  marked  and  homogeneous  if  there  existed  no  cases  where 
its  effects  were  completely  annulled.  When  a  population  of  small 
owners  is  clerical,  it  becomes  neither  radical,  Bonapartist,  nor  con- 
servative, but  it  remains  altogether  clerical,  and  the  people  follow  the 
advice  of  the  priest.  It  is  evident  that  the  social  factors  resulting  from 
the  landed  regime  can  be  reduced  to  nothing  or  almost  nothing  by 
moral  factors  more  powerful.  Take  for  instance  Cornouaille  and  Leon, 
the  two  analogous  regions  of  average  small  holdings.  Cornouaille  is 
rather  anticlerical  and  was  the  birthplace  of  the  Republic  in  Brittany. 
However,  in  Leon,  this  theocracy  never  accepted  the  republican  idea 
of  government.  Similar  observations  might  be  made  for  Breton  Marais 
(Vendee),  wh'ere  the  land  was  parcelled  out,  but  the  people  were 
Catholic.  They  resisted  the  civil  authority  so  much  that  the  Marais 
Poitou,  which  had  Bonapartist  tendencies,  has  passed  very  quickly 
from  its  Bonapartism  of  yesterday  to  a  definite  radicalism  today. 

But  this  important  exception  being  made,  we  are  able  to  maintain 
as  a  general  rule  that  the  parcelling  of  the  land  carries  with  it  a  pro- 
found transformation  of  interests,  of  temperament,  and  of  political 
and  social  conceptions.  Everywhere,  where  the  soil  is  divided,  the 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  405 

atmosphere  of  the  Ancient  Regime  disappears,  permitting  free  expres- 
sion to  that  of  the  French  Revolution  (the  Republic). 

Influence  of  large  properties. — While  small  holdings  create  inde- 
pendence and  equality,  the  great  holdings  tend  to  fashion  hierarchical 
societies  where  the  classes  who  do  not  possess  the  land  are  dependent 
upon  those  who  do.  Here  one  may  perceive  a  remote  reflection  of 
feudalism.  However,  this  general  proposition,  which  should  be  con- 
sidered true  in  its  entirety,  has  numerous  defects  and  must  be  modified 
because  of  two  supplementary  factors  that  are  never  absent  from  the 
situation.  These  are  the  regimes  of  cultivation  and  of  residence  and 
that  of  the  absenteeism  of  proprietors.  It  is  the  study  of  the  multiple 
combinations  of  these  three  factors  (landed  regime,  cultivation,  resi- 
dence) that  will  alone  permit  us  to  determine  with  some  precision  the 
political  effects  of  large  holdings. 

We  will  first  examine  the  cases  where  the  domination  of  the  land- 
lord is  developed  to  the  maximum  degree.  This  occurs  when  the  great 
estates  coincide  with  the  small  cultivation  by  tenants  or  laborers  and 
when  the  proprietor  resides  on  his  land.  The  union  of  these  three  con- 
ditions is  irresistible.  One  may  very  well  comprehend  that  the  situation 
may  be  thus:  the  richer  the  landlord,  the  more  modest  the  tenant,  the 
greater  the  differences  between  them,  the  greater  will  be  the  authority 
of  the  former  over  the  latter.  It  frequently  happens  in  the  West  that 
the  same  person  possesses  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  farms.  At  the  time  of 
the  renewal  of  leases  (especially  in  periods  of  prosperity),  this  signifies 
ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  peasants  who  are  anxiously  waiting  to  ascertain 
if  they  will  retain  their  farms.  This  also  signifies  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty 
voters  who  dare  not  put  forth  an  opinion  capable  of  displeasing  the 
landlord.  I  do  not  exaggerate  in  saying  that,  in  a  great  number  of 
cases,  this  will  be  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  clients  who  will  seek  a  word 
of  order  from  the  landlord,  or  at  least  who  will  receive  it.  Popular  lan- 
guage reflects  this  dependency.  In  speaking  of  his  farmers,  the  Vendeau 
noble  says,  "My  boys";  in  Lannion  one  speaks  of  them  as  "subjects"  of 
such  or  such  a  "Monsieur";  in  all  the  territory  of  the  West  the  peasant 
calls  his  proprietor  "our  master";  and  in  rural  Anjou  one  hears  like- 
wise this  altogether  feudal  expression,  "I  am  of  the  subjection  of 
Mr.  X.  or  Y." 

It  is  true  that  the  authority  of  the  proprietor  singularly  diminishes 
when  he  is  not  a  resident.  He  is  then  no  longer  in  his  commune  and 
becomes  somewhat  of  an  outsider.  In  such  cases  his  rather  unexpected 
interventions  lose  much  of  their  efficacy.  But  if  he  resides  all  year  upon 
his  land,  as  do  the  majority  of  the  nobles  of  the  West,  he  is  truly  rural 
in  tastes,  habits,  and  temperament,  and  he  naturally  occupies  a  pre- 
ponderant position  in  the  political  sphere.  It  is  very  important  in  this 


406  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

respect  to  observe  whether  the  large  landlords  are  noble  or  bourgeois. 
The  bourgeoisie  are  much  more  apt  to  be  absentee  owners,  and  the 
nobles  are  much  more  active  in  politics,  effectively  placing  the  peasants 
under  constant  surveillance.  This  supervision  is  reinforced  further 
when  the  farmer  is  replaced  by  the  metayer  (cropper),  for  the  lessor 
who  holds  the  contract  of  metayage  (a  holding  the  rent  of  which  con- 
sists of  giving  half  or  more  of  the  produce  to  the  landowner)  also  has 
the  right  of  unceasing  penetration  upon  the  estate,  and  of  mixing  into 
the  most  trivial  acts  of  the  cultivator.  ...  In  the  West  the  metayage 
is  the  form  of  cultivation  that  invokes  the  greatest  amount  of  social 
and  political  dependency  of  the  cultivator. 

At  the  beginning  I  have  pointed  out  the  necessity  of  guarding 
against  the  formulation  of  too  simple  generalizations.  We  are  going  to 
consider  what  occurs  when  cultivation  on  a  large  scale  coincides  with 
large  holdings  of  property  (large  farms  with  large-scale  tenants). 
Under  these  conditions  an  entirely  new  social  and  political  atmosphere 
is  created.  In  the  first  place  the  electoral  dependence  is  diminished 
,  until  at  times  it  entirely  disappears  or,  in  other  words,  the  large  tenant 
of  fifty  or  one  hundred  hectares  of  land  considers  himself  an  equal  of 
his  proprietor.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  then,  as  before,  of  a  "master" 
and  of  "his  farmer,"  but  rather  of  a  capitalist  and  an  entrepreneur  of 
agriculture,  that  is  to  say,  two  bourgeois,  who  in  the  political  struggle 
are  generally  "on  the  same  side  of  the  barricade." 

In  my  opinion  it  is  necessary  to  extend  the  problem  in  a  measure  and 
to  consider  the  status  of  the  authority  o£  the  master  upon  the  day 
laborers  on  the  farms  operated  on  a  large  scale.  But  we  must  not  be 
misled.  The  relations  between  employers  and  employes  are  not  identi- 
cal with  those  between  noble  and  metayer  that  we  have  just  discussed 
for  the  West.  If  the  patron  employs  many  workers — and  this  is  the  case 
in  almost  all  centralized  agricultural  enterprises — he  can  no  doubt  sub- 
mit them  to  a  very  strong  material  discipline,  very  military,  but  the 
political  and  moral  influence  he  will  be  able  to  exert  upon  them  will 
always  remain  inferior  to  the  quasi-patriarchal  influence  of  an  Angevin 
noble  on  his  metayer.  He  will  have  to  deal,  at  least  during  the  harvest, 
with  a  group  of  individuals  often  unknown  to  him,  artificially  concen- 
trated at  a  given  point,  and  so  aware  of  these  conditions  that  they  are 
able  to  align  themselves  collectively  against  him.  These  circumstances 
are  no  longer  truly  or  traditionally  rural.  They  rather  resemble,  when 
the  culture  is  industrialized,  that  of  the  industrial  worker.  Similar  to 
the  workers  of  the  great  industries,  and  for  the  same  reasons,  these 
agricultural  workers  are  susceptible  to  either  an  agrarian  socialism 
or  a  demagogy  of  a  nationalistic  character. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  407 

The  political  effects  of  large  holdings  may  be  summarized  by  the 
following  double  conclusion:  coexistent  with  small-scale  operation,  it 
tends  to  maintain  the  supremacy  of  social  authorities,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence an  atmosphere  of  hierarchy;  but  combined  with  large-scale 
operation,  it  does  not  provoke  the  same  dependency  of  the  cultivators 
on  their  proprietors,  and  at  the  same  time  there  is  a  risk  that  an  • 
agrarian  proletariat  may  arise  that  may  become  a  dangerous  enemy  of 
the  proprietor.  The  second  alternative  is  clearly  observed  in  the  West, 
but  the  former  is  the  rule.  More  than  anything  else  this  political  hier- 
archy gives  this  part  of  France  its  political  personality. 

Intermediate  types  of  property. — So  far  we  have  been  considering 
only  very  definite  types  of  property,  and  we  are  able  to  ascertain  that 
these  types  tend  to  create  equally  definite  types  of  political  societies. 
But  the  phenomena  are  not  always  so  simple,  and  intermediate  types 
are  extensively  found  in  the  West.  We  must,  therefore,  consider  them, 
but  one  may  guess  that  as  a  result  of  the  relative  uncertainty  of  their 
pattern,  the  reverberations  that  originate  with  them  will  be  infinitely 
less  clear  and  especially  less  decisive.  It  is  in  effect  in  this  sphere  of 
transition  that  other  factors  of  political  opinion,  and  notably  the  some- 
what deceptive  factor  of  personal  influence,  tend  to  occupy  a  pre- 
ponderant place. 

Is  it  necessary  to  speak  of  the  average  property  as  a  special  type? 
I  hesitate  to  do  so,  thinking  that  it  might  rather  be  considered  as 
a  continuation  of  the  small  property  type.  Especially  when  encoun- 
tered in  the  West,  it  corresponds  to  a  class  of  fairly  large  cultiva- 
tors, proprietors  of  their  cultivation,  but  managing  it  themselves  and 
hardly  ever  renting  it  out  to  others.  Practically  it  is,  in  totality,  a  form 
of  peasant  property.  This  is  the  case  in  Cornouaille,  Leon,  Breton, 
Marais,  Auge,  Bessin,  and  Cotentin,  In  all  of  these  regions,  with  the 
exception  of  the  clericals,  it  is  observed  that  the  average  proprietors 
emphasize  conservatism.  They  are  independent,  moderate,  willing  re- 
publicans, but  not  reformers,  and  never  partisans  of  the  Ancient  Re- 
gime. None  the  less  they  are  adversaries  of  all  democratic  orientation 
that  is  a  trifle  advanced.  In  saying  that  the  Lower-Normandy  spirit 
very  well  represents  that  of  the  average  proprietor,  one  has  mentioned 
the  essentials  of  the  subject. 

The  situation  is  more  uncertain  in  the  groups  where  the  different 
kinds  of  property  are  coexistent.  Here,  particularly,  it  is  necessary  to 
recall  that  the  political  reverberations  of  the  landed  regimes  are  col- 
lective, not  individual.  We  must  not  imagine  that  in  a  mixed  region 
the  proprietors  will  all  be  free  and  the  tenants  all  dependent.  No! 
There  will  develop,  rather,  a  general  spirit  where  the  dominant  tend- 
ency will  absorb  the  other.  Occasionally  the  presence  of  some  landed 


408  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

seignors,  especially  if  they  are  nobles,  will  be  sufficient  to  give  the 
group  a  particular  atmosphere  of  dependency  in  political  opinion 
rather  than  of  liberty.  At  other  times,  on  the  contrary,  a  united  resist- 
ance of  small  tenants  and  of  small  landholders  will  develop  a  powerful 
influence.  Many  examples  establish  the  fact  that  instability  and  political 
incoherence  are  a  direct  result  of  the  indefiniteness  of  the  landed 
regime. 

53.  S.  KAWADA:  THE  TENANTRY  SYSTEM  AND  MOVEMENT 
IN  JAPAN* 

The  structure  of  Japanese  agriculture. — People  who  are  acquainted 
with  the  conditions  of  Japanese  agriculture  know  that  small  farming 
prevails,  and  that  large  farming  represents  a  very  rare  exception.  The 
very  small  size  of  the  farms,  the  so-called  pygmean  agriculture,  pre- 
sents a  great  obstacle  to  the  development  of  agriculture  in  Japan.  The 
most  intensive  cultivation,  often  of  a  grade  of  intensity  absolutely  un- 
known to  western  countries,  is  the  outstanding  characteristic  of 
Japanese  agriculture. 

The  publications  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  and  Commerce 
give  the  following  data  concerning  the  average  acreage  per  household 
by  years  from  1910  to  1920,  based  on  the  total  amount  of  land  culti- 
vated. 


RICE 

(TAN)f 

DRY  PLOUGHLAND 
(TAN) 

TOTAL 
(CHO) 

1912 

5.32 

5.22 

1.054 

1913 

5.34 

5.25 

1.059 

1914 

5.35 

5.27 

1.062 

1915 

5.37 

5.33 

1.070 

1916 

5.39 

5.36 

1.075 

1917 

5.41 

5.43 

1.084 

1918 

5.41 

5.52 

1.093 

1919 

5.44 

5.58 

1.103 

1920 

5.46 

5.59 

1.105 

The  following  table  gives,  in  percentages,  the  ratio  of  farms  of  speci- 
fied sizes  (in  tan)  to  the  total  number  of  agricultural  enterprises  dur- 
ing the  period  from  1910  to  1920. 

From  S.  Kawada,  "Die  Pachterbewegung  in  Japan,"  Archiv  f.  Sozialwissenschajt 
fiber  Sozialpolitik,  1925,  LIV,  424-445.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  o£  the  author. 
1 1  tan=0.245  acres,  1  cho=2.450  acres,  and  10  tan=l  cho. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  409 


UNDER 
5  TAN 

5TAN- 

ICno 

1-2  CHO 

2-3  CHO 

3-5  CHO  OVER  5  CHO 

TOTAL 

1910 

37.5 

33.0 

19.3 

6.0 

2.9 

1.3 

100 

1911 

37.1 

33.1 

19.7 

6.0 

2.9 

1.2 

100 

1912 

37.1 

33.3 

19.6 

6.0 

2.8 

1.2 

100 

1913 

36.8 

33.4 

19.8 

6.0 

2.8 

1.2 

100 

1914 

36.6 

33.4 

19.9 

6.1 

2.7 

1.2 

'  100 

1915 

36.5 

33.4 

20.0 

6.1 

2.7 

1.3 

100 

1916 

36.4 

33.3 

20.2 

6.1 

2.7 

1.3 

100 

1917 

36.1 

33.3 

20.4 

6.1 

2.7 

1.3 

100 

1918 

35.8 

33.2 

20.6 

6.3 

2.8 

1.3 

100 

1919 

35.7 

33.1 

20.5 

6.1 

2.8 

1.7 

100 

1920 

35.6 

33.2 

20.5 

6.2 

2.8 

1,7 

100 

These  two  tables  enable  one  to  see  clearly  the  very  small  size  of 
Japanese  agricultural  enterprises.  This  conclusion  remains  valid  not- 
withstanding the  fact,  shown  in  the  second  table,  that  there  was  a 
gradual  decrease  in  the  percentage  -  of  all  farms  under  5  tan  and  a 
gradual  increase  in  the  percentage  of  all  farms  over  5  tan.  However, 
these  increases  and  decreases  are  very  insignificant. 

An  analysis  of  the  degree  of  concentration  of  land  property  leads 
indirectly  to  somewhat  similar  conclusions.  The  concentration  of  land 
property  does  not  always  parallel  the  size  of  the  farm  enterprise,  for 
large  estate  owners  may  lease  their  land  in  small  lots  to  tenants.  The 
result  of  such  a  situation  would  be  the  simultaneous  existence  of  small 
farms  and  large.  However,  in  a  country  where  the  greater  part  of  the 
land  is  owned  by  the  peasants,  small-scale  farming  always  prevails  and 
the  above  concentration  of  land  does  not  take  place. 

According  to  the  official  statistics  of  land  property,  the  average  size 
of  the  estates  in  1908  was  11.43  cho;  in  1913,  11.82  cho;  and  in  1918, 
12.37  cho. 

In  the  official  statistics  there  is  also  a  comparison  of  the  number  of 
landowners  possessing  property  of  various  sizes  with  the  total  number 
of  agricultural  enterprises.  The  size  of  about  two-thirds  of  all  the  enter- 
prises is  less  than  one  cho.  These  data  also  indicate  that  small-scale 
farming  is  typical  for  Japan. 

Let  us  glance  at  the  composition  of  the  population  engaged  in  small 
agricultural  enterprises.  Three  different  groups  are  to  be  distinguished: 
(1)  peasant  owners,  (2)  small  tenants,  (3)  peasant  owners  who  are 
also  tenants. 

The  following  figures  show  the  proportion  of  each  of  these  groups 
the  total  number  of  agricultural  households: 


410  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


PEASANT  OWNERS 

SMALL  TENANT 

OWNER  AND 
TENANT 

TOTAL 

1910 

33.4 

27.4 

39.2 

100 

1911 

33.1 

27.4 

39.5 

100 

1912 

33.0 

27.3 

39.7 

100 

1913 

32.7 

27.6 

39.7 

100 

1914 

32.4 

27.6 

40.0 

100 

1915 

32.1 

27.7 

40.2 

100 

1916 

31.7 

27.6 

40.7 

100 

1917 

31.6 

27.8 

40.6 

100 

1918 

31.6 

28.0 

40.4 

100 

1919 

31.6 

27.9 

40.5 

100 

1920 

31.3 

28.1 

40.6 

100 

From  the  above  table  it  is  possible  to  conclude  that  an  increase  of 
small  tenantry  and  a  decrease  of  peasant  ownership  are  recent  tenden- 
cies in  Japanese  agriculture. 

The  following  table  shows  the  relative  proportions  of  the  total 
amount  of  land  of  various  types  cultivated  by  the  owners  and  by 
tenants: 

PERCENTAGE  OF  LAND  CULTIVATED        PERCENTAGE  OF  LAND  CULTIVATED 
BY  OWNERS  BY  TENANTS 


Under  Rice          Dry  Ploughland        Under  Rice          Dry  Ploughland 


1908 

50.01 

59.61 

49.99 

40.39 

1913 

49.02 

60.22 

20.98 

39.78 

1918 

48.43 

59.37 

51.57 

40.63 

1921 

48.38 

59.07 

51.62 

40.93 

This  table  enables  us  to  conclude  that  from  1908  to  1921  the  amount 
of  land  cultivated  by  tenants  increased  slightly  while  that  cultivated 
by  owners  decreased. 

The  above  analysis  gives  some  idea  about  certain  peculiarities  of 
contemporary  Japanese  agriculture.  These  are  briefly  summarized  as 
follows:  (1)  Small  farming  dominates  over  large  farming.  (2)  Small 
farming  is  done  in  a  great  many  cases  by  tenants,  whose  number  is 
increasing  at  the  same  time  that  the  number  of  peasant  owners  is  de- 
creasing. Thus,  from  economic  and  sociological  viewpoints  it  is  com- 
prehensible that  the  movement  of  tenantry  in  Japan  is  beginning  to 
occupy  a  prominent  place. 

Compared  with  the  fundamental  tenantry  systems  of  western  coun- 
tries, the  tenantry  system  of  Japan  has  several  peculiarities.  In  the  first 
place,  the  land  in  Japan  is  divided  into  small  holdings  and  is  leased  in 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  411 

small  lots  to  tenants.  Large  estates,  like  those  of  England  and  other 
countries,  do  not  exist  in  Japan.  .  .  .  The  most  common  and  general 
form  of  tenancy  is  land-renting  for  a  definite  length  of  time.  But  this 
form  has  some  peculiarities  that  distinguish  it  from  similar  systems  in 
the  West.  In  the  western  countries  the  tenant  is  obliged  to  pay  the 
stipulated  yearly  rent  regardless  of  whether  the  crop  is  good  or  bad. 
In  Japan  the  proprietor  can  claim  the  full  stipulated  rent  only  when  the 
crop  is  good;  if  it  is  bad  he  can  claim  only  a  part  of  the  rent  agreed 
upon.  This  custom,  styled  Kebifyi  is  quite  common  and  regularly  prac- 
ticed. It  is  based  partly  on  an  old  tradition,  partly  on  numerous  prece- 
dents in  tenancy  contracts.  ...  It  is  not  a  juridical  prescription  but 
a  manifestation  of  the  good  will  of  the  owners,  based  on  patriarchal 
mores. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  the  tenant  himself.  The  specialists  and  the  prac- 
tical social  workers  have  been  confronted  with  a  problem:  Should  the 
Japanese  tenant  be  regarded  as  a  laborer  or  as  an  entrepreneur  ?  At  the 
International  Conference  for  Labor  Protection  (Geneva,  1921),  the 
problem  aroused  a  lively  discussion.  The  representatives  of  Japanese 
labor  assumed  that  the  tenant  was  a  laborer,  the  representatives  of  the 
Japanese  government  and  entrepreneurs  that  he  was  an  entrepreneur. 
The  representatives  of  other  countries  also  had  different  views.  Cer- 
tainly, the  problem  is  not  easy  to  decide.  Indeed,  the  living  conditions 
of  a  small  tenant  do  not  differ  from  those  of  the  farm  or  industrial 
laborers;  the  tenants'  situation  is  perhaps  even  more  uncertain  and 
poor  than  that  of  the  laborers.  Nevertheless,  from  the  juridical  and 
economic  standpoints,  tenants  cannot  be  classified  as  laborers  because 
there  is  no  labor  contract  between  tenant  and  landowner,  and  hence  the 
tenant's  income  is  not  labor.  With  the  exception  of  the  rent  that  the 
tenant  has  to  pay  to  the  owner,  the  entire  entrepreneurial  risk  falls  on 
the  shoulders  of  the  tenant.  Therefore  it  was  rightly  decided  that  the 
Japanese  tenant  belongs  to  the  class  of  the  entrepreneurs  and  not  to 
that  of  the  laborers. 

The  principal  types  of  tenancy  are  hereditary  tenure,  intermediate 
tenure,  and  pint  tenure?*  Hereditary  tenure  originated  in  the  remotest 
past.  Now  it  either  remains  indefinite  as  to  the  length  of  time  or,  ac- 
cording to  the  Civil  Code,  with  a  duration  of  twenty  to  fifty  years. 
During  this  period,  the  owner  cannot  raise  the  yearly  rent,  but  neither 
is  he  obliged  by  law  to  lower  it  in  the  years  of  a  poor  crop.  The  tenant 
is  entitled  to  bequeath  his  property,  status,  and  right  of  renting  and 
mortgaging.  Intermediate  tenure  exists  in  some  provinces  with  ab- 
sentee landowners.  The  "middle  man"  rents  land  from  the  owner  in 
large  tracts  and  leases  it  in  small  lots  to  lesser  tenants.  Joint  tenure  of 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Subsequent  parts  are  abstracts  from  the  paper  of  Kawada. 


412  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

an  owner's  land  is  the  joint  renting  by  several  tenants  from  the  same 
village  who  are  collectively  responsible  for  the  payment  of  the  rent. 
They  usually  divide  the  land  among  themselves  according  to  the 
amount  of  the  labor  forces  of  each  tenant  family. 

Though  the  length  of  the  tenure  varies  greatly,  the  most  typical 
length  is  from  two  to  five  years.  The  predominant  form  of  rent  is 
a  certain  share  of  the  produce  of  the  land  (usually  rice) ;  the  most 
common  rate  is  about  or  below  50  per  cent  of  the  total  produce  of  the 
land  rented.  However,  this  rate  fluctuates  greatly  from  place  to  place 
and  from  period  to  period. 

It  is  natural  to  expect  that  the  tenant-owner  relationship  is  not  free 
from  conflicts.  In  the  period  of  the  Shogunate  (the  Tokugawa  re- 
gime), the  government  usually  favored  the  owners  against  the  tenants 
in  such  conflicts.  Before  the  World  War  the  majority  of  these  conflicts 
appeared  in  connection  with  the  matter  of  lowering  the  rent  in  years 
of  a  poor  crop  and  were  decided  by  private  agreement  between  the 
owner  and  the  tenant.  Sometimes  these  conflicts  assumed  a  sharp  form. 
After  the  war  the  situation  changed.  The  mind  of  the  lower  classes — 
the  laborers  and  the  small  tenants — became  imbued  with  'liberty  and 
equality,"  Socialism  and  Bolshevism.  In  some  places  the  "small  tenants 
movement"  appeared  as  a  result.  The  program  of  this  movement  is  not 
clear.  Sometimes  it  is  styled  a  program  for  the  nationalization  of  land. 
But  none  of  the  leaders  of  the  movement  have  set  it  forth  clearly. 
More  often  the  movement  manifests  itself  in  an  organized  pressure  of 
the  tenants,  perhaps  in  the  form  of  violent  measures,  to  lower  the  rent. 
The  number  of  conflicts  has  become  greater  than  before  the  war.  There 
were  85  conflicts  in  1917;  256  in  1918;  326  in  1919;  408  in  1920;  1,680 
in  1921,  and  1,578  in  1922.  In  1922  in  these  1,578  conflicts  29,077  owners 
and  125,750  tenants  were  involved.  In  1,469  of  these  1,578  conflicts 
the  cause  of  the  conflicts  was  the  tenants*  demand  that  the  rent  be 
lowered;  in  22  cases  it  was  the  tenants'  opposition  to  any  increase  of 
the  rent;  in  the  remaining  87  cases  the  causes  were  miscellaneous.  In 
connection  with  these  conflicts  several  unions  of  tenants  and  several  of 
owners  appeared,  having  for  their  purpose  the  protection  and  promo- 
don  of  the  interests  of  their  respective  class. 

Taking  all  the  relevant  circumstances  into  consideration,  it  is  possi- 
ble to  contend  that  the  real  objective  of  the  movement  is  "the  elimina- 
tion of  the  class  of  large  landowners  and  the  transformation  of  the 
small  tenants  into  small  peasant  proprietors."  In  regard  to  the  means 
and  ways  of  realizing  this  objective  opinions  differ.  Up  to  this  time  it 
remains  undecided  as  to  whether  the  government  should  perform  this 
transformation  in  a  compulsory  way  or  whether  it  should  be  achieved 
through  the  private  initiative  o£  both  classes  involved.  Likewise,  it  is 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  413 

unknown  to  what  extent  landowners  should  be  hurt.  The  future  will 
decide  whether  this  reconstruction  will  be  realized  through  evolution 
or  through  revolution.* 

54.  A.  POLJAKOW:  FORMS  OF  TENANCY  IN  CHINA! 

Introduction. — Despite  manifold  minor  modifications  and  differ- 
ences, conditions  of  tenancy  in  China  are  essentially  similar  in  .form 
and  economic  content  throughout  the  eighteen  provinces  and  Man- 
churia. First  of  all,  we  shall  discuss  the  rent  with  a  fixed  payment  in 
%indt  in  which  the  entire  capital  belongs  to  the  tenant  and  the  rental 
is  paid  in  a  fixed  amount  of  products.  Further,  we  have  partial  rent, 
in  which  the  tenant  furnishes  only  a  portion  of  the  capital,  the  owner 
furnishing  the  remainder,  and  in  which  the  crop  is  divided  between 
the  two  in  a  fixed  ratio.  We  meet  similar  forms  of  tenancy  in  Europe 
and  in  America.  Share  tenancy,  which  plays  a  prominent  role  in  China, 
is  differentiated  in  its  economic  content  from  the  French  metairie  sys- 
teme,  which  Marx  considered  the  classical  form  of  tenancy,  from  the 
Italian  mezzadria,  and  from  the  American  share  renting  system.  In  the 
Chinese  share  tenancy,  as  well  as  in  the  metairie  systeme,  the  mez- 
zadria, and  the  share  renting  system,  the  tenant  generally  furnishes  a 
portion  of  the  working  capital  in  addition  to  his  own  labor  or  that  of 
others.  The  owner  furnishes  the  other  portion  of  the  working  capital 
(i.e.,  the  cattle)  in  addition  to  the  ground.  The  products  are  divided 
between  them  in  a  fixed  ratio  that  varies  from  country  to  country.1 

"If  one  considers  further  the  rent  in  fixed  payments  in  %indt  which 
is  the  most  common  form  of  the  tenancy  agreements  in  China,  one 
sees  that  this  form  is  practically  identical  in  economic  structure  with 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — For  Japansee  also:  K.  Asakawa,  The  Early  Institutional  Life  of 
Japan,  1903;  G.  Liebscher,  Japan's  landwirthschaftliche  und  allgemeiniuirthschaitlichc 
Verhahnisse,  1882;  F.  H.  King,  Farmers  of  Forty  Centuries,  New  York,  Harcourt,  Brace 
Co.;  S.  Kawada,  Study  on  Rural  Communities  (in  Japan),  1925;  K.  Yanagida,  History 
and  Agricultural  Policy  (in  Japan),  1910;  S.  Nasu,  Rural  Social  Problems  (in  Japan), 
1928;  K.  Mori,  Rural  Social  Problems  (in  Japan),  1919;  R.  Ota,  Rural  Social  Problems 
(in  Japan),  1925;  Ch.  Ogawara,  Rural  Sociology  (in  Japan),  1917;  T.  Ono,  Lectures  on 
Rural  Community  (in  Japan),  1925;  J.  Yokoi,  Reorganization  of  Rural  Communities  (in 
Japan),  1925;  E.  Yamasaki,  Rural  Planning  (in  Japan),  1927;  S.  Kawada,  "Tenant  Sys- 
tem in  Japan  and  Korea,"  Kyoto  Univ.  Economic  'Review,  1926,  No.  1,  I,  38-74;  S.  Ka- 
wada, "The  Tenant  System  of  Formosa,"  Kyoto  Univ.  "Economic  Review,  1928,  No.  2, 
III,  86-147;  Iku-Okuda,  Das  Verteilungssystem  des  Wald-  und  Old-landes  in  Japan, 
Stuttgart,  1928;  K.  Asakawa,  "The  Early  Sho  and  the  Early  Manor:  a  Comparative 
Study,"  Journal  of  Economic  and  Business  History,  February,  1929;  T.  Ono,  Peasant 
Movements  in  the  Period  of  the  Tofagawa  (in  Japan),  1927;  Fesca,  Die  landtvirtschajt- 
lichen  Verhaltnisse  Japans  und  die  ^Colonisation  Hokaidos,  1887. 

fFrom  Agrar-Problemet  published  by  the  International  Agrarian  Institute,  Moscow, 
1928,  No.  4,  I,  690-721.  Translated  and  reprinted  with  permission  of  the  publisher 
(Paul  Parey). 

''Karl  Marx,  Das  Kapital,  4th  ed.,  Hamburg,  1919,  Parts  II,  HI,  pp.  336-337, 


414  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  American  standing  rent  system,  which  is  widespread  throughout 
the  southern  cotton-growing  regions  of  the  United  States  of  North 
America.2 

The  fundamental  difference  between  the  agricultural  conditions  of 
China  and  those  of  Europe  and  America  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
the  Chinese  tenant  is  in  need  in  the  majority  of  cases,  possesses  only 
a  minute  piece  of  land,  is  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  usurers,  and  is  de- 
pendent on  the  owner  of  the  property.  He  cannot  be  designated  as 
a  tenant  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  especially  if  he  is  compared  with 
European  and  American  tenants.  But  one  must  not  forget  the  fact 
that  there  are  well-to-do  middle  classes  among  Chinese  tenants,  and 
also  that  the  majority  of  tenants  in  Europe  and  America — tenants  of 
parcels  of  land — are  tenants  from  necessity.  In  the  southern  states  of 
America  in  1925  there  were  one  and  one-half  million  half -en  slaved 
share  tenants  (according  to  Lenin).*  In  Germany  in  the  same  year, 
88.6  per  cent  of  the  farms  that  consisted  entirely  of  rented  land  com- 
prised less  than  2  hectares  apiece  (about  5  acres).3  Finally,  the  Italian 
mezzadro,  who  .  .  .  comprise  64  per  cent  of  the  tenants  of  Italy,  are 
also  tenants  from  necessity  in  the  large  majority  of  cases. 

FORMS  OF  TENANCY  EXISTING  IN  CHINA  AT  THE  PRESENT  TIME 

Payment  of  a  portion  of  the  products  as  rent. — The  owner  places 
terre  mailer  e}  terre  capitals,  the  buildings,  and  the  remainder  of  the 
capital  (animate  and  inanimate  inventory,  seed,  fertilizer,  and  work- 
ing capital)  at  the  disposal  of  the  ploughman.  At  the  end  of  the  year 
the  ploughman,  who  also  may  be  said  to  be  a  share  tenant,  receives 
a  portion  of  the  goods  produced  on  this  "rented"  piece  of  land  (30  per 
cent  of  the  products  in  Manchuria,  Tschili,  and  Kiangsu,  and  50  per 
cent  in  Mongolia).  It  must  be  pointed  out  that  this  form  of  "tenancy 
relationship"  is  not  tenancy  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  but  repre- 
sents a  transition  between  hiring  and  renting. 

Share  tenancy. — The  owner  places  terre  matiere,  terre  capitale,  the 
buildings,  and  a  portion  of  the  remaining  capital  at  the  disposal  of 
the  tenant.  The  tenant  furnishes  the  remainder  of  the  capital,  and  the 
products  are  divided  among  them  in  a  fixed  ratio  (either  5:5  or  6:4 
in  Manchuria,  Tschili,  Schansi,  Kiangsu,  and  Ytinan). 

3  Tenancy  with  fixed  payments  in  kind  naturally  has  nothing  in  common  with  the 
"produce  rent,'*  which  presupposes  a  produce  economy.  The  "produce  rent"  persists  in 
backward  regions  as  a  survival. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — We  leave  the  specific  terminology  of  the  Communist  author.  Lenin 
refers  to  the  "croppers."  For  an  analysis  of  this  cropper  system  see  "Farm  Ownership 
and  Tenancy,"  in  U,  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook  1923,  pp.  507  ff.,  by  L.  C,  Gray,  Charles  L. 
Stewart,  Howard  A.  Turner,  T-  T.  Sanders,  and  W.  ].  Spillman.  The  cropper  system 
itself  is  primarily  a  step  towards  landowncrship  by  the  former  slaves.  Ibid.,  pp.  515fE. 

*  Wtrtschaft  und  Statistik,  Berlin,  May,  1927,  No.  9,  p.  403. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  415 

Tenancy  with  payment  in  a  portion  of  the  products. — The  owner 
furnishes  terre  matiere,  terre  capital?,  and  the  buildings  (not  always 
the  latter).  The  tenant  furnishes  the  remainder  of  the  capital  and 
sometimes  the  buildings.  The  owner  receives  a  portion  of  the  products 
for  the  use  of  the  land  (30  per  cent  in  Schansi  and  Tschili,  and  from 
30  to  40  per  cent  in  Kiangsu) . 

Tenancy  with  fixed  payments  in  %ind. — The  owner  turns  over  to  the 
tenant  terre  matiere  and  terre  capitate,  while  the  tenant  furnishes  the 
remainder  of  the  capital.  The  buildings  may  belong  to  either.  The 
owner  of  the  land  receives  payments  in  kind,  the  exact  amount  of 
which  is  determined  when  the  contract  is  made.  (This  is  the  most 
widely  spread  form  of  tenancy  in  China,  being  diffused  throughout 
the  entire  country.) 

Tenancy  with  a  fixed  payment  of  money, — The  owner  furnishes 
terre  matiere,  terre  capitate,  and  only  rarely  the  buildings.  The  tenant, 
generally  the  owner  of  the  buildings,  furnishes  the  remainder  of  the 
capital.  The  owner  receives  a  fixed  sum  of  money  agreed  upon  when 
the  contract  was  made,  and  generally  paid  in  advance.  This  form  is 
most 'frequently  met  with  in  the  leasing  of  truck  gardens,  gardens,  mul- 
berry plantations,  etc. 

Tenancy  with  ownership  of  the  "terre  capitale"  vested  in  the  tenant. 
—The  owner  furnishes  only  the  terre  matiere.  The  tenant  is  owner  of 
the  terre  capitale  (the  fertilized  surface  soil),  the  buildings,  and,  in 
addition,  furnishes  the  remainder  of  the  capital.  The  owner  receives 
rent  for  the  leased  ground  as  such — the  foundation  of  the  soil,  the 
ground  on  which  taxes  are  levied.  According  to  the  agreement  at  the 
time  the  contract  is  made,  the  rent  may  be  either  a  fixed  amount  or 
a  fixed  share  of  the  produce.  The  only  places  in  which  this  form  exists 
are  a  few  of  the  provinces  of  middle  China. 

The  eternal  lease. — For  some  reason  or  other  the  owner  does  not 
enjoy  possession  of  the  property  which  the  "eternal  tenant"  leases  from 
him,  but  possesses  only  the  right  to  a  definite  rent,  fixed  once  for  all 
time.  In  this  form  the  tenant  not  only  furnishes  the  entire  capital  and 
owns  the  buildings,  but  he  is  also  the  real  owner  of  the  terre  matiere 
and  the  terre  capitale.  This  eternal  lease  may  be  divided  into  the  fol- 
lowing forms:  (a)  hereditary  lease,  whose  value  approaches  the  value 
of  the  property  (found  in  Kiangsu  and  Kwangtung),  (b)  eternal  leas- 
ing of  the  ground  which  has  been  sold  under  certain  conditions  (found 
in  Anhui  and  Kiangsu).  The  eternal  lease,  like  the  first  form  of  this 
classification,  is  not  a  lease  in  the  true  sense  of  the  world.  If  the  rela- 
tionship of  the  owner  to  the  ploughman  and  share  tenant  verges  on 


416  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  usual  wage  relationship,  the  eternal  lease  is  on  the  borderline  be- 
tween tenancy  and  ownership.* 

Private  persons  compose  the  majority  of  the  owners  who  lease  their 
land,  although  clans,  cloisters,  and  the  central  government  may  be 
owners.  The  private  persons  leasing  land  include  both  those  who  live 
on  their  estates  and  practice  agriculture,  and  those  who  live  in  the 
cities.  The  only  relationship  of  the  latter  to  the  village  is  through  the 
agents  from  whom  they  draw  the  rental.  The  number  of  absentee 
owners  is  very  large,  and  it  seems  that  the  majority  of  them  are  mer- 
chants. Alluvial  land  and  other  land  belonging  to  the  state  govern- 
ment, as  well  as  land  belonging  to  the  clans  and  the  temples,  is  gen- 
erally leased  in  large  tracts,  and  then  sublet  in  smaller  parcels.  In 
Kuichow  the  lands  of  minor  foreign  nobles  are  generally  rented  to  the 
"elder";  he  parcels  it  out  among  the  "chief  tenants,"  they  in  turn  parcel 
it  out  among  the  tenants  who  will  cultivate  the  land.  This  system  of 
subletting  is  applied  only  to  the  largest  of  the  private  estates.  However, 
it  is  related  to  the  system  of  eternal  tenancy,  for  the  land  subject  to  that 
arrangement  is  often  sublet  to  the  tenant  who  will  cultivate  it. 

The  tenants  who  work  the  soil  may  be  divided  into  those  who  lease 
from  necessity  and  those  who  lease  for  gain.  Undoubtedly  the  great 
majority  are  tenants  from  necessity.  But  the  other  class  is  not  unim- 
portant, and  includes  owners  who  rent  an  additional  strip  of  land. 

Terre  capitate  is  especially  important  in  irrigated  lands,  where  its 
value  includes  the  costs  of  the  complicated  irrigating  system,  levelling, 
terracing,  etc.  The  value  of  terre  capitals  is  increased  also  by  the  in- 
tensive fertilizing  system.  As  was  pointed  out,  in  both  cases  in  which 
it  was  possible  to  secure  information  as  to  the  value  of  rent,  the  land 
farmed  by  the  owner  himself  commanded  a  higher  price  than  that 
which  he  let  out. 

Products  of  the  soil  when  used  in  the  payment  of  rent  are  generally 
the  basic  products  of  the  region.  For  instance,  of  the  products  paid  as 
rent  on  establishments  studied  in  northern  Manchuria,  more  than  50 
per  cent  was  in  beans  alone,  while  in  Kauliang  and  Gudzi  96.5  per 
cent  was  in  beans.  The  tenants  in  the  southern  provinces  frequently 
add  some  "presents,"  such  as  chickens,  ducks,  pork,  wine,  etc.  The  rela- 
tive importance  of  this  practice  is  small,  although  it  has  persisted 
rather  rigidly.  Occasionally,  however,  these  "presents"  assume  greater 
importance,  either  when  they  are  brought  at  the  time  of  important 
festivals,  or  when  they  are  specified  in  some  detail.  "The  rent  in 
products  is  either  hauled  to  the  warehouse  of  the  owner  by  the  tenant 
(occasionally  he  is  paid  for  transporting  it)  or  is  taken  from  the  gran- 
ary of  the  tenant  by  the  owner  or  his  agent.  The  former  method  seems 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Subsequent  part  is  an  abstract  from  the  same  paper. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  417 

to  be  much  more  widespread  than  the  latter."  The  payment  of  rent  in 
products  takes  place  after  the  harvest,  that  is,  twice  a  year  in  southern 
and  middle  China,  once  a  year  in  the  northern  portions.  When  the 
rent  is  paid  in  cash,  payment  is  made  at  the  time  the  contract  is  signed 
and  in  the  monetary  units  agreed  upon. 

It  is  a  common  practice  in  China  to  deposit  security  for  leased  land. 
Ordinarily  the  security  is  used  to  cover  any  arrears  in  the  rent,  and 
the  balance  is  returned  at  the  expiration  of  the  lease.  In  some  few 
cases  the  value  of  the  security  approaches  the  value  of  the  land  (fifty 
to  seventy  Mexican  dollars  in  Kiangsu),  a  practice  that  seems  to  occur 
only  in  the  case  of  the  eternal  lease. 

In  general  the  rental  price  ranges  from  10  to  15  per  cent  of  the  value 
of  the  land,  although  it  is  8  per  cent  in  Kiangsu  and  18  per  cent  in 
Shantung.  Since  the  owner  furnishes  a  portion  of  the  capital  in  most 
of  the  share  arrangements,  he  also  receives  interest  on  capital,  but  this 
has  been  deducted  from  the  original  data  in  order  to  secure  the  rent 
figures  given  above. 

The  contract  may  be  made  either  orally  or  in  writing.  In  the  latter 
case,  only  one  copy  is  made  and  that  one  is  deposited  with  the  owner. 
The  contract  assumes  that  the  inventory  furnished  will  be  returned  in 
its  original  condition.  Sometimes  it  also  includes  provisions  regarding 
the  buildings,  irrigation  system,  etc.,  besides  specifying  the  size  of  the 
tract,  the  amount  of  the  rent,  the  time  of  payments,  and  the  security, 
if  any.  If  the  rent  is  paid  in  shares,  the  leases  are  generally  for  one  year. 
In  other  forms,  they  run  three  to  ten  years.  Throughout  China,  the 
poorer  soil  is  generally  leased  for  the  longer  periods  of  time. 

If  the  term  of  the  lease  is  more  than  a  year,  the  owner  generally 
raises  the  rent  at  the  end  of  the  term.  If  the  tenant  is  unable  to  pay  the 
higher  rent,  he  is  driven  off  the  land,  and  receives  no  compensation 
for  any  improvements  he  may  have  made.  He  may  be  driven  off  the 
land  before  the  end  of  the  term  if  he  has  failed  to  meet  the  payments, 
either  at  the  stated  time  or  within  the  extension  that  is  occasionally 
granted.  The  tenants  for  one  year,  who  are  generally  share  tenants, 
may  be  driven  off  the  land  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Eviction  before  the 
end  of  the  term  is  generally  unprofitable  for  the  owner.  If  the  tenant 
leaves  voluntarily  before  that  time  he  may  be  sued  in  the  courts. 

"The  most  widespread  form  of  tenancy  in  China  is  that  in  which 
payment  is  a  fixed  amount  of  the  products.  Share  tenancy  occupies 
second  place,  and  cash  tenancy  third  place.  The  role  of  such  survivals 
as  'labor-rent'  and  'products-rent'  is  quite  unimportant.  Of  these  lat- 
ter, only  the  second  is  found  in  a  more  or  less  pure  form,  and  that  only 
in  the  most  backward  and  isolated  corners  of  China."  One  may  say 
definitely  that  the  most  widespread  form  of  tenancy  leaves  uncondi- 


418  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tioned  ownership  in  the  terre  matiere,  terre  capitate,  and  the  buildings 
to  the  owner,  whereas  the  tenant  has  full  ownership  of  any  other 
means  of  production.  In  share  tenancy  the  owner  may  have  owner- 
ship rights  in  a  portion  of  the  means  of  production  (cattle,  inanimate 
inventory,  fertilizers,  seed,  etc.),  in  addition  to  the  items  mentioned 
above.  Rights  of  ownership  in  the  terre  matiere  only,  as  well  as  the 
eternal  lease,  and  conditional  ownership  in  the  terre  matiere  and  terre 
capitale  are  becoming  less  common. 

In  share  tenancy,  the  owner  generally  receives  a  portion  of  the  basic 
products  as  his  share,  whereas  all  other  products,  by-products,  and  the 
like  fall  to  the  share  of  the  tenant.  In  some  places  the  straw  also  is 
divided.  The  conditions  vary.  We  find  all  products  divided,  only  the 
first  harvest  divided,  or  the  entire  first  harvest  taken  as  rent  and  the 
remaining  ones  turned  over  to  the  tenant.  In  some  cases  the  propor- 
tion in  which  the  division  is  to  occur  is  fixed  at  the  time  the  contract 
is  made.  In  others  it  is  fixed  according  to  the  condition  of  the  crop 
immediately  before  the  harvest.  This  is  most  frequently  done  by  the 
owner,  although  it  may  be  done  by  an  official  board,  or  a  committee  of 
the  association  of  landlords. 

A  transitional  form  between  payments  in  shares  and  payments  in 
fixed  amounts  is  found  in  Soochow.  "The  amount  of  the  rents  in 
Soochow  is  determined  on  the  basis  of  the  price  of  rice,  which  is  deter- 
mined from  year  to  year.  Money  is  simply  a  substitute  for  the  payment 
in  rice.  The  prices  determined  for  rice  are  therefore  designated  as  con- 
version prices.  The  price  for  rice,  at  which  the  rent  will  be  received, 
is  generally  fixed  by  the  landlord's  association  in  Soochow,  and  is  lower 
than  the  actual  market  price  of  unpolished  rice."4 

In  those  cases  in  which  ownership  of  the  terre  cafitale  is  vested  in 
the  tenant,  the  relationship  of  the  price  of  that  to  the  terre  matiere 
varies  between  5:5  and  3:7.  As  a  rule  the  owner  of  the  subsoil  may 
purchase  the  surface  soil  and  evict  the  tenant.  The  value  of  the  surface 
soil  is  generally  determined  by  current  market  values. 

Mention  was  made  above  of  the  relatively  unimportant  "labor-rent" 
and  "products-rent."  In  the  case  of  the  former,  the  tenant  is  bound  to 
execute  any  orders  of  the  owner,  and  to  work  on  his  estate,  when  com- 
manded to  do  so,  with  no  remuneration  beyond  the  three  meals  per 
day  which  are  furnished  him.  This  arrangement  has  persisted  in  its 
most  crass  form  on  the  estates  of  minor  alien  nobles  in  Kuichow. 
"Products-rent"  is  found  on  these  same  estates  as  well  as  in  South 
China.  Under  this  arrangement,  the  tenant  is  required  to  pay  a  share 
of  all  products,  generally  in  the  form  of  "presents."  When  the  land  has 
been  sublet,  it  is  a  common  practice  for  the  immediate  lessor  to  retain 

*  "Farming  in  Soochow,"   Chinese  Economic  Journal,  1927,  p.  189. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  419 

these  "presents"  and  transmit  only  the  required  share  of  the  basic 
products  to  the  original  lessor.* 

55.  HENRI  SEE:  AGRARIAN  REGIMES  IN  EUROPE  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
AND  THE  NINETEENTH 


The  landed  and  agrarian  regime  of  France  was  rather  exceptional 
in  Europe.  Before  the  Revolution  the  system  in  France  had  the  fol- 
lowing characteristics:  the  practical  nonexistence  of  serfdom,  properly 
speaking;  the  existence  of  peasant  proprietorship,  which  was  quite  im- 
portant in  certain  regions  despite  the  general  existence  of  burdening 
services  and  taxes;  a  preponderance  of  small  or  medium-sized  hold- 
ings, which  offered  grave  obstacles  to  agricultural  progress;  and  no 
appreciable  concentration  of  rural  property  because  of  the  inability  of 
the  proprietary  nobles  to  monopolize  completely  the  village  com- 
munity lands. 

When  one  studies  the  countries  that  enjoyed  a  similar  system,  par- 
ticularly southeastern  and  northeastern  Germany,  but  which  had  a 
few  differences,  particularly  a  greater  prevalence  of  serfdom,  one  ob- 
serves that  it  was  also  in  eastern  France  that  serfdom  persisted  in  the 
attenuated  form  known  as  mainmorte.  In  Germany  going  eastward 
the  Grundherrschaft,  the  feudal  regime,  gradually  gave  way  to  the 
Rittergut  of  eastern  Germany,  that  is,  to  the  large  noble  holdings  di- 
rectly operated  by  the  feudal  lord.  At  the  same  time  peasant  services 
there  were  more  extensive,  the  most  characteristic  of  which  was  the 
Gesindedierst  or  the  obligation  of  the  sons  of  peasants  to  work  on  the 
lordly  domain. 

England  had  a  unique  agrarian  regime;  the  peasant  was  free  even 
to  a  greater  degree  than  in  France.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  course  of 
social  evolution  was  similar  to  that  in  France;  serfdom  was  abolished 
and  peasant  ownership  gradually  consummated.  In  the  modern  period 
during  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  however,  there  was 
a  progressive  dispossession  of  the  peasants,  due  chiefly  to  the  enclosures, 
the  extension  of  ownership  by  the  nobility  together  with  its  increase 
and  concentration.  This  resulted  in  the  development  of  a  class  of  free 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE.  —  On  the  rural  socio-economic  organization  in  China  see  also  the 
works  quoted  in  the  preceding  section.  Besides  these  works  see:  Takharoff,  Land  Prop' 
erfy  in  China  (Russ.),  1910,  2  vols.;  Li  Kolu,  "Die  Chinesische  Agrarverfassung," 
Eerichtc  uber  Landwirtschajt,  Berlin,  1924,  Vol.  I,  Heft  3-4;  Makay,  "Das  Agrarproblem 
in  China,"  Zcitschr.  /.  Agrarpolitik,  Berlin,  1913;  Grosse,  "Wirtschaftsverhaltnisse  in 
alten  China,"  Qstasiatische  Rundschaw,  1928;  F.  Otte»  Wirtschajtspolitische  Lande$\unde 
(China),  1927.  See  a  very  good  bibliography  in  V.  Riasanovsky,  Bibliography  in  Chinese 
Law  (Russ.);  see  also  the  bibliography  given  in  this  and  preceding  chapters. 

t  From  H.  See,  Esqutsse  d'une  histoire  du  regime  agraire  en  Europe  aux  XVIU  et 
XIX  sticks,  Paris,  Marcel  Giard  &  Co.,  1921,  pp.  3-8,  269-272.  Translated  and  printed 
with  the  permission  of  the  publisher. 


420  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

agricultural  laborers,  which  became  increasingly  dependent  economi- 
cally upon  the  noble  proprietors.  The  latter  did  not  operate  their  own 
holdings  but  turned  the  management  over  to  large  farmers.  These  are 
to  be  distinguished  from  the  "general  farmers"  of  an  earlier  period  in 
France  who  were  not  independent  cultivators  as  were  the  English,  and 
also  from  our  peasant  farmers,  for  the  English  superintended  large 
operations  and  belonged  to  the  bourgeois  class  by  virtue  of  their  wealth 
and  type  of  life. 

The  economic  results  of  this  economic  revolution  have  been  serious. 
England  produced  increasingly  less  of  cereals,  for  the  tillable  land  was 
transformed  into  pasture  in  order  to  simplify  exploitation;  the  crops 
came  to  be  insufficient  for  the  consuming  needs.  At  the  same  time  the 
dispossession  of  the  peasants  greatly  contributed  to  the  development  of 
industry  since  it  made  an  important  class  of  laborers  available.  It  is 
interesting  to  observe  that  the  causes  of  this  economic  revolution  were 
not  solely  of  an  economic  nature.  It  was  especially  stimulated  by  the 
political  power  held  by  the  landed  aristocracy,  which  controlled  the 
local  administration  and  was  ruler  of  Parliament;  the  two  parties, 
Whig  and  Tory,  were  equally  aristocratic,  being  equally  composed  of 
great  landed  proprietors. 

The  reign  of  large  holdings  has  had  particularly  serious  results  in 
Ireland.  The  conquest  resulted  in  dispossession  and  landlordism;  while 
the  Irish  population  was  reduced  to  the  state  of  tenants  who  were  sub- 
ject to  arbitrary  eviction  by  the  owners.  As  it  was  impossible  to  operate 
the  clearings  and  to  alleviate  the  overpopulation  existing  in  the  rural 
parts — for  the  population  was  too  numerous  and  industrial  develop- 
ment too  tardy— the  agrarian  question  has  become  one  of  great  acuity 
in  Ireland,  the  sufferings  of  the  peasants  being  only  alleviated  by  mass 
migration. 

In  certain  countries  of  northeastern  Europe— East  Prussia,  Poland, 
Denmark,  and  the  Russian  Baltic  provinces — there  was  a  considerable 
extension  of  serfdom  of  a  particularly  noxious  kind;  the  serf  was 
bound  to  the  soil  and  had  to  render  so  many  services  of  corvee  ("la- 
bor") to  the  lord  that  these  occupied  the  greatest  part  of  his  time. 
Serfdom  was  here  of  recent  origin,  dating  only  from  the  end  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  In  these  regions  of  settlement  the  landlord  devoted  him- 
self to  operating  his  land;  noble  ownership  was  extensive  and  concen- 
trated and  formed  a  coherent  whole  (Rittergut) ,  The  lord  was  a  large- 
scale  entrepreneur  and  exploited  his  own  holdings  in  the  course  of 
which  he  had  need  of  the  free  labor  of  his  subjects.  We  thus  observe 
an  inverse  evolution  in  these  countries  as  compared  with  France;  the 
holdings  of  the  feudal  lords  have  become  rooted  at  the  expense  of 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  421 

peasant  ownership  and  of  the  village  common  lands  (the  Bauern- 
legen). 

The  economic  causes  of  this  regime  were  doubtless  primary*  These 
countries  were  large  producers  and  exporters  of  grain;  they  were  not 
dealing  with  a  limited  market  as  in  France  but  with  a  large  external 
commerce  carried  on  by  means  of  the  Hanse  and  Holland.  The  pro- 
prietary noble  at  the  head  of  a  large  holding  of  a  capitalistic  nature  was 
not  content  with  living  from  his  feudal  revenues  as  was  the  case  in 
France.  The  political  causes  are  more  difficult  to  determine.  One  does 
not  fail  to  see,  however,  that  the  political  influence  of  the  nobility  was 
a  powerful  factor  in  maintaining  their  economic  domination;  the 
Estates  (Stande)  persisted  everywhere  and  were  in  the  control  of  the 
aristocracy.  In  Poland  the  political  preponderance  of  the  nobility  was 
more  marked  than  elsewhere;  it  was  there  that  the  agrarian  regime 
we  are  discussing  reached  its  highest  development  and  there  the 
peasant  class  suffered  the  most  complete  subjection.  In  Prussia  the 
situation  was  different  in  that  the  royal  power  was  strong  enough  to 
impose  restrictions  upon  the  agrarian  omnipotence  of  the  Junker.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  the  government  made  some  partially  successful 
attempts  to  prevent  the  dispossession  of  the  peasants  and  succeeded  in 
weakening  the  Estates.  As  the  ]un\er  formed  one  of  the  primary 
forces  in  the  Prussian  state  they  were  spared  and  their  economic  power 
allowed  to  persist. 

Russia  had  an  entirely  different  system.  It  is  true  that  serfdom  was 
of  recent  origin  here  also  and  that  there  were  many  large  estates;  but 
these  estates  were  frequently  too  large  to  be  directly  exploited  by  the 
owner.  Certain  unfavorable  physical  conditions  tended  also  towards 
the  cruder  methods  of  cultivation;  the  system  was  clearly  that  of  ex- 
tensive farming.  In  southern  Russia,  where  the  black  earth  is  so  fertile, 
the  soil  was  not  fully  utilized  until  the  nineteenth  century,  at  which 
time  large-scale  exportation  of  wheat  began.  In  the  Russian  Empire  the 
owners  of  the  nobility  had  available  the  full  labor  of  serfs  by  means  of 
the  corvees;  but  because  of  an  abundance  of  land,  they  granted  a  con- 
siderable plot  of  land  to  the  peasants.  This  was  not  granted  to  indi- 
viduals but  rather  under  a  collective  form  in  return  for  rents  paid  by 
the  mir. 

There  were  certain  other  peculiarly  Eastern  customs.  Many  servants 
lived  in  the  house  of  the  feudal  lord,  which  gave  rise  to  domestic  serf- 
dom. The  master  had  entire  control  of  the  person  of  his  serf;  he  could 
keep  him  for  use  in  the  house,  or  sell  him  independently  of  the  land. 
The  serf  who  worked  outdoors  owed  rent  or  fee  to  the  lord.  Russia 
was  the  only  country  in  Europe  having  serfdom  of  personnel.  In 
southern  Russia  there  was  a  totally  different  system  from  that  pre- 


422  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

vailing  in  Great  Russia  proper.  Slowly  colonized,  it  had  for  long  been 
occupied  by  soldier-laborers,  Cossacks.  The  system  of  individual  own- 
ership marked  by  the  appropriation  of  the  land  by  the  nobility  was 
only  slowly  established;  serfdom  was  much  more  exceptional  here  also. 
The  movement  of  emancipation  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  and 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  took  different  forms  according  to 
the  particular  agrarian  regime  and  the  condition  of  the  peasants  of  the 
several  countries.  This  movement  began  in  western  Europe,  and  in 
France  particularly,  where  the  peasants  actually  enjoyed  the  greatest 
economic  independence.  For  these  peasants  it  resulted  in  freedom  from 
the  oppressive  charges  of  the  feudal  regime  and  in  full  autonomy  of 
ownership.  It  was  an  absolute  ruler,  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  who  set  the 
example  in  emancipation.  In  France,  in  general,  a  serious  political  revo- 
lution was  necessary  before  the  freedom  of  the  peasants  was  assured; 
action  was  forced  upon  the  assembled  revolutionaries  by  violence. 
With  the  complete  abolition  of  the  feudal  regime,  the  peasant  owner- 
ship was  fully  established;  it  is  certain  that,  without  the  Revolution, 
the  dissolution  of  this  system  would  have  taken  a  much  longer  time 
and  greater  effort.  The  Revolution  again  increased  the  peasant  owner- 
ship and  struck  a  blow  at  privileged  property  without  ruining  it  com- 
pletely, however.  One  understands  the  implications  of  the  French 
Revolution  when  one  observes  the  more  or  less  complete  emancipation 
in  all  the  countries  subject  to  its  influence;  this  was  true  in  both  its 
annexed  regions  and  in  the  subject  nations.  In  the  countries  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine  the  ancient  regime  was  completely  abolished;  on 
the  right  bank,  in  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Berg  in  the  Kingdom  of  West- 
phalia, opportunist  measures  were  used  and  emancipation  went  only 
halfway.  Southeastern  Germany  had  been  but  indirectly  influenced  by 
the  French  Revolution.  Peasant  freedom  was  obtained  by  the  liberal 
constitutions  granted  by  the  rulers  to  their  subjects  in  return  for  the 
opposition  they  had  offered  against  Napoleon.  Greater  freedom  was 
achieved  through  the  influence  of  the  Revolution  of  1830  and  especially 
that  of  1848,  which,  in  this  connection,  was  of  primary  importance.  In 
no  place  has  the  social  influence  of  the  Revolution  of  1848  been  more 
striking  than  in  the  countries  of  the  Austrian  monarchy.  The  work  of 
Maria  Theresa  and  the  radical  reforms  of  Joseph  II  met  with  deter- 
mined resistance  from  the  nobility;  this  reaction  was  so  violent  that 
the  old  order  was  maintained  nearly  intact  from  1790  to  1848.  The 
Revolution  of  1848  abolished  it,  and  the  emancipation  of  the  peasants 
has  been  more  complete  and  more  beneficial  than  in  the  other  eastern 
countries.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  Prussian  mon- 
archy freeing  the  peasants  improved  the  situation  of  the  prosperous 
cultivators  and  granted  juridical  liberty  to  all  agrarian  classes;  but  it 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  423 

especially  served  the  interests  of  the  noble  proprietors  by  increasing 
their  domains.  It  also  contributed  to  the  expropriation  of  tenants,  often 
transforming  them  into  salaried  workers,  thus  permitting  the  great 
proprietors  to  exploit  these  lands  directly.  The  Prussian  state  felt  that 
it  must  care  for  the  interests  of  the  Junker. 

In  the  duchies,  especially  in  Denmark,  this  emancipation  had  a  dif- 
ferent character.  Peasant  ownership  was  re-established,  while  the  aris- 
tocracy lost  its  political  power  as  the  state  yielded  to  democratic  de- 
mands. In  Lithuania  servitude  had  been  so  complete  that  its  effects 
have  disappeared  but  slowly.  Russia  possessed  an  agrarian  regime  so 
original  that  this  movement  of  emancipation  could  be  expected  to  take 
a  unique  form  here.  In  no  country  of  Europe  has  the  movement  been 
more  tardy.  Russia  is  also  the  only  country  where  freedom  was  im- 
posed by  the  despotic  authority  of  the  sovereign.  It  was  a  particularly 
difficult  task,  for  it  was  necessary  at  the  same  time  to  abolish  serfdom 
and  to  give  the  peasants  the  land  to  which  they  previously  had  no  title, 
The  peasants  were  required  to  buy  the  land  they  needed,  but  the  condi- 
tions were  so  stringent  that  peasant  ownership  was  acquired  slowly. 
True  individual  ownership  was  not  established,  for  in  most  cases 
the  rural  community  periodically  distributed  the  land  by  lot  among  its 
members.  Then,  too,  the  peasants  received  an  insufficient  amount  of 
land,  with  the  result  that  this  emancipation  contributed  to  the  develop- 
ment in  Russia  of  an  industrial  proletariat  at  the  same  time  that  it 
introduced  the  germs  of  capitalism.  It  indeed  provoked  the  birth  of 
a  new  Russia  which,  although  undertaken  by  the  government,  was  a 
true  revolution  whose  significance  seems  as  great  as  that  of  the  French 
Revolution. 

The  example  of  Russia  shows  that  the  transformation  of  the  agrarian 
regime  has  been  able  to  exert  a  definite  influence  on  the  development 
of  modern  capitalism.  In  England  the  concentration  of  real  property 
has  also  contributed  without  a  doubt  to  the  progress  of  industrial  capi- 
talism. Conversely,  the  increase  in  wealth  and  the  appearance  of  capital 
have  exerted  some  influence  on  the  development  of  agricultural  organi- 
zation beginning  with  the  concentration  of  landed  property.  The  Prus- 
sian Junkers,  by  establishing  breweries,  distilleries,  and  sugar  refineries, 
have  performed  the  work  of  capitalists  and  have  been  stimulated  to 
increase  the  intensity  of  their  agricultural  exploitations.  One  can  also 
observe  a  reciprocal  action  of  economic  and  political  phenomena.  If  the 
agrarian  reform  in  France  was  possible  in  France  only  by  means  of  a 
political  revolution,  it  is  to  the  peasant  problem  that  the  political  revo- 
lution owes  its  original  character.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  large  part  of 
Europe  the  Revolution  of  1830  and  especially  that  of  1848  determined 
the  definite  abolition  of  the  agrarian  system,  especially  of  the  feudal 


424  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

regime.  In  countries  such  as  Prussia  where  the  aristocracy  possessed 
strong  political  authority,  the  transformation  of  the  agrarian  system 
was  made  to  the  profit  of  this  class.  In  countries  such  as  Denmark, 
where  the  aristocracy  had  lost  its  power,  peasant  ownership  was  re- 
established. Even  in  England  it  was  the  progress  of  democracy  which 
had  provoked  measures  destined  to  reform  peasant  ownership  or  opera- 
tions; this  could  only  be  done  at  the  expense  of  the  rights  of  the  no- 
bility. Thus  the  struggle  of  the  Irish  people  for  the  freedom,  of  their 
land  led  the  English  government  to  endeavor  to  solve  the  agricultural 
question.* 

56.  WALTER  SCHIFF:  THE  LEGISLATIVE  AGRARIAN  REFORMS  IN 
EUROPEAN  COUNTRIES  BEFORE  AND  AFTER  THE  WORLD  WAR| 

A.  BEFORE  THE  WAR 

I.  GREAT  BRITAIN 

Three  traits  are  characteristic  of  the  land  system  of  Great  Britain: 
the  almost  complete  absence  of  a  real  peasant  class;  the  concentration 
of  the  greater  part  of  the  land  in  the  hands  of  a  few  large  landowners; 
and  the  cultivation  of  this  land,  not  by  the  landlords  themselves,  but 
by  tenants  to  whom  they  lease  it.  As  late  as  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  Great  Britain  was  still  principally  a  peasant  coun- 
try, where  peasants  had  their  fields  side  by  side  with  those  of  the  land- 
lords. However,  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  landlords  succeeded  in 
appropriating  the  land  of  the  peasants  through  division  of  the  land 
of  the  communities  and  enclosures,  and  through  favored  treatment  by 
law  and  government.  In  this  way  the  still  existing  latifundia  origi- 
nated. At  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  Great  Britain,  whose 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  also  I.  Loutchisky,  L'etat  des  classes  agricoles  en  France  a.  la 
veille  de  la  Revolution,  Paris,  1911;  C.  Bloch,  Etudes  d'histoire  economique  de  la 
France,  1900;  M.  Kovalevsky,  La  France  economique  a  la  veille  de  la  Revolution 
(French  trans.) ,  Paris,  1909;  N.  Kareiev,  Les  pay  sans  et  la  question  paysanne  en  France 
(French  trans.),  Pans,  1899;  Th.  Knapp,  Gesammelte  Eeitrdge  zur  Rechts-  und  Win- 
schaftsgeschichte,  Tubingen,  1902;  G.  Slater,  The  English  Peasantry  and  the  Inclosure 
of  Common-fields,  London,  1907;  Th.  Rogers,  A  History  of  Prices  and  Agriculture  in 
England,  1902;  Barbara  Hammond,  The  Village  Laborer,  London,  1919;  V.  Semevski, 
Russian  Peasants  under  Catherine  II  (Russ.);  Kcussler,  Zur  Geschichte  und  Knti\  des 
bauerlichen  Grundbesitzes,  1876-1882,  3  vols;  P.  I.  Liaschenko,  Essays  in  the  Agrarian 
Evolution  of  Russia  (Russ.),  Leningrad,  1924.  (Ocherki  agrarnoi  evolutzii  Rossii.) 
N,  S.  B.  Gras  and  E.  C.  Gras,  The  Economic  and  Social  History  of  an  English  Village, 
1930.  For  other  literature  see  the  references  in  the  work  by  H.  See  and  in  these  other 
works.  See  also  the  bibliography  given  in  this  chapter  and  that  given  after  each  of  the 
readings  of  this,  the  preceding,  and  the  next  two  chapters. 

t  From  Walter  Schiff,  "Die  Agrargesetzgebung  der  europaischen  Staaten  vor  und  nach 
dem  Kriege,"  Archiv  fur  Sozialtvisscnschaft  und  Sozialpohtik,  1925,  Vol.  LIV,  87-131, 
469-529.  The  paper  is  given  in  an  abbreviated  form.  Lines  in  parentheses  are  abstracts 
of  the  more  detailed  parts  of  the  original 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  425 

population  numbered  about  40  millions,  there  were  only  about  320,000 
landowners,  which  means  that  99  per  cent  of  the  population  had  no 
right  to  the  land.  According  to  the  new  Domesday  Book  of  1874-1875 
the  following  number  of  persons  each  owned  a  fourth  of  the  land : 


AVERAGE  AREA  OF 

PERCENTAGE  OF 

No.  OF  PERSONS 

LANDHOLDING  IN 

TOTAL  No.  OF 

HECTARES 

LANDOWNERS 

1,200 

6,550 

0.4 

6,200 

1,270 

2.0 

50,800 

155 

16.0 

261,800 

30 

82.0 

Thus  7,400  landlords  owned  about  one-half  of  the  land,  and  58,200 
owned  three-quarters  of  it.  .  .  .  Moreover,  the  number  of  landowners 
was  still  decreasing  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  concen- 
tration of  land  in  Scotland  was  particularly  great.  In  England  and 
Wales  estates  above  200  hectares  occupied  about  57  per  cent  of  the  total 
land  cultivated;  in  Scotland  they  occupied  about  97  per  cent  of  the 
total  land  cultivated.  In  England  874  persons  owned  about  one-fourth 
of  the  land,  while  in  Scotland  580  estates  occupied  four-fifths  of  the 
total  land,  170  about  one-half,  and  12  estates  with  1-75  millions  of  hec- 
tares occupied  one-fourth  of  the  land. 

These  large  land  properties  were  exploited  by  the  landlords  them- 
selves only  to  an  insignificant  extent.  In  1887  about  86  per  cent  of 
their  land,  and  in  1912  about  90  per  cent,  was  leased  to  tenants.  The 
predominant  type  of  tenancy  was  middle  and  large  tenancy;  the  tenant 
farm  enterprises  of  above  20  hectares  occupied  84  per  cent  of  the  entire 
land,  while  those  of  over  120  hectares  occupied  only  25  per  cent  of  it. 

The  laws  of  land  ownership  were  quite  liberal.  Juridically,  the  owner 
was  free  to  exercise  his  rights  of  ownership.  However,  since  the  seven- 
teenth century  there  have  already  appeared  several  practical  limitations 
of  this  freedom.  In  the  first  place,  there  were  the  entails,  according  to 
which  the  owner  had  to  use  his  freedom  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure 
juridically  transmission  of  the  undivided  part  of  his  property  to  one 
heir  for  two  generations.  As  such  free  bindings  were  renewed  in  each 
generation  the  result  was  the  same  as  that  which  is  secured  in  Germany 
through  the  institution  of  the  Fainilienfideifyminisse.  The  land  under 
these  entails  was  about  two-thirds  of  the  total  land  area  in  England  and 
Wales,  about  one-half  in  Scotland,  and  about  five-sixths  in  Ireland. 
Thus  through  the  entails  the  greater  part  of  the  land  was  barred  from 
commercial  circulation.  This  also  kept  the  price  of  land  very  high.  In 
so  far  as  the  juridical  relationship  between  landowner  and  tenant  is 


426  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

concerned,  the  same  liberal  principle  of  a  purely  contractual  order 
dominated  up  to  the  interference  of  the  agrarian  legislation.  The  own- 
ers tried  to  exert  some  influence  on  the  management  of  the  farms  in 
order  to  secure  a  better  produce.  However,  in  spite  of  this,  the  condi- 
tions of  tenure,  at  least  in  England,  were  not  unfavorable. 

The  tenure  contracts  were  generally  concluded  for  only  one  year; 
but  they  were  almost  always  renewed.  According  to  the  letter  of  the 
law,  the  improvements,  buildings,  and  various  arrangements  made  by 
the  tenant  went  to  the  landowner;  but  according  to  common  practice, 
these  juridical  rules  were  softened  in  favor  of  the  tenant.  The  tenure 
rent  was  fixed  very  low,  and,  according  to  the  tradition,  the  land- 
owners customarily  helped  the  good  tenants  in  years  of  a  bad  economic 
situation.  For  instance,  during  the  agricultural  crisis  of  1875  the  rent 
was  usually  abated  from  25  to  50  per  cent. 

The  agrarian  legislation  moved  in  two  directions:  toward  an  im- 
provement of  the  juridical  status  of  the  tenants  and  toward  the  creation 
of  a  class  of  small  landowners.  It  is  noteworthy  that  these  laws  were 
enacted  without  the  existence  of  a  strong  agrarian  movement. 

(a)  Protection  of  the  tenants. — This  was  the  objective  of  many  laws 
enacted  during  the  years  from  1875  to  1909.  They  attempted  to  give  the 
tenants  a  greater  independence  from  the  owners;  the  time  of  the  tenure 
was  prolonged;  the  owners'  influence  on  the  management  was  abol- 
ished; the  owner  was  obliged  to  compensate  the  tenant  for  any  dam- 
age or  loss  which  resulted  from  an  unjustifiable  cancellation  of  the 
contract  by  the  owner,  delayed  renewal  of  the  contract,  or  an  increase 
of  the  rent;  finally,  the  tenant  was  entitled  to  claim  compensation  from 
the  owner  for  various  improvements  on  the  land  that  were  still  of  value 
to  the  new  tenants  and  for  meliorations  that  had  been  made  with  the 
agreement  of  the  owners. 

In  Scotland  these  protective  laws  went  still  further:  cancellation  of 
the  contract  by  the  owner  was  prohibited  as  long  as  he  was  paid  his 
rent,  while  such  a  right  of  cancellation  on  a  year's  notice  was  recog- 
nized for  the  tenant;  the  amount  of  the  rent  to  be  paid  was  to  be  fixed 
by  a  special  commission;  finally,  the  right  of  tenure  could  be  taken  for 
life  or  even  transmitted  to  the  next  generation  within  the  same  family. 
These  reforms,  started  in  1886  for  the  small  tenants  in  the  north  of 
Scotland,  were  extended  in  1911  over  the  whole  of  Scotland  for  all 
farms  up  to  50  acres  and  produced  important  and  beneficial  results. 

(b)  Promotion  of  small  holdings. — The  object  of  the  law  of  1892— 
the  first  of  this  type—was  to  promote  small  ownership  of  land  through 
the  creation  of  cheap  state  credit.  The  law  entitled  the  county  commit- 
tees to  buy  land  freely  where  they  found  it  desirable,  divide  it  into 
peasant  holdings  of  from  0.4  to  20  hectares,  and  sell  them  or,  in  excep- 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  427 

tional  cases,  rent  them  to  the  peasants.  For  this  purpose  the  state  gave 
credit  at  3%  per  cent  interest.  The  settler  had  to  pay  only  20  per  cent 
of  the  price,  the  remaining  part  being  paid  by  installments  distributed 
in  100  half-year  portions;  but  one-fourth  of  the  price  might  be  left  as 
eternal  rent.  As  long  as  something  remained  to  be  paid,  and  at  least 
during  the  first  twenty  years,  the  buyer  was  somewhat  limited  in  his 
property  rights  to  the  land:  without  the  consent  o£  the  county  commit- 
tee he  could  neither  divide,  sell,  nor  lease  his  land,  and  was  obliged 
to  farm  it  himself.  This  law  remained  entirely  ineffective.  Only  in  10 
out  of  96  counties  was  it  applied  at  all.  Up  to  1907  only  385  hectares 
were  divided  in  this  way.  The  causes  of  this  ineffectiveness  were  nu- 
merous. .  .  .  The  ineffectiveness  called  forth  the  law  of  1908,  which 
tried  to  improve  the  situation  and  did  help  somewhat.  ...  By  1914, 
12,600  small  farms  with  a  total  area  of  about  80,000  hectares  were  cre- 
ated. Of  these  only  200  hectares  were  bought  by  50  settlers,  the  remain- 
ing being  given  in  tenure.  In  addition  about  3,000  hectares  were  leased 
to  63  small-holdings  cooperative  organizations,  which  subrented  them 
to  1,450  members.  .  .  . 

All  in  all  the  objective  of  these  laws — to  create  a  peasant  class  of 
landowners  in  England — was  not  achieved.  The  principal  effect  of  the 
Small  Holdings  Acts  was  merely  to  replace  large  tenants  by  small  ten- 
ants, and  private  proprietors  as  large  leasers  by  the  county  committees. 
But  even  these  effects  were  limited.  In  Scotland  a  similar  law  of  1911 
did  not  have  much  greater  effect.  The  outbreak  o£  the  war  brought 
the  small-holdings  movement  to  a  standstill,  while  interest  on  state 
credit  was  raised  to  4l/2  per  cent.  After  the  war  a  law  of  1919  tried  to 
stimulate  the  small-holdings  movement  through  the  introduction  of 
further  facilities  for  prospective  settlers.  According  to  it,  the  govern- 
ment itself  was  entitled,  especially  in  counties  where  the  county  com- 
mittee was  indolent,  to  buy  or  rent  land  and  turn  it  into  small  hold- 
ings. The  small  tenants  are  entitled  to  turn  their  tenure  into  property 
in  the  course  of  time,  and  the  price  of  the  land  has  to  be  fixed  regard- 
less of  the  improvements  made  by  the  tenant.  The  actual  effects  of  this 
law  remain  unknown  as  yet.  It  seems  that  many  allotments  have  been 
created,  but  only  a  few  small  holdings  have  appeared  as  yet. 

Of  other  agrarian  measures  we  must  mention  the  settlement  in  agri- 
cultural colonies  of  the  soldiers  and  sailors  who  returned  from  the 
war.  Its  motives  were  to  relieve  unemployment  in  the  country,  give 
soldiers  and  sailors  the  possibility  of  making  their  living,  increase  the 
production  of  food  in  the  country,  and  make  it  more  independent  of 
the  import  of  food  from  foreign  countries.  .  .  .  However,  this  act  has 
had  only  very  limited  importance. 

To  sum  up:  the  efforts  of  the  English  agrarian  laws  to  suppress  the 


428  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

large  estates  have  remained  unsuccessful;  only  limited  success  has  been 
obtained  in  the  way  of  the  creation  of  new  independent  small  tenants. 
However.,  these  laws  have  notably  improved  the  juridical  status  of  the 
tenants  in  England  and  Wales  and  especially  in  Scotland. 

II.   IRELAND 

In  contrast  to  Great  Britain  the  agrarian  reform  in  Ireland  has  been 
followed  by  much  greater  success  and  has  changed  fundamentally  the 
system  of  land  relationship.  There  also  up  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  system  of  the  large  latifundia  dominated.  Half  of  the  land 
belonged  to  seven  hundred  English  owners  who  usually  lived  in  Lon- 
don. They  did  not  burden  themselves  with  the  management  of  their 
lands  but  only  received  their  tenants'  rent,  forwarded  to  them  by  their 
managers. 

As  in  England,  the  laws  concerning  the  disposal  of  landed  property 
were  liberal  in  regard  to  owners.  But,  also  as  in  England,  the  greater 
part  of  this  land  was  tied  by  entails  (see  above).  The  land  owned  by 
the  English  landlords  was  cultivated  by  Irish  small  tenants.  They 
rented  it  in  small  lots,  either  for  one  year,  or  for  a  length  of  time,  ac- 
cording to  the  will  of  the  owner.  The  latter  could  cancel  the  tenure 
contract  at  any  moment  as  soon  as  the  rent  was  not  paid.  The  tenant 
was  not  given  the  right  of  compensation  from  the  owner  for  any  im- 
provements made  by  him  on  the  land  rented.  ...  In  the  years  from 
1844  to  1859  about  50,000  tenant  families  were  deprived  of  their  tenure 
because  of  their  failure  to  pay  the  rent. 

This  hard  situation  among  Irish  tenants  was  due  to  historical  circum- 
stances. Celtic  and  Catholic  Ireland  was  treated  by  its  Protestant  Eng- 
lish conquerors  as  an  enemy  country.  Under  the  pretext  of  felony,  the 
land—about  11,000,000  acres— was  taken  from  Irish  peasants  and  given 
to  English  colonists.  The  former  owners  were  deprived  of  their  prop- 
erty and  debased  to  the  position  of  tenants  with  a  very  insecure  status 
and  with  a  high  rent  to  be  paid  to  the  new  owners.  In  this  way  not 
only  economic,  but  also  a  sharp  national,  religious,  and  social  antago- 
nism arose  between  these  two  classes. 

The  economic  conditions  of  the  tenants  were  miserable.  The  high 
rent  to  be  paid  to  landlords  left  the  tenants  scarcely  anything  to  satisfy 
their  most  elementary  needs.  The  potato  was  almost  the  only  food,  and 
a  bed  was  a  luxury.  The  terrible  poverty  led  to  an  enormous  mortality. 
This  and  strong  emigration  greatly  depopulated  the  country,  which 
previously  had  been  densely  populated.  In  1844  the  population  of  Ire- 
land was  about  8  millions;  in  1901  it  had  decreased  to  4.4  millions. 
Chronic  famines,  combined  with  these  other  conditions,  aroused 
grudges  and  feelings  of  hatred  in  the  Irish  population  against  the  Eng- 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  429 

lish  owners.  This  resulted  in  a  general  unrest,  frequent  disorders,  and 
agrarian  crimes.  Such  a  permanent  state  of  revolution  forced  the  Eng- 
lish to  pass  radical  land  reforms.  Only  in  Protestant  Ulster  was  the 
situation  different.  .  .  . 

Agrarian  Reforms 

(a)  The  reform  of  the  tenure.— -By  the  laws  of  1870  and  1896  the 
three  "F's"  [Fixity  of  tenure,  Free  sale,  Fair  rent]  of  Ulster  were  ex- 
panded over  all  Ireland.  From  now  on  the  tenure  could  be  cancelled  by 
the  owner  only  for  certain  important  reasons,  such  as  nonpayment  of 
the  rent,  breach  of  the  tenure  conditions,  or  neglect  of  the  owner's 
property.  The  tenant  was  entitled  to  compensation  by  the  owner  for 
improvements  and  buildings.  Likewise  he  was  entitled  to  sell  his  ten- 
ure at  will.  By  the  law  of  1881  he  was  entitled  to  obtain  through  court 
"the  statutory  rent,"  or  lower  rent,  for  fifteen  years.  This  law  was  re- 
newed in  1896.  As  even  these  laws  did  not  prevent  the  danger  of  tenure 
cancellation  by  owners  for  the  nonpayment  of  the  rent  in  due  time — 
the  danger  that  menaced  more  than  100,000  tenants— the  law  permitted 
small  tenants  who  were  ready  to  pay  the  rent  but  were  unable  to  do 
it  in  time,  and  who  had  paid  at  least  one  year's  rent,  a  delay  in  the  rent 
payment,  while  the  state  itself  guaranteed  the  owners  the  rent  for  an- 
other year.  This  provision  was  applied  in  130,000  cases.  In  this  way  the 
formerly  deprived  tenants  acquired  a  firm  right  of  land  possession, 
which  approached  a  kind  of  limited  ownership.  From  1881  to  1896, 
382,000  of  the  500,000  tenants,  renting  about  11,300,000  of  the  total 
20,000,000  acres  rented,  applied  for  the  establishment  of  the  lower 
"statutory  rent."  The  rent  was  lowered  by  approximately  20.7  per  cent, 
while  for  the  other  tenants  the  possibility  of  an  appeal  to  the  courts 
proved  equally  advantageous.  In  1896  the  second  15-year  period  began. 
The  rent  of  143,000  tenants,  which  originally  amounted  to  3.2  million 
pounds,  and  had  already  been  decreased  to  2.54  millions,  was  lowered 
to  2.1  million  pounds,  that  is,  by  an  additional  17.3  per  cent.  Since  1881, 
their  rent  had  been  lowered  by  34,4  per  cent. 

(b)  Creation  of  peasant  owners. — The  above  effects  were,  however, 
insufficient  to  pacify  Ireland.  The  Irish  demanded  full  ownership  of 
the  land  which  previously  had  belonged  to  them  and  of  which  they 
had  been  robbed.  In  order  to  end  the  socially  and  politically  unsup- 
portable  relationships,  and  thus  suppress  the  state  of  inner  war  in  Ire- 
land, the  English  lawgivers  had  to  undertake  a  fundamental  modifi- 
cation of  the  Irish  agrarian,  regime  and  a  division  of  the  large  land- 
holdings.  Corresponding  steps  were  made  somewhat  indecisively  at  the 
beginning,  later  with  an  increasing  determination.  After  some  only 
slightly  effective  attempts  to  induce  the  tenants  to  turn  their  tenure 


430  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

into  property  through  the  credit  of  the  state,  which  loaned  first  two- 
thirds  (1870)  and  later  three-quarters  (1881)  of  the  price  of  the  rented 
farm  at  5  per  cent  interest,  to  be  paid  by  installments  during  35  years, 
the  land  commissions  obtained  5  million  pounds  from  the  state  in  1885, 
5  millions  in  1888,  and  33  million  pounds  in  1891,  to  extend  as  credit  to 
the  tenants  who  achieved  an  agreement  with  landowners  concerning 
the  price  of  the  land.  The  new  possessor  had  to  pay  off  the  loan  at 
4  per  cent  interest  during  48  and  later  49  years.  The  law  of  1890  pro- 
vided for  a  reduction  in  the  rate  of  interest  every  ten  years,  and  in  addi- 
tion prolonged  the  time  o£  payment  up  to  70  years.  Until  the  whole 
price  of  the  purchased  tenure  was  paid,  any  division  or  mortgage  of  it 
was  prohibited.  These  measures,  however,  had  only  limited  results. 
About  one  million  hectares  were  bought  in  this  way,  and  73,807 
tenants  turned  into  owners.  During  subsequent  years,  from  1900  to 
1919,  new  laws  were  enacted  with  the  same  intention  and  objective. 
They  stimulated  further  the  process  discussed. 

These  measures  have  had  great  results.  At  the  time  of  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  379,000,  or  75  per  cent  of  the  total  of  500,000  tenants,  had 
become  peasant  owners.  Of  18.8  million  acres  of  tenure  land,  11.4  mil- 
lions or  61  per  cent  had  passed  into  the  ownership  of  former  tenants. 
.  .  .  After  the  war  the  movement  was  resumed  in  1923  in  order  to 
secure  peasant  ownership  of  the  remaining  tenure  land.  The  rent  that 
had  existed  up  to  that  time  was  lowered  by  from  30  to  35  per  cent. 
Thus  in  a  short  time  all  the  Irish  tenants  will  acquire  the  right  of  own- 
ership of  the  land  rented.  If  this  land  reform  does  not  cure  entirely  all 
defects  of  the  Irish  agrarian  relationship,  it  at  least  represents  the  most 
artful  agrarian  reform  carried  out  before  our  eyes.  In  the  course  of  one 
decade  Ireland  has  become  a  country  of  farmer-owners,  who  peace- 
fully and  safely  live  on  their  farms;  emigration  from  Ireland  is  decreas- 
ing; cattle-breeding  progresses  while  the  acreage  of  cultivated  land  is 
increasing;  and  the  standard  of  living  of  the  people  is  improving.  Eco- 
nomic independence  achieved,  political  independence  is  naturally  com- 
ing as  its  fruit. 

III.   FRANCE 

In  France  no  great  social  or  economic  contrasts  exist  in  the  field  of 
the  agrarian  regime;  therefore,  there  are  no  difficult  politico-agrarian 
problems  to  be  solved.  Landownership  there  is  quite  liberal  and  does 
not  know  any  limitations.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  French  law 
favors  the  division  of  the  land  property  among  the  heirs  of  the  owner. 
.  .  .  Large  landholdings  occupy  an  insignificant  part  of  the  land,  the 
greater  part  of  it  being  in  the  hands  of  small  peasant  owners  who 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  431 

cultivate  their  holdings  by  themselves.  In  1892  about  53  per  cent  of  the 
land  cultivated  was  in  the  hands  of  owners;  about  37  per  cent  was 
rented;  and  10  per  cent  was  in  hands  of  part-owners— part-tenants.  Sev- 
enty-eight per  cent  of  the  owners  operated  their  land  by  themselves  and 
22  per  cent  of  them  leased  it  to  tenants.  Tenancy  has  played  some  part 
but  has  not  led  to  any  notable  class  conflicts.  We  have  not  heard  of  any 
significant  agrarian  movements  in  France.  For  the  same  reason  legisla- 
tion directed  either  to  the  modification  of  the  agrarian  regime  or  to  the 
parcellation  of  the  large  landholdings  has  not  appeared.  (Several  laws 
enacted  concerned  only  some  secondary  traits  of  the  land  system.)  In 
addition  it  is  to  be  mentioned  that  the  postwar  tendency  of  legislation 
has  been  in  the  direction  of  a  further  multiplication  of  small  land- 
ownership.  The  law  of  1919  empowered  the  departments  and  com- 
munities to  buy  land  and  whole  farm  properties  and  to  sell  them  in 
parcels  to  laborers  and  poor  people,  the  price,  payable  in  cash,  not  to 
exceed  10,000  francs.  The  buyer  is  obliged  to  cultivate  the  land  himself 
with  his  family  and  cannot  sell  or  alienate  it  during  10  years  after  its 
purchase.  The  law  of  1921  created  a  cheap  state  credit  for  this  purpose. 

IV.  GERMANY 

The  agrarian  relationships  and  policy  were  different  in  various  parts 
of  Germany.  As  to  landowner  ship,  there  were  three  different  regions: 
the  northeast,  where  large  estates  predominated;  the  south  and  the 
middle  of  Germany,  where  middle  and  relatively  large  peasant  hold- 
ings predominated;  and  the  west,  where  small  peasant  farms  predomi- 
nated. This  is  shown  by  the  following  table,  based  on  the  data  of  1907. 


AREA  OF  CULTI- 

•n                                                          VATED  LAND  IN 

REGION                               MILLIONS  OF 
HECTARES 

PERCENTAGE  OF  LAND  IN  SPECIFIED  SIZE 
HOLDINGS  IN  HECTARES 

Up  to  5 

5  to  20 

20  to  100 

100  and 
More 

East  of  the  Elbe                 13.9 
Rhine,  Main,  Thiiringen    5.6 
Remainder  of  Germany     12.3 

8.5 

35.4 

15.1 

22.7 
46.4 
37.9 

28.5 
13.6 
37.3 

40.3 
4.6 
9.7 

Total   for   Germany  31.8  15.8  32.7  29.3  22.2 

In  reality  the  percentage  of  the  land  in  large  landholdings  was  still 
greater,  especially  in  the  first  region,  than  is  shown  by  the  table,  be- 
cause many  latifundia  were  divided  into  small  parts  and  in  this  form 
were  leased  to  small  tenants.  However,  the  predominant  system  in 


432  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Germany  was  the  cultivation  of  the  land  by  the  owners.  Only  13  per 
cent  of  the  land  area  was  leased  to  tenants.  A  portion  of  these  tenants 
were  also  part  owners.  Only  7  per  cent  of  all  agricultural  enterprises 
were  operated  by  tenants. 

The  agrarian  legislation  in  Germany  was  that  of  the  separate  states 
of  the  German  Empire,  and  hence  there  were  different  laws  in  the 
various  states.  Here  we  can  mention  only  the  most  important  features 
of  these  legislative  acts, 

(a)  Division  of  land  communities. — Division  of  the  land  owned 
jointly  by  the  peasant  land  communities  into  the  individual  property  of 
its  members  began  in  Prussia  in  1821.  Soon  other  states  followed  this 
lead.  The  Allmenden  (common  pastures)  survived  only  in  southern 
Germany,  and  here  they  still  occupy  an  important  place. 

(b)  Prevention  of  parcellation  of  landholdings  into  small  strips  scat- 
tered over  a  wide  area. — Side  by  side  with  the  division  of  the  land  pos- 
sessed by  the  land  communities,  juridical  measures  were  taken  to  pre- 
vent division  of  individual  holdings  into  strips  scattered  at  various 
places  over  a  wide  area.  These  measures  were  particularly  successful  in 
Prussia  where,  in  1908,  18.8  million  of  a  total  of  32.6  million  hectares 
of  farm  and  forest  land  were  consolidated  into  landholdings  free  from 
such  scattered  strips.  .  .  . 

(c)  Meliorations. — In  various  states  a  series  of  laws  were  enacted  in 
order  to  facilitate  the  improvement  of  the  land  in  various  ways  through 
voluntary  or  compulsory  cooperative  organizations. 

(d)  Family  entails. — In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  many 
German  states  prohibited  the  establishment  of  entails;  later  on,  how- 
ever, the  prohibition  was  annulled,  especially  in  regard  to  the  land- 
lords' estates.  The  number  and  area  of  the  entailed  estates  began  to 
grow.  In  Prussia  in  1917  there  were  1,369  entailed  estates  containing 
2.5  million  hectares,  an  area  constituting  7.3  per  cent  of  the  total  land 
area.  .  .  .  The  entails  had  a  tendency  to  grow  at  the  expense  of  the  free, 
especially  the  small,  landholdings.  In  several  states  the  right  to  entail 
their  land  property  was  given  to  the  peasants  also,  but  since  the 
peasants  did  not  use  the  right  at  all,  the  law  had  no  effects.  (Several 
other  laws  were  issued,  directed  toward  the  prevention  of  land  specu- 
lation and  excessive  mortgaging,  the  facilitation  of  cheap  and  accessible 
credit  for  the  peasants,  etc.,  but  they  were  of  secondary  importance.) 
Some  of  the  more  important  of  the  other  measures  were  the  attempt 
of  Prussia  to  buy  or  obtain  the  land  from  the  Poles  in  the  Polish  prov- 
inces of  Germany  and  to  transfer  it  into  the  hands  of  the  German 
peasants  and  the  attempts  to  help  the  peasants  become  the  owners  of 
land  purchased  from  large  owners  through  specially  created  land 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  433 

banks  (RentenbanJ^en) .  Though  these  measures  had  some  effects, 
nevertheless  they  made  no  significant  change  in  the  existing  agrarian 
regime  and  the  existing  distribution  of  land  property. 

v.  AUSTRIA  (FORMER  BOUNDARIES) 

The  distribution  of  land  property  in  Austria  was  different  in  its  dif- 
ferent regions.  In  the  Alpine  regions  small  peasant  holdings  were  en- 
tirely predominant;  southern  Austria  was  an  area  of  fairly  large 
peasant  holdings  with  a  considerable  number  of  large  estates  and  lati- 
fundia.  In  the  Carpathian  region  large  estates  predominated  and  were 
exploited  by  renting  parcelled  lots  to  tenants.  All  in  all  the  system  of 
cultivation  of  the  land  by  owners  was  predominant.  .  .  . 

(As  a  rule  the  land  property  regime  was  liberal.  .  .  .  Only  a  few 
limitations  such  as  the  institution  of  entails,  land-community  owner- 
ship, and  so  on,  restrained  somewhat  the  freedom  of  disposal  of  the 
owned  land.)  The  agrarian  laws  enacted  before  the  [World]  War  at- 
tempted to  regulate  several  land  relationships  but  in  the  majority  of 
cases  they  either  had  insignificant  positive  effects  or  in  some  cases  were 
even  directed  against  the  interests  of  the  peasants.  An  example  of  the 
latter  type  was  the  law  concerning  land  servitude.  Since  olden  times 
small  peasants  had  a  right  to  use  the  forests,  willows,  and  pasture  lands 
of  the  landlords  for  the  needs  of  peasant  enterprises.  Such  servitude 
hindered  somewhat  the  development  of  more  intensive  agriculture  on 
the  lands  of  the  lords.  For  this  reason  the  law  of  1853  terminated  this 
right  of  the  small  holders.  The  result  was  favorable  for  the  landlords 
but  very  unfavorable  for  the  peasants.  Many  of  their  small  enterprises 
could  not  exist  without  such  servitude  and  had  to  be  forsaken.  They 
were  bought  up  by  the  great  landlords  and  were  turned  for  the  most 
part  into  forests  or  reserves  for  hunting  by  the  nobility.  The  whole 
country  thus  lost  rather  than  gained  from  such  a  reform.  Other  laws 
concerned  the  dissolution  of  the  peasant  land  communities,  the  regula- 
tion of  the  land  inheritance,  and  various  meliorations,  but  their  effects 
were  very  limited.* 

VI.  RUMANIA 

Among  the  Balkan  states  before  the  war,  Rumania  alone  had  ex- 
tensive, though  not  universally  effective,  agrarian  legislation.  The  coun- 
try was  characterized  by  the  simultaneous  existence  of  a  considerable 
number  of  latifundia  and  small  peasant  holdings  with  the  mediation 
of  very  few  middle-sized  holdings.  In  1905  the  situation  was  as  follows: 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  the  details  in  the  original.  Still  greater  details  are  given  in 
W.  SchifFs  "Die  Agrarprobleme  in  Osterreich,"  Agrar-Probleme,  Berlin,  1928,  Vol.  I, 
82-109,  284-323. 


434  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


No.  OF  OWNERS 

ACREAGE  OWNED 

SIZE  OF  LANDHOLDINGS  IN 
HECTARES 

In 

In 

In  Millions 

In 

Thousandths 

Percentages 

of  Hectares 

Percentages 

Less  than  10 

.       921 

95.4 

3.2 

40.3 

10  to  100 

39 

4.0 

0.7 

11.0 

More  than  100  . 

5 

0.6 

3.9 

48.7 

Total  965  100.0  7.8  100.0 

The  average  size  of  the  small  peasant  holdings  was  only  3.5  hectares, 
and  was  insufficient  for  the  maintenance  of  a  family.  Relatively  well-to- 
do  farmers,  in  the  central  European  sense,  were  practically  unknown  to 
Rumania.  On  the  other  hand,  one-half  of  the  land  belonged  to  only 
5,000  landowners,  and  2,049  of  these  owned  2.2  million  hectares,  or  28 
per  cent  of  the  total  land  cultivated.  Such  a  situation  was  the  result  of 
the  liberation  of  the  peasants  from  serfdom  in  1862-1864.  This  libera- 
tion was  carried  on  one-sidedly  in  favor  of  the  landlords;  .  .  .  516,000 
peasants  received  only  2  million  hectares  of  land.  .  .  .  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances the  peasants  were  forced  to  rent  land  from  the  landlords 
under  the  most  unfavorable  conditions.  Cash  tenure  was  a  rare  excep- 
tion; as  a  rule  there  was  a  share  tenure  or  labor  tenure.  Share  tenure 
was  mostly  of  the  "fifty-fifty"  type.  In  labor  tenure,  for  each  hectare  of 
rented  land  the  tenant  had  to  cultivate  entirely  throughout  the  whole 
year  a  hectare  for  the  owner.  Another  result  of  the  liberation  from 
serfdom  in  this  manner  was  that  the  peasants  had  to  hire  as  laborers  to 
the  owners  under  the  most  unfavorable  conditions.  The  result  was  that 
the  peasants,  either  as  tenants  or  as  hired  laborers,  furnished  the  labor 
for  about  three-fourths  of  the  land  of  the  great  estates.  Besides,  they 
had  to  furnish  their  own  cattle,  implements,  and  inventory  of  produc- 
tion. Of  the  total  inventory  of  the  country  the  peasants  had  nine-tenths, 
the  landlords  only  one-tenth;  the  latter  had  only  8  per  cent  of  the 
working  cattle  while  they  owned  76  per  cent  of  the  grazing  lands! 
Naturally  the  peasants  fell  in  debt  to  the  landlords.  Through  these  con- 
ditions in  spite  of  their  liberation  the  peasants  remained  almost  as  un- 
free  as  they  were  before  their  liberation.  They  were  forced  to  do  com- 
pulsory labor.  It  was  not  rare  for  them  to  be  coerced  to  it  by  military 
troops  called  by  the  lords. 

This  situation  was  still  more  aggravated  by  the  appearance  of  large 
tenure  trusts.  They  rented  the  land  of  the  landlords  in  large  tracts  and 
subrented  it  to  the  peasants  in  smaller  lots  for  a  higher  price.  For  in- 
stance, in  1905  there  existed  one  such  trust  that  had  at  its  disposal  five 
million  hectares! 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  435 

The  peasants'  situation  was  terrible.  The  rent  was  rising  all  the  time. 
The  rapidly  increasing  population  was  causing  the  scarcity  of  land  to 
become  even  greater.  All  this  resulted  in  great  peasant  unrest,  which 
made  necessary  a  series  of  agrarian  reforms  in  the  years  1907  and  fol- 
lowing. The  principal  regulations  were  as  follows:  Labor  tenancy  was 
prohibited.  Special  regional  commissions  were  to  determine  the  maxi- 
mal rent  for  land,  minimal  farm-labor  wage,  and  maximal  rent  for 
use  of  the  landlords'  grazing  land.  Communal  pastures  were  ordered 
established  for  the  peasants  from  state,  corporation,  and  privately  owned 
lands.  Tenure  trusts  were  prohibited.  .  .  .  Further,  establishment  of 
peasant  cooperative  tenure  organizations,  supported  by  state  credit,  was 
stimulated.  They  were  to  be  financed  through  the  People's  Banks.  The 
cooperative  organizations  could  rent  large  tracts  of  land  in  order  to 
sublet  them  to  their  members  in  small  lots  of  10  hectares.  In  1912  there 
were  about  500  such  cooperative  organizations  with  100,000  members 
and  400,000  hectares  of  land.  Special  rural  banks,  similar  to  the  Russian 
Peasant  Banks,  were  created  in  order  to  buy  land  from  the  landlords 
and  to  sell  it  in  parcels  of  5  hectares  to  the  peasants.  Up  to  1912,  2,726 
holdings  with  12,426  hectares  of  land  were  created  in  this  way.  .  .  . 
Some  meliorative  measures  were  also  carried  on.  However,  up  to  the 
time  of  the  war  these  measures  did  not  alter  much  the  formerly  exist- 
ing situation.  The  census  of  1913  showed  that  at  that  time  the  land  dis- 
tribution was  about  the  same  as  it  had  been  in  1905. 

VII.   RUSSIA 

About  80  per  cent  of  the  population  of  Russia  belonged  to  the  peas- 
antry. This  explains  why  the  agrarian  problem  was  the  most  vital  prob- 
lem for  Russia.  .  .  .  After  the  liberation  of  the  peasants  (in  1861) 
Russia  had  large  estates  side  by  side  with  small  peasant  holdings,  while 
middle-sized  farms  were  almost  absent.  In  1903,  16  to  20  million  peas- 
ants had  only  about  150  million  desiatins,*  while  20  to  30  thousand 
landlords  had  about  40  million  desiatins.  The  remaining  land  belonged 
to  the  state,  the  Czarist  family,  the  cities,  monasteries,  churches,  etc. 

However,  during  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  there  was 
a  considerable  shift  of  the  land  of  the  landlords  into  the  hands  of  the 
peasants.  The  land  of  the  nobility  was  about  79  million  desiatins  in 
1860;  about  73  million,  in  1877;  about  65,  in  1887;  and  continued  to 
decrease  subsequently.  However,  the  progressive  increase  of  peasant 
land  did  not  lead  to  an  increase  of  the  average  size  of  their  holdings 
but  only  to  an  increase  in  the  number  of  peasant  holdings,  because  the 
peasant  population  grew  even  more  rapidly  than  the  amount  of  the 
peasant  land.  While  the  latter  increased  by  about  20  per  cent  during 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — A  de&iatin  is  2.7  acres. 


436  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

forty  years,  the  peasant  population  increased  by  90  per  cent.  For  this 
reason  the  size  of  the  peasant  holdings  was  practically  cut  in  half.  The 
large  landholdings  were  managed  only  in  part  as  large  capitalist  enter- 
prises; the  greater  part  of  them,  as  well  as  the  state  and  the  church 
lands,  were  rented  to  the  near-by  peasants,  who  operated  them  with 
their  own  inventory.  In  1905  these  rented  lands  amounted  to  30  mil- 
lion desiatins.  Eighty-one  per  cent  of  the  peasant  land  belonged,  not  to 
individual  peasant  proprietors,  but  to  the  mir.  Only  19  per  cent  of  the 
peasant  land  was  the  private  property  of  individual  peasants.  The  prin- 
cipal regions  of  individual  peasant  proprietorship  were  in  Russian 
Poland,  Lithuania,  and  Little  Russia  (Ukraine) . 

Under  such  circumstances  the  peasants  had  to  look  for  an  additional 
source  of  income  in  the  form  of  work  outside  their  farms,  either  in  the 
city  or  on  the  estates  of  the  landlords.  Many  were  forced  to  rent  addi- 
tional land  from  big  landowners.  This  naturally  led  to  their  exploita- 
tion and  the  accumulation  of  debts  to  the  landowners. 

Agrarian  laws. — Before  the  great  agrarian  disorders  of  1902-1906  the 
laws  enacted  concerned  only  secondary  points  of  the  agrarian  regime. 
In  1881  the  peasant  payments  to  their  previous  lords  were  lowered,  in 
1905  they  were  decreased  by  one-half,  and  in  1907  they  were  abolished. 
In  1882  a  Peasant  Bank  was  created  under  the  guarantee  of  the  state  for 
the  purpose  of  buying  land  from  the  landlords  and  reselling  it  to  the 
peasants.  Up  to  1903  about  9  million  desiatins  were  sold  to  the  peasants 
in  this  way.  The  law  of  1893  prohibited  the  redistribution  of  land  in 
peasant  land  communities  more  often  than  once  in  every  twelve  years. 
In  this  way  peasant  land  possession  was  made  somewhat  more  stable. 
At  the  same  time  the  law  prohibited  the  separation  of  a  member  of  the 
land  community  from  such  a  community,  unless  it  was  sanctioned  by 
two-thirds  of  the  members.  This  naturally  limited  somewhat  the  eco- 
nomic freedom  of  the  peasant.  In  1904  the  collective  responsibility  of 
the  peasant  community  was  abolished,  thus  increasing  the  individual 
liberty  of  the  peasant. 

The  unsatisfactory  conditions  of  the  peasants  created  a  state  of  un- 
rest among  them.  This  led  to  the  outbreak  of  the  peasant  revolution  in 
1905-1906,  with  its  demand  for  the  division  of  the  landlords'  land 
among  the  peasants.  This  revolution  started  a  fundamental  agrarian 
reform  of  the  whole  land  regime  in  Russia. 

Stolypins  agrarian  reforms.— The  reforms  of  1906-1911  were  directed 
toward  saving  the  large  estates  from  annihilation  by  the  peasant  revo- 
lutionary movement;  increasing  agricultural  production;  dissolving  the 
mir;  freeing  the  peasants  from  bondage  and  transforming  them  into 
individual  landowners;  improving  peasant  farming  both  technically 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  437 

and  economically;  and  organizing  the  migration  of  the  peasants  from 
regions  where  land  was  scarce  to  regions  where  land  was  abundant. 

The  Russian  regime  of  landownership  was  throughout  bonded,  pe- 
culiar, and  complicated.  Its  central  point  consisted  in  the  mir  or  peasant 
land  community.  The  liberation  of  the  peasants  in  1861  *  was  seem- 
ingly carried  on  in  favor  of  the  peasants,  but  in  fact  it  was  in  favor  of 
the  landlords.  It  gave  them  the  possibility  of  remodelling  the  manage- 
ment of  their  estates  along  the  lines  of  modern  capitalistic  enterprises. 
It  gave  a  little  economic  independence  to  the  peasants.  They  were  still 
bonded  to  the  mir.  They  did  not  receive  private  ownership  of  the  land 
that  was  given  to  them,  for  the  land  was  still  the  property  of  the  mir. 
The  peasant  was  only  a  co-owner  of  the  peasant  community  land  and 
received  a  certain  portion  for  his  use,  according  to  the  number  of 
"souls"  in  his  family.  At  the  moment  of  liberation  one  "soul"  received 
on  the  average  about  4  desiatins.  Later  on,  owing  to  a  rapid  increase  of 
the  peasant  population,  this  portion  decreased  to  2.6  desiatin  per 
"soul" 

Under  the  technical  conditions  of  Russian  agriculture  this  amount 
was  insufficient  for  even  the  most  moderate  maintenance  of  the  peasant 
family.  Besides,  the  peasants  had  to  pay  (through  the  state)  a  large 
amount  of  money  to  their  previous  lords  for  their  land  and  liberty. 
This  payment  continued  up  to  1905  when,  under  the  influence  of  the 
revolutionary  movement,  it  was  terminated.  In  addition  the  peasants 
were  overburdened  with  high  taxes.  The  normal  needy  situation  of 
the  peasants  was  often  aggravated  by  famines,  which  happened,  for 
instance,  in  1891-1892,  1897,  1898, 1901,  and  1907-1908.  The  government 
had  to  spend  about  four  million  rubles  yearly  for  famine  relief  of  the 
peasants. 

Consequently,  in  all  villages  where  there  was  no  redistribution  of 
land  between  the  village  land-community  members  during  the  last 
twenty-four  years,  the  mir  system  was  abolished  automatically,  and  the 
peasants  were  made  the  private  owners  of  the  land  that  they  had  in 
their  possession  at  that  time.  In  villages  where  the  redistribution  of 
land  was  still  practiced,  the  mir  could  be  abolished  by  the  vote  of  the 
majority  of  the  members  of  the  village-community.  But  every  indi- 
vidual peasant  was  also  entitled  to  take  the  land  that  was  in  his  posses- 
sion out  of  the  land  community  as  his  private  property  and  in  this  way 
to  "go  out"  of  the  mir.  (Several  other  laws  were  enacted  in  order  to 
prevent  such  individual  peasant  proprietors  from  being  dispossessed  of 
their  land  by  land  profiteers  and  to  make  this  great  substitution  of  the 
private  property  regime  for  the  mir  land  system  orderly.) 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  Maklakov's  paper  about  the  conditions  o£  the  liberation  of 
the  peasants  and  the  mir. 


438  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  reform  was  carried  on  with  great  energy.  However,  up  to  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  only  the  smaller  part  of  the  reform  was  carried 
out.  Up  to  1912  only  827,000  peasants  with  a  total  area  of  8.4  million 
desiatins  of  the  former  mir  land  and  2.6  million  desiatms  of  the  former 
state  land  had  become  private  owners.  Qualitatively  the  reform  was 
successful:  where  it  was  realized,  the  technique  of  agricultural  produc- 
tion was  intensified,  the  three-field  system  disappeared,  and  the  situ- 
ation of  the  peasantry  improved  notably.  Under  the  circumstances, 
however,  the  reform  could  not  solve  the  peasant  problem  because  it 
did  not  increase  notably  the  acreage  of  the  poor  peasants;  on  the  other 
hand,  it  facilitated  a  sharpening  of  social  antagonism  between  the  rela- 
tively well-to-do  and  the  poor  peasants  in  a  village,  and  it  also  saved 
the  large  land  estates  of  the  nobility. 

VIII.    SUMMARY 

Leaving  aside  the  reforms  of  a  technical  and  secondary  character,  the 
above  discussion  may  be  summed  up  as  follows: 

1.  Before  the  war  the  agrarian  legislative  reforms  tended  at  the  be- 
ginning to  enlarge,  and  later  on  to  limit,  the  large  landholdings. 

2.  The  majority  of  the  laws  tended  to  improve  only  the  juridical 
status  of  the  small  peasants — the  tenants,  land  laborers,  and  small  part 
owners.  Deeper  and  more  fundamental  land  reforms  were  promul- 
gated only  under  the  pressure  of  revolutionary  movements. 

3.  These  measures  for  the  most  part  changed  the  landownership 
regime  and  the  juridical  conditions  of  the  peasants  rather  than  the  size 
of  the  landholdings.  Before  the  war  there  was  no  serious  attempt  to 
abolish  the  large  land  possessions  in  an  obligatory  way  and  to  replace 
them  with  small  peasant  landholdings. 

4.  The  division  of  the  large  landholdings  took  place  only  in  a  purely 
voluntary  manner,  in  so  far  as  it  was  agreed  upon  by  the  landlords, 
with  no  compulsion  by  law.  It  had  relatively  insignificant  results. 

5.  The  results  were  also  ineffective  in  those  countries  that  tried  to 
limit  the  complete  liberty  of  landownership  through  freely  introduced 
limitations  of  the  landowners'  rights  of  disposal  of  their  lands  (entails, 
etc.) 

The  agrarian  reforms  which  have  taken  place  in  Europe  since  1917 
give  quite  a  different  picture  from  the  above  pre-war  reforms.  These 
postwar  reforms  will  be  depicted  in  the  second  part  of  this  paper. 

B.  AGRARIAN  REFORMS  DURING  THE  WAR 

Despite  the  fact  that  the  activities  of  the  states  during  the  war  were 
concentrated  mainly  on  the  work  of  the  war,  some  agrarian  legislative 
measures  were  brought  forward  during  that  period.  However,  these 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  439 

were  not  intended  to  become  permanent  laws,  but  were  intended  to 
fit  the  extraordinary  circumstances  of  the  war  period.  The  legislative 
acts  of  the  transition  period  immediately  after  the  war  were  enacted 
under  somewhat  similar  conditions.  We  can  distinguish  three  principal 
groups  of  agrarian  measures  enacted  during  the  war: 

1.  Limitations  of  amortization  and  alienation. — Certain  countries, 
namely  Germany  and  Austria,  limited  the  alienation  and  leasing  of 
land  in  order  to  avoid  both  speculation  in  land  and  the  concentration 
of  land  in  the  hands  of  people  of  different  nationality,  such  as  the 
Czechs. 

2.  Compulsory  cultivation. — The  urgent  need  of  food  caused  the 
Central  Powers  to  compel  the  farmers  to  increase  their  production.  In 
England  and  Ireland  similar  measures  were  enacted,  but  they  were 
much  more  stringent  in  character,  as  the  state  secretary  could  order  the 
remission  of  an  enterprise  if  its  productiveness  was  not  up  to  a  certain 
standard. 

3.  Encouragement  of  the  cultivation  of  grain. — In  these  measures,  the 
state  either  established  and  guaranteed  fixed  prices  for  the  cultivated 
grains,  increased  their  prices,  or  gave  premiums  for  increases  in  pro- 
duction. 

C.  AGRARIAN  REFORMS  AFTER  THE  WAR 

In  the  victorious  countries,  such  as  Great  Britain  and  France,  the 
war  and  postwar  periods  have  produced  very  few  changes  in  agra- 
rian policy.  After  the  war  Great  Britain  continued  her  previous  policy 
of  facilitating  the  diffusion  of  landownership  and  the  increase  of  small 
landholdings.  In  addition  she  sought  the  creation  of  [land]  in  the 
colonies  for  those  who  returned  from  the  war.  Ireland  has  proceeded 
in  her  policy  of  converting  the  remaining  part  of  the  tenants  into 
owners.  France  has  continued  her  policy  favorable  to  a  further  increase 
of  small  landowners. 

The  situation  was  quite  different  in  central  and  eastern  Europe. 
More  or  less  radical  attacks  against  the  existing  political,  social,  and 
economic  conditions  have  led  to  new  and  oftentimes  entirely  different 
forms  of  agrarian  relationships.  The  revolutionary  movement  has 
manifested  itself  first  of  all  in  a  more  or  less  successful  attack  on  large 
landownership,  and,  particularly  when  owner-managership  does  not 
exist,  on  large  agricultural  enterprises.  Large  landownership  has  been 
considered  as  an  obstacle  to  equality,  democracy,  and  the  natural  rights 
of  at  least  the  majority  of  men  to  the  land  that  nature  has  given  in 
limited  amounts  to  the  people.  Political  and  ethical  considerations, 
partly  also  national,  social,  and  even  military  considerations,  have 
united  themselves  to  the  agrarian  policy  and  the  problem  of  agrarian 


440  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

reforms  that  may  more  adequately  satisfy  the  land  hunger  of  small 
farmers,  peasants,  hired  laborers,  and  other  propertyless  classes.  All  this 
has  led  to  the  disintegration  and  possibly  even  to  the  abolition  of  large 
landownership  through  division  and  inner  colonization. 

Naturally  the  movement  started  first  with  the  rural  population— par- 
ticularly with  the  peasantry.  But  the  city  proletarians,  who  have  been 
strongly  inclined  toward  socialism,  have  also  given  considerable  sup- 
port to  the  movement  rather  than  attempting  to  hinder  it. 

During  the  years  of  1917-1922  fourteen  states  have  initiated  new 
agrarian  reforms.  These  states  were:  Germany,  all  the  states  formerly 
included  in  Russia,  the  states  of  the  previous  Austria-Hungarian  mon- 
archy, and  the  Balkans  states  (with  the  single  exception  of  Albania). 

These  reforms  have  produced  fundamental  changes  in  the  economic 
and  social  structure  of  the  greater  portion  of  Europe.  The  states  that 
have  carried  out  agrarian  reforms  occupy  7.1  million  square  kilometers 
and  have  a  population  of  267  millions.  In  other  words,  these  states  rep- 
resent 71  per  cent  of  the  total  land  of  Europe  and  59  per  cent  of  its  total 
population.  Over  an  area  comprising  54  per  cent  of  the  total  land  area 
of  Europe  and  containing  33  per  cent  of  its  population,  large  land- 
ownership  has  been  either  completely  abolished  or  will  disappear  very 
soon.  This  annihilation  of  large  private  land  property  has  been  accom- 
plished partly  with  and  partly  without  compensation  to  the  owner. 

In  different  states  the  agrarian  reforms  have  differed  considerably  in 
both  nature  and  content.  Their  character  has  depended  to  a  large  ex- 
tent upon  the  degree  to  which  large  landownership  previously  existed 
in  the  country.  The  most  radical  agrarian  reforms  took  place  in  Russia 
and  the  mildest  in  Austria. 

The  following  short  characterization  gives  the  type  and  the  essence 
of  the  agrarian  reforms  in  all  the  countries  mentioned. 

Russia* — An  abrupt  and  direct  confiscation  of  all  private  large 
estates,  with  no  compensation.  About  24  million  hectares,  17.6  per  cent 
of  the  total  amount  of  land,  were  confiscated  and  passed  to  the  peas- 
ants. At  first  the  peasants  received  a  personal  indefinite  right  to  the 
cultivation  of  land;  later  this  right  was  transformed  into  a  fixed  family 
right  to  the  utilization  of  land  without  ownership. 

Finland. — Provision  for  possible  alienation  of  from  2  to  50  per  cent 
of  the  land  of  those  large  estates  consisting  of  200  or  more  hectares  of 
cultivated  land.  In  all  about  3.1  million  hectares,  17.6  per  cent  of  the 
total  cultivated  land  area,  were  alienated.  This  was  permitted,  however, 
only  where  land  for  small  farms  could  be  obtained  in  no  other  way. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  the  papers  of  Prokopovitch  and  others  in  the  next  chapter 
concerning  the  revolutionary  land  reforms  in  Russia, 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  441 

The  compensation  for  the  alienated  land  was  fixed  at  its  market  price, 
and  new  farms  formed  from  it  could  not  be  larger  than  20  hectares. 

Estonia. — Immediate  and  final  confiscation  of  all  large  land  posses- 
sions. These  comprised  2.4  million  hectares,  or  58  per  cent  of  the  total 
land  area.  There  was  no  compensation  for  the  land  confiscated.  The 
size  of  the  new  farms  was  to  be  regulated  according  to  the  size  of  the 
family  and  the  number  of  its  working  hands. 

'Latvia. — Confiscation  of  large  land  possessions  without  compensa- 
tion. These  large  land  possessions  comprised  3  million  hectares,  or  48 
per  cent  of  the  total  land  area.  Only  from  45  to  100  hectares  were  to  be 
left  to  the  owner,  while  the  new  farms  formed  were  not  to  be  larger 
than  22  hectares, 

Lithuania.— Recognition  of  the  right  of  expropriation  of  large  land 
possessions  above  80  hectares.  The  new  farms  were  to  be  from  18  to  20 
hectares  in  size. 

Poland. — Expropriation  of  the  large  land  possessions  above  60  to  180 
hectares.  These  large  possessions  comprised  13  million  hectares,  or  35 
per  cent  of  the  total  land  area.  The  new  farms  were  to  be  not  larger 
than  15  hectares.  Compensation  to  the  original  owners  was  to  be  half 
the  market  value  of  the  land. 

Rumania. — Expropriation  of  all  large  land  possessions  above  25  to 
250  hectares.  Compensation  was  given  according  to  the  price  of  the 
land  in  1912-1916.  In  addition  to  these  large  land  possessions,  the  pos- 
sessions of  the  state  and  of  "dead  hands"  were  to  be  given  for  peasant 
farms.  In  all,  6.4  million  hectares,  or  21.8  per  cent  of  the  total  land  area, 
were  alienated.  New  farms  were  to  be  from  5  to  7  hectares. 

Greece. — Recognition  of  the  right  of  expropriation  of  large  land  pos- 
sessions above  100  hectares.  Compensation  was  given  according  to  the 
pre-war  prices,  and  new  farms  were  to  be  from  7  to  16  hectares  in  size. 

Bulgaria.— Expropriation  of  land  possessions  larger  than  80  hectares. 
Compensation  was  given  according  to  land  prices  of  1905-1915.  New 
farms  were  not  to  be  larger  than  80  hectares. 

Jugoslavia. — Complete  expropriation  of  possessions  over  56  to  280 
hectares.  Compensation  was  to  be  received  for  the  time  being  in  the 
form  of  rent.  The  sizes  of  the  newly  formed  farms  should  be  regulated 
according  to  the  size  of  the  family  and  the  number  of  its  working 
hands. 

Hungary. — Possibility  of  partial  expropriation  of  large  land  posses- 
sions where  land  for  small  farms  was  not  available  in  any  other  form. 
These  large  possessions  comprised  1.4  million  hectares,  or  40  per  cent 
of  the  total  amount  of  cultivated  land.  Compensation  was  given  ac- 
cording to  the  present  value  of  the  land.  New  farms  were  not  to  be 
larger  than  65  hectares. 


442  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Czechoslovakia.— Sequestration  of  all  large  land  possessions  of  more 
than  150  hectares  of  cultivated  land  and  200  hectares  of  land  altogether. 
Compensation  was  given  according  to  the  prices  of  19124915.  New 
farms  were  not  to  be  larger  than  15  hectares. 

Germany. — In  cases  of  real  need,  land  possessions  above  100  hectares 
to  be  admitted  for  expropriation  provided  such  large  possessions  com- 
prised more  than  10  per  cent  of  the  total  land  of  a  district  (Bezirt(). 
Compensation  was  to  be  according  to  the  actual  cost,  and  "self-support- 
ing farms"  were  to  be  created. 

Austria. — Admission  of  the  right  of  expropriation  of  land  that  had 
previously  belonged  to  peasants,  when  peasants  intend  to  return  to 
farming. 

It  is  evident  from  these  short  characterizations  of  the  agrarian  re- 
forms of  different  countries  that  there  is  a  correlation  between  the  type 
of  reform  and  the  particular  agrarian  conditions.  The  radical  cast  of 
the  agrarian  reforms  has  been  proportional  to  the  degree  to  which  the 
previous  distribution  of  land  was  unfavorable,  to  the  extent  of  the 
previous  domination  of  the  landlord  class,  and  to  the  degree  of  strength 
of  the  revolutionary  movement  itself.  Some  other  factors,  which  are  not 
strictly  economic  in  their  nature,  have  also  had  considerable  influence 
on  the  type  of  agrarian  reform. 

D.  SUMMARY 

After  the  war  and  revolutions,  the  agrarian  policy  of  several  Euro- 
pean countries  assumed  an  entirely  different  character.  We  can  distin- 
guish three  principal  types  of  reforms,  which  are  connected  with  one 
another  to  a  greater  or  less  degree.  They  are  as  follows:  division  of 
large  land  possessions;  improvement  of  the  rights  of  tenants,  some- 
times resulting  even  in  converting  tenure  into  property  ownership; 
compulsory  unification  and  melioration  of  land. 

All  these  reforms  have  been  connected  to  some  extent  with  a  viola- 
tion of  the  rights  of  private  property.  Before  the  war  the  lawgivers  did 
not  dare  to  touch  this  right.  However,  the  violations  as  outlined  above 
have  not  been  a  denial  of  the  right  of  private  property  in  the  socialistic 
sense,  but  merely  a  change  in  landownership  produced  by  economic, 
social,  and  political  conditions.  These  reforms  have  not  disturbed  in 
any  way  the  principle  of  the  private  ownership  of  land.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  have  increased  the  proportion  of  the  population  who  are 
landowners  and  in  this  way  have  reinforced  the  institution  o£  the  pri- 
vate ownership  of  land. 

1.  The  agrarian  policy  connected  with  the  unification  and  meliora- 
tion of  land  was  known  before.  It  was  sometimes  carried  on  even 
against  the  will  of  a  part  of  the  landowners.  After  the  war  certain 
states  have  carried  on  these  meliorations  quite  independently  of  the 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  443 

will  of  the  owners,  basing  them  only  on  a  consideration  of  their  gen- 
eral economic  usefulness.  In  Prussia  and  Austria  governmental  officials 
were  given  power  to  make  such  meliorations,  regardless  of  the  wishes 
of  the  owners.  Because  such  reforms  do  not  change  the  size  of  the  land 
possessions  and  are  very  profitable  both  from  a  private  and  a  social 
standpoint,  they  naturally  have  been  carried  on  more  energetically 
where  the  need  has  been  greater,  so  that  they  have  appeared  to  be 
more  justifiable.  Moreover,  the  war  and  its  correlated  phenomena  have 
shown  us  the  great  economic  importance  of  such  meliorations  and  of 
a  rationalized  scientific  agriculture.  These  same  factors  have  made  the 
people  less  sensitive  toward  justifiable  interference  with  the  existing 
rights  of  private  ownership. 

2.  The  postwar  reforms  of  tenancy  have  differed  in  both  content 
and  degree  in  various  states.  The  following  are  some  of  the  reforms 
adopted  in  various  states:  governmental  fixation  of  tenure  rent;  length- 
ening the  time  of  tenure;  elimination  of  the  right  of  cancellation  by 
the  owner;  conversion  of  tenure  into  private  ownership  of  the  prop- 
erty by  the  tenant,  even  against  the  will  of  the  owner.  Examples  of 
such  reforms  occurred  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  even  before  the 
war.  These  reforms  protected  tenants  from  exploitation  on  the  part  of 
the  landowner,  especially  through  profiteering  due  to  sharp  fluctuation 
in  the  value  of  money;  they  gave  tenants  greater  independence  from 
landowners  and  also  the  right  to  convert  their  tenure  into  property 
ownership.  These  reforms  were  based  only  partly  on  purely  economic 
motives.  The  deepest  of  these  reforms,  the  right  to  convert  the  tenure 
into  the  property  of  the  tenant,  sprang  entirely  from  social  motives 
rather  than  from  economic  ones.  It  has  been  carried  on  without  any 
regard  to  its  eventual  economic  consequences,  without  even  any  con- 
sideration of  the  old  controversial  question  as  to  the  relative  advan- 
tages and  disadvantages  of  tenancy  compared  to  ownership.  These 
changes  in  the  juridical  relationship  of  the  cultivator  to  the  land  have 
been  carried  out  on  a  reasonably  large  scale  in  many  states,  such  as 
Roumania  and  Czechoslovakia.  Their  real  effects  on  the  national  eco- 
nomic life  can  hardly  have  been  so  important  as  to  admit  an  objective 
measurement  in  the  presence  of  so  many  other  factors. 

3.  The  compulsory  division  of  large  land  possessions  is  the  reform 
specifically  characteristic  of,  and  most  decisive  in,  the  postwar  land 
reforms.  What  there  was  before  the  war  had  quite  a  different  character. 
The  pre-war  measures,  such  as  the  land  reforms  in  Ireland  and  Stoly- 
pin's  reform  in  Russia,  did  not  attempt  the  compulsory  division  of 
large  landholdings.  In  contrast  to  this,  the  postwar  agrarian  laws 
have  been  directed  toward  a  compulsory  parcellation  of  the  large 
estates,  not  only  those  that  have  been  rented  to  tenants  but  also  those 
that  have  been  managed  by  large  landowners  themselves.  Hence  these 


444  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

reforms  mean  the  dissolution  of  large  land  possessions  of  all  types,  in- 
cluding large  capitalistic  agricultural  enterprises,  in  favor  of  small 
farms. 

This  fundamental  and  deepest  interference  with  land  relationships 
was  a  direct  or  indirect  result  of  the  revolutions  and  social  upheavals, 
or  was  at  least  intended  to  prevent  threatening  disorders.  It  has  not 
been,  or  has  been  only  to  a  small  extent,  caused  by  economic  considera- 
tions and  motives,  such  as  the  greater  economic  advantageousness  of 
small  farm  enterprises  in  comparison  to  large  ones.  Quite  different  mo- 
tives decided  the  reforms:  the  land  hunger  of  the  rural  population;  the 
struggle  against  the  reactionary  elements;  ideological  factors  such  as 
the  ideologies  of  Democracy,  Equality,  and  Justice;  purely  political 
purposes;  nationalistic  tendencies;  ethical  motives  (gratitude  for  par- 
ticipation in  the  war),  etc.  All  these  have  worked  their  way  so  much 
the  more  easily  because  the  traditional  authorities,  the  tendency  to 
accept  what  existed,  and  respect  for  the  sacredness  and  inviolability  of 
the  institution  of  private  property  were  already  lost. 

The  beginning  was  made  by  Russia,  with  its  wild,  violent,  and  an- 
archical seizure  and  division  o£  the  estates  by  the  peasants,  a  step  that 
was  later  sanctioned  by  the  legislation  of  the  Soviet  government.  This 
example  exerted  a  contagious  effect,  first  on  the  neighbors  of  Russia 
and  second  on  other  countries.  The  country  population  was  stirred  up; 
similar  laws  with  similar  tendencies  were  issued,  although  nowhere 
have  these  laws  been  as  extreme  as  those  in  Russia. 

The  radical  character  of  the  agrarian  reforms  has  been  greater  ac- 
cording to  the  nearness  of  the  country  to  Russia,  the  proportion  of 
peasants  in  the  population,  the  strength  of  the  political  power  of  the 
peasants;  the  less  the  development  of  industry;  and  the  greater  the 
proportion  of  landowners  who  have  been  of  foreign  origin.  All  these 
factors  together  give  specific  characteristics  to  the  agrarian  reforms  of 
each  country. 

Because  the  character  of  the  agrarian  reforms  has  been  a  direct  con- 
sequence of  the  social  and  political  ideologies  and  the  relative  political 
power  of  the  social  classes  involved,  the  forms  of  their  execution  have 
also  borne  the  marks  of  these  two  factors.  This  refers  in  particular  to 
the  character  of  the  land  division.  While  the  laws  usually  prescribed  a 
definite  minimum  size  for  the  new  landholdings  in  order  to  make 
them  economically  self-supporting,  actually,  contrary  to  the  intention 
of  the  laws,  the  land  possessions  created  were  much  smaller  than  had 
been  expected.  It  was  advisable  from  a  political  standpoint  to  give  less 
to  a  greater  proportion  of  the  population. 

For  the  above  reasons,  these  agrarian  reforms  should  not  be  consid- 
ered or  evaluated  as  purely  economic  in  their  nature,  motives,  and 
effects. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  445 

57.  WERNER  SOMBART:  PEASANT  ECONOMY* 

I.  WHAT  CONSTITUTES  A  PEASANT  FARM  (BAUERNWIRTSCHAFT)  ? 

A  peasant  (Bauer),  in  the  broad  sense  in  which  the  term  will  be 
used  below,  is  a  man  who  supervises  an  agricultural  enterprise,  gath- 
ers the  grain  or  other  crops  into  his  own  granary,  and  himself  follows 
the  plow.  The  peasant  farm  is  that  agricultural  enterprise  which  this 
man  works  with  his  family  (as  will  be  described  in  detail  below). 

II.    THE    DISTRIBUTION    OF    PEASANT    FARMS    ON    THE    EARTH 

In  view  of  the  incomplete  and  varied  statistics  on  the  subject,  it  will 
be  impossible  to  get  more  than  an  approximate  picture  of  the  spread 
of  peasant  farms.  However,  this  picture  will  be  sufficient  to  enable 
one  to  evaluate  the  importance  of  this  form  of  economy  with  com- 
parative correctness.  I  am  indebted  for  the  following  figures  to  the 
valuable  compilation  of  W.  Woytinski,  Die  Welt  in  Zahlen  (Bk.  Ill, 
1925). 

The  result  of  a  survey  of  the  spread  of  peasant  farming  throughout 
the  world  and  the  changes  in  farming  during  the  era  of  advanced 
capitalism  is  this:  During  this  period  peasant  farming  has  made  not 
unimportant  gains  in  spread  and  importance,  and  today  is  still  num- 
bered as  by  far  the  most  important  form  of  economic  organization. 

Among  the  peasantry  of  the  entire  world,  we  may  distinguish  three 
groups : 

1.  The  East — the  culture  areas   (Kulturlander)    of  Asia,   China, 
Japan,  and  India,  to  which  Russia  may  be  added. 

2.  Europe. 

3.  The  West— America  and  Australia. 

The  Orient  is  a  purely  peasant  territory  in  which  the  same  organi- 
zations have  persisted  since  a  period  antedating  human  memory.  The 
number  of  farms  is  estimated  at : 


COUNTRY  No. 

China    50,000,000 

Japan 5,000,000 

India    30,000,000 

Russia    22,000,000 

Egypt 2,000,000 

*  W.  Sombart,  Das  Wirtschaftsleben  im  Zeitalter  des  Hoch^apitalismus,  Munchen, 
Duncker  &  Humblot,  1927,  II,  967-972.  Translated  and  printed  with  permission  of  the 
author,  and  the  publisher.  • 


446  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

These  countries,  in  which  other  forms  of  agriculture  hardly  exist, 
contain  about  110,000,000  farms  on  which  between  600,000,000  and 
700,000,000  persons  make  a  living. 

The  number  of  peasant  farms  in  Europe  did  not  in  any  case  decrease 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  and  it  has  been  increased  considerably 
since  the  end  of  the  World  War.  Among  the  larger  peasant  countries 
Germany  has  about  5,500,000;  France  5,000,000;  Italy  4,500,000;  Aus- 
tria and  Poland  each  2,500,000;  Hungary  2,000,000;  and  the  other  coun- 
tries a  total  of  between  5,000,000  and  6,000,000  in  all  between  27,000,000 
and  28,000,000  peasant  farms  throughout  central  and  western  Europe, 
on  which  live  about  150,000,000  persons.  Fully  three-fourths  of  the 
total  area  of  this  continent  is  worked  by  peasants.  Germany  reaches 
this  average;  some  countries,  as  England,  Hungary,  and  Poland,  fall 
below  it;  others,  as  Italy,  France,  and  Ireland,  exceed  it. 

The  West  has  struck  out  different  lines  of  development  in  differ- 
ent countries.  Because  of  the  predominance  of  cattle-raising  in  South 
America  and  Australia,  they  have  become  the  prey  of  large-scale 
management  to  a  great  extent,  although  a  peasant  class  has  been  de- 
veloping there  also  for  some  time,  notably  in  Argentina.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  two  parts  of  North  America,  Canada  and  the  United  States, 
have  always  been  true  peasant  countries  (Bauernldnder)  up  to  the 
present  time.  In  establishing  that  fact  obviously  we  may  not  use 
European  concepts  of  the  limits  of  size  of  a  peasant  establishment.  We 
include  as  pure  peasant  establishments,  the  enterprises  of  175  to  500 
acres  (70-200  hectares),  which  included  33.8  per  cent  of  the  cultivated 
land  in  the  United  States  in  1920. 

We  find  also  that  more  than  four-fifths  (84.9  per  cent)  of  the  land 
in  the  United  States  is  peasant  land.  The  proportion  is  probably  even 
greater  in  Canada.  These  6,000,000  to  7,000,000  peasant  farms  covering 
North  America  have  been  added  to  the  previous  total  of  peasant  estab- 
lishments in  the  world  during  the  past  century. 

The  number  of  peasant  farms  in  the  advanced  countries  of  the  three 
continents  would  therefore  total  from  145,000,000  to  150,000,000,  and 
the  number  of  persons  living  on  them  from  750,000,000  to  900,000,000. 
If  we  include  primitive  peoples,  among  whom  we  find  only  "peasants," 
in  so  far  as  there  is  any  individual  economy,  we  secure  a  total  of  at 
least  200,000,000  peasant  farms  with  a  total  of  one  to  one  and  a  half 
billion  persons  in  the  world.  That  would  include  about  two-thirds  of 
all  humanity. 

III.  THE  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  PEASANT  ECONOMY 

(BAUERNTUM) 

1.  Constancy. — Regarding  the  characteristics  of  the  peasant  econo- 
my, we  may  establish  first  of  all,  a  trait  that  has  been  found  in  all 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  447 

countries  and  at  all  times:  it  manifests  a  great  persistence,  a  certain 
constancy  of  its  nature,  so  that  it  maintains  itself  as  such  particularly  in 
regard  to  size.  It  is  the  "stable  pole  in  the  flight  of  phenomena."  The 
reason  for  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  large-scale  capitalistic 
management  cannot  threaten  the  existence  of  peasant  farming,  for  it  is 
not  at  all,  or  only  slightly,  superior  to  it. 

2.  The  manifoldness  of  its  forms. — Contrasted  to  this  constancy  of 
its  nature,  there  is  a  great  variation  in  the  types  of  peasant  establish- 
ments, as  we  have  noticed  in  other  places.  There  are  rather  important 
differences  between  an  Egyptian  fellah  and  an  American  "farmer," 
between  a  German  Rordebauer  and  an  Italian  mezzadro,  between  a 
Russian  mouji\  and  a  French  jermier. 

The  differences  lie,  first  of  all,  in  a  difference  in  economic  motives. 
We  shall  probably  find  all  gradations  of  economic  thought  in  the  vari- 
ous types  of  peasant  economy;  from  the  pure  principle  of  need  to  that 
of  a  more  or  less  purely  developed  principle  of  gain,  from  a  world- 
removed  traditionalism  to  a  highly  developed  economic  rationalism, 
from  true  community  spirit  to  an  impudent  individualism.  In  the 
most  modern  forms  of  peasant  economy,  as  in  Denmark,  the  United 
States,  or  Australia,  we  meet  an  economic  person  (Wirtschaftssub^ect) 
who  has  incorporated  important  characteristics  of  the  capitalistic  spirit. 
But  one  may  not  speak  of  capitalistic  entrepreneurs  in  these  cases.  They 
still  lack  the  most  important  characteristic  for  that,  namely,  the  capi- 
talistic enterprise. 

Variations  result  also  from  the  varied  formations  of  the  social  order 
in  which  the  peasants  of  different  countries  live.  Here  we  find  a  whole 
range  of  dependency  relationships,  from  partial  serfdom  to  complete 
freedom.  We  find  great  variations  in  the  conditions  of  property  and 
ownership  all  the  way  from  pure  tenancy,  through  share  tenancy,  to 
pure  ownership.  And  we  find  varied  conditions  of  sale,  etc. 

Finally,  the  technique  differs  fundamentally  in  various  countries  and 
portions  of  one  country.  There  are  variations  in  the  plants  cultivated, 
the  intensity  of  cultivation,  the  implements  used,  etc. 

This  manifoldness  of  the  economic  forms  of  peasant  farming  stands 
in  contrast  to  the  uniformity  in  all  other  economic  fields,  just  as  the 
constancy  of  its  nature  stands  in  contrast  to  the  variability  in  the 
organization  (Betriebsformeri)  of  the  others.  Handicraft  must  give 
way  to  capitalistic,  large-scale  production,  but  wherever  they  appear, 
both  forms  of  economic  organization  reveal  an  almost  complete  simi- 
larity of  form.  As  has  been  said,  just  the  contrary  is  true  in  agriculture. 

If  we  ask  for  the  causes  o£  the  manifoldness  of  agricultural  enter- 
prises, we  become  aware  of  them  most  readily  when  we  remember  the 
remarks  I  made  concerning  the  causes  of  the  uniformity  of  modern  in- 


448  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

dustry.  For  we  find  neither  the  psychological  nor  the  factual  need  for 
uniformity  in  peasant  farming  since  the  motives  remain  manifold, 
and  the  means  of  securing  success  in  agriculture  are  by  no  means  so 
uniformly  determined  as  in  the  other  branches  of  economic  life.  But 
we  find,  and  that  is  probably  the  most  important  fact,  no  compulsory 
uniformity  of  structure,  because  agriculture,  and  especially  the  peas- 
ant economy,  can  withdraw  itself  from  dependence  on  the  market 
more  completely  than  any  other  form  of  economy.  Thus  one  cause 
making  for  uniformity  drops  out  or  is  considerably  weakened  in  its 
effects.  Hence  all  the  other  components  of  the  economic  complex  of 
causes  may  develop  their  influence:  nationality,  soil,  climate,  and  his- 
tory. They  are  those  which  would  always  be  active,  but  are  over- 
whelmed in  the  other  fields  of  economic  life  by  the  mighty  and  con- 
stant dependence  on  the  market. 

3.  The  uniform  economic  situation  of  the  peasants. — Under  this 
head  we  shall  consider  the  degree  of  wealth,  the  amount  of  goods  that 
is  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  individual  peasant  farm  as  its  return, 
and  therefore  the  amount  of  the  income. 

First  of  all  we  shall  have  to  establish  the  fact,  certainly  not  expected 
by  many,  that  during  the  illustrious  past  century,  the  peasantry  in  the 
mass  has  found  itself  in  oppressed  circumstances  throughout  the  en- 
tire world,  as  far  as  we  can  follow  the  traces  of  capitalism.  Nowhere 
do  we  find  material  improvement  of  their  living  conditions,  or  an  up- 
ward swing  of  their  situation  that  might  be  compared  to  the  progress 
of  the  wage-earning  class  or  even  with  the  growing  wealth  of  the 
bourgeoisie. 

In  order  to  understand  the  peculiar  position  of  the  peasantry  within 
the  frame  of  advanced  capitalistic  economic  life,  we  must  secure  a  clear 
picture  of  the  circumstances  that  determine  its  economic  situation.  It  is 
clearly  dependent  on  the  combination  of  the  following  three  variables: 

1.  The  size  of  the  return  in  crops  of  every  establishment.  Holding 
natural  factors  equal,  this  is  the  result  of:  (a)  the  size  of  the  land  area 
under  cultivation,  (b)  the  grade  of  perfection  attained  by  the  man- 
agement, (c)  the  amount  of  auxiliary  income. 

2.  The  size  of  the  share  of  this  return  that  the  peasant  receives. 
This  is  decreased  in  proportion  as  he  is  required  to  pay  more  (a)  taxes 
to  the  state,  (b)  services  or  rent  to  the  owner  of  the  land,  (c)  interest 
to  the  money  lender. 

3.  The  prices  that  the  peasant  receives  in  the  market  for  his  prod- 
ucts. 

Although  the  entire  peasant  class  of  the  world  is  in  need,  this  need 
is  naturally  not  of  the  same  magnitude  in  all  places,  and  above  all,  its 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  449 

causes  are  not  everywhere  the  same.  It  may  be  well,  therefore,  to  ex- 
amine these  conditions  in  various  territories  separately.  We  will  find 
three  such  territories  with  relatively  uniform  conditions,  the  same  three 
that  we  have  constantly  distinguished  in  the  course  of  this  discussion: 
western  and  central  Europe,  the  old  civilized  countries,  and  the  co- 
lonial West. 

IV.  PROBLEM  OF   CONCENTRATION  OF  LAND* 

First,  we  can  state  very  decidedly  that  there  is  no  trace  whatever  of 
a  general  tendency  toward  concentration  in  this,  still  the  most  impor- 
tant, of  economic  fields.  When  we  survey  the  conditions  of  operation 
in  agriculture  during  the  capitalistic  era,  we  perceive  that  some  indi- 
vidual countries  have  at  no  time  experienced  such  a  phenomenon  as 
a  movement  toward  concentration  or  even  a  tendency  toward  enlarg- 
ing the  average  establishment.  Among  these  are  France  and  the  United 
States  of  America.  In  other  countries,  however,  we  find  an  absorption 
of  small  and  middle-sized  establishments  during  the  later  eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  centuries;  but  since  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  large-scale  production  has  made  no  progress  in  these  coun- 
tries as  against  the  small  and  middle-sized  enterprises,  nor  has  it  in- 
creased its  average  volume.  We  might  mention  Germany  and  Great 
Britain  among  these  countries.  But  to  explain  increasing  indebtedness 
as  a  form  of  the  movement  toward  concentration  as  some  orthodox 
Marxians  do,  is  unjustifiable,  and  a  procedure  that  ought  not  be  per- 
mitted in  scientific  lines  of  proof.  When  Marx  believed  himself  able 
to  prove  that  the  same  "laws"  of  concentration  existed  in  agriculture 
as  in  other  forms  of  economic  life,  and  when  he  prophesied  the  dis- 
appearance of  small-scale  production  in  agriculture,  he  was,  stated 
simply  and  without  reservation,  mistaken. 

Statistics  thoroughly  refute  this  point  of  view. 

Germany:  The  distribution  of  the  total  area  devoted  to  agriculture 
has  been  as  follows.1 

SIZE  OF  ESTABLISHMENT 

IN  HECTARES  1907  1895  1882 


5                                 .   . 

15.7 

15.1 

14.9 

5-20 

32.0 

29.0 

28.6 

20-100    

29.3 

30.4 

30.9 

Over  100  

23.0 

25.5 

25.6 

Over  200 

17.8 

20.1 

20.8 

*W.  Sombart,  Das  Wirtschaftsleben  im  Zeitalter  des  Hochkapitaltsmus, 
Duncker  &  Humblot,  1927,  II,  822-826. 

des  deutschen  Reiches,  112,  II,  12.  (A  hectare  is  equal  to  2%  acres.) 


450  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

United  States  of  America:  The  average  amount  of  cultivated  land 
per  farm: 


ACRES 


1850  78.0 

1880  71.0 

1890  78.3 

1900  72.2 

1910  75.2 

1920  .               .         78.0 

The  following  table  shows  the  distribution  of  the  land  for  establish- 
ments of  various  sizes: 

SIZE  OF  ESTABLISHMENT  PERCENTAGE  OF  TOTAL  NUMBER 


IN  ACRES 

1880 

1890 

1900 

1910 

1920 

Under  10          .... 

3.5 

3.3 

4.7 

5.3 

4.5 

10-19         

6.4 

5.8 

7.1 

7.9 

7.9 

20-49                .    . 

.  .      19.5 

19.8 

21.9 

22.2 

23.3 

50-99 

25.8 

24.6 

23.8 

22.6 

22.9 

100-499              .       . 

42.3 

44.0 

39.9 

39.2 

38.1 

Of  these,  100-174 

24.8 

23.8 

22.5 

500-999 

1.9 

1.8 

1.8 

2.0 

2.3 

Over  1,000        

0.7 

0.7 

0.8 

0.8 

1.0 

The  next  table  shows  the  percentage  of  cultivated  land  in  each  of 
the  classes  according  to  size. 

PERCENTAGE  OF  CULTIVATED  LAND 
SIZE  IN  ACRES 


1900  1910  1920 


Under  20       

1.6 

1.7 

1.6 

20-49           

8.0 

7.6 

7.7 

50-99 

16.2 

14.9 

14.4 

100-174 

28.6 

26.9 

25.5 

175-499    

32.7 

33.8 

33.8 

500-999       

7.1 

8.5 

9.6 

Over   1,000 

5.9 

6.5 

7.5 

We  see  that  the  majority  of  farms  are  between  50  and  500  acres,  for  this 
class  includes  77,5,  75.6,  and  73.3  per  cent.  The  large-scale  establishments 
are  only  a  small  proportion  and  have  increased  slightly  during  the  last 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  451 

twenty  years,  approximately  reaching  again  the  point  which  they  had 
reached  thirty  years  before.  These  fluctuations  are  correlated  with  fluctua- 
tions in  the  settlement  and  mode  of  agriculture  in  various  portions  of  the 
United  States.  Hence  the  average  for  the  entire  country  does  not  yield  a  true 
picture  of  the  development.  It  is  the  average  of  separate  figures  which  indi- 
vidually represent  very  different  movements.  Thus  the  slight  increase  of  the 
size  of  the  average  farm  in  1900-1920  is  a  result  of  equal  tendencies  toward 
increase  and  decrease.  Four  of  the  groups  of  states  into  which  the  country 
is  usually  divided  for  statistical  purposes  show  a  tendency  toward  an  in- 
crease in  size,  while  five  show  a  tendency  toward  a  decrease. 
States  with  a  tendency  toward  an  increase  in  the  size  of  the  average  farm: 

DIVISION  1900  1910  1920 

East  North  Central  (wheat  territory)  763  79.2  81.0 

West  North  Central  (wheat  territory)  127.9  148.0  156.2 

West  South  Central                 .       .  .    .        52.7  61.8  64.4 

Mountain               .              82.9  86.8  123.3 

States  with  a  tendency  toward  a  decrease  in  the  size  of  the  average  farm: 
DIVISION  1900  1910  1920 


New  England          

.     .     42.4 

38.4 

39.1 

Middle  Atlantic         

63.4 

62.6 

62.5 

South  Atlantic 

47.9 

43.6 

41.9 

East  South  Central 

44.5 

42.2 

42.2 

Pacific     

132.5 

116.1 

102,2 

NOTE. — Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States, 

If  we  ask  concerning  the  reasons  for  the  absence  of  any  tendency 
toward  concentration  in  agriculture,  we  will  find  them  apparent  to  an 
unprejudiced  observer  and  judge.  As  far  as  I  can  see  they  are  primarily 
as  follows: 

1.  Capital  has  no  great  preference  for  productive  activity  in  agri- 
culture. (This  is  also  the  reason  for  the  small  number  of  joint-stock 
companies  in  agriculture.)  And  .  .  .  that  is  probably  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  chances  of  gain,  especially  of  pure  profit,  are  smaller  in  agri- 
culture than  in  other  industries,  due  to  the  decreasing  returns  with 
intensive  cultivation.  To  this  must  be  added  the  fact  that  capitalistic 
ground  rent  has  so  increased  the  price  of  land  that  one  can  hardly 
expect  a  large  profit  on  the  capital  invested  in  a  newly  acquired  piece 
of  land.  And  finally  the  difficulty  o£  securing  laborers  in  agriculture, 
due  to  the  seasonal  character  o£  the  demand,  may  play  a  r61e. 

2.  Agriculture  is  not  under  the  compulsion  of  competition  to  the 


452  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

same  extent,  partly  because  agricultural  enterprises  are  largely  self- 
sufficient  and  thus  entirely  independent  of  the  market  and  partly  be- 
cause the  prices  of  products  are  determined  by  the  most  inefficient 
establishment  rather  than  by  the  most  efficient.  .  .  . 

3.  In  addition  to  all  this,  the  large-scale  enterprise  offers  either  no 
advantages,  or  else  very  unimportant  ones,  which  the  smaller  enter- 
prise cannot  also  procure  for  itself,  whereas  the  smaller  enterprise  in 
some  respects  proves  even  superior  to  the  larger  one. 

The  reason  why  large-scale  management  offers  fewer  advantages  in 
agriculture  than  in  other  economic  fields  is  based  on  two  characteristics 
of  agriculture:  the  succession  of  the  individual  production  processes  and 
the  expansion  of  its  field  of  enterprise.  The  former  makes  the  profit- 
able utilization  of  specialization  as  well  as  the  economic  exploitation 
of  machinery  impossible,  or  at  least  very  difficult;  the  latter  has  the 
same  effect  on  large-scale  application  of  cooperation,  as  well  as  on  the 
unification  of  the  source  of  power.  Specialized  workers  cannot  be 
trained,  for  they  could  be  utilized  for  only  a  short  time  during  the 
year;  and  machines  are  only  incompletely  used  for  the  same  reasons. 
Cooperation  on  a  large  scale,  as  well  as  the  concentration  and  piling  up 
of  power,  are  impossible  because  tasks  are  performed  in  entirely  dif- 
ferent places  at  various  times.  That  is  true  especially  of  seeding  and 
the  care  of  plants.  It  has  been  rightly  said  that  the  agricultural  laborer 
must  go  everywhere  because  the  object  with  which  he  works  is  spread  ' 
over  a  huge  shop.  He  can  deal  with  only  one  plant  at  a  time.  He 
cannot  throw  several  plants  into  a  heap — the  processes  of  combining 
the  materials  is  not  applicable — and  the  plants  cannot  move  along 
before  him.  If  there  are  ten  plants  that  require  ten  minutes  of  one 
laborer,  they  will  require  one  minute  each  of  ten  laborers.  If  the  beets 
in  two  fields  are  to  be  removed,  the  one  field  containing  1  hectare 
and  the  other  10  hectares,  the  ratio  of  the  number  of  laborers  will  be 
1 : 10,  if  the  work  is  done  at  the  same  time  and  with  the  same  intensity. 
In  both  cases  the  performance  will  be  the  same.  Cooperation  may  begin 
only  when  the  product  has  been  removed  from  the  soil,  when  the 
harvest  is  brought  in.  But  even  here  its  expansion  is  subject  to  very 
narrow  limits.  Because  of  the  size  of  the  field  of  work,  the  agricultural 
machines,  up  to  the  steam  plow,  are  built  small  enough  to  be  moved 
about  by  draft  animals,  and  hence  reach  the  optimum  of  their  utiliza- 
tion in  a  small  enterprise. 

According  to  G.  Fischer  (Die  soziale  Bedeutung  der  Maschine  in 
der  Landwirtschaft,  1902)  the  limits  of  utility  of  machines  drawn  by 
draft  animals  is  as  follows: 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  453 


HECTARES 

Drills,  3.7  meters  wide .    .  17.0 

Drills,  1.8  meters  wide                       8.8 

Chopping  machine       .                  .    .         0.23-3.7 

Grain  mower  that  deposits  the  grain          .                         ...  7.1 

Grain  mower  with  which  the  grain  is  collected  by  hand  ....  5.1 

Grain  mower  with  binder                 .                  ...           ....  24.3 

Steam  plows      .              1,000.0 

Two  steam  plows  are  profitable  when  used  38  %  days,  and  one  machine 
when  used  48/4  days.  Even  an  individual  large  enterprise  rarely  reaches 
this  optimum,  and  hence  we  find  that  steam  plows  are  frequently  loaned 
out.  Only  415  of  2,995  enterprises  that  used  steam  plows  owned  their  own 
machines. 

The  steam  thresher  is  more  economical  than  hand  threshing  only  if  it  is 
used  12.1  days.  But  one  could  thresh  121,000  kg.  of  grain  in  12.1  days.  Not 
even  very  large  establishments  thresh  as  much  grain  as  that,  and  hence 
again  we  find  much  borrowing  of  this  machine.  (Compare  also  A.  Lang, 
Die  Maschine  in  der  Rohprodufyion,  Part  II,  1904.) 

It  is  possible  that  the  spread  of  electricity  and  of  benzine  (gasoline) 
motors  will  bring  about  a  change  in  this  situation.  In  the  period  just 
past  these  sources  of  power  have  not  evidenced  their  revolutionary 
effects. 

But  the  small  enterprise  is  able  to  appropriate  many  of  the  advan- 
tages of  large-scale  enterprise,  especially  with  the  aid  of  the  cooperative 
society.  .  .  . 

And,  finally,  large-scale  management  loses  its  advantage,  as  com- 
pared with  small-scale  management,  through  the  previously  mentioned 
fact  that  the  latter  is  in  many  respects  even  superior  to  the  former. 
That  is  the  case  in  every  instance  where  intensity  of  labor  and  interest 
in  the  labor  are  decisive  for  the  productivity  of  the  enterprise.  Both 
these  factors  are  more  operative  in  the  small  enterprise,  in  this  case  the 
peasant  enterprise,  than  in  the  large-scale  one.  To  this  must  be  added 
the  fact  that  the  manager  of  a  small  enterprise  will  suffer  privations 
more  readily,  and  if  necessary  will  evaluate  his  labor  lower,  than  the 
wage  worker  in  large-scale  industry,  if  the  latter  can  be  secured  at  all. 
In  his  independence  of  the  wage  worker  lies  the  final  decisive  reason 
for  the  superiority  of  the  peasant  farmer. 

V.  ECONOMIC  LIFE  OF  THE  FUTURE* 

If  craftsmanship  maintains  in  the  economic  order  of  the  future  the 
modest  position  that  it  possesses  today,  small-scale  agriculture  will 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Parcellation  of  large  estates  into  small  farms. 


454  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

probably  continue  to  grow  in  extent  and  importance.  The  peripheric 
peasant  class  will  become  stronger,  for  it  will  free  itself  from  the 
economic  dependence  in  which  western  European  capitalism  has  held 
it.  The  peasantry  of  western  and  central  Europe,  however,  will  de- 
velop all  the  more.  "Internal  colonization"  *  will  make  further  progress. 
The  share  of  agriculture  in  the  total  economic  life  will  grow  consid- 
erably, as  the  overpopulated  portions  of  our  continent  will  barely  be 
able  to  maintain  life  by  means  of  it.  It  may  no  longer  be  doubted  that 
a  cutting  back  (Ruc^bildung)  of  the  European  tumor  is  necessary  in 
order  to  maintain  the  life  of  the  organism.  Once  the  capitalism  of  the 
Negroes  has  begun  to  develop  itself,  the  days  of  Europe  as  the  exploiter 
will  be  past.  Such  malformations  as  the  English  economic  structure,  in 
which  only  8  per  cent  of  the  population  is  engaged  in  agriculture,  will 
then  no  longer  be  possible.  The  nations  will  have  to  get  back  to  an 
agricultural  basis,  and  with  the  dominance  of  democratic  trends  this 
will  be  possible  only  through  an  increase  in  the  number  of  peasants. 
The  agrarian  reform  program  of  Lloyd  George  will  be  a  model  for 
all  European  countries  in  which  agriculture  has  been  too  much  neg- 
lected. 

From  the  changes  that  large  sections  of  the  peasantry  have  experi- 
enced in  the  advanced  capitalistic  epoch,  we  may  conclude  that  the 
peasant  of  the  future  will  not  be  the  same  as  he  is  today.  The  process 
of  modernization,  and,  in  the  broader  sense,  rationalization,  will  con- 
tinue to  progress.  At  the  end  of  the  development  we  find  the  American 
farmer  with  telephone,  Ford  car,  bank  account,  and  silk  hose  for  his 
wife.  The  peasant  of  the  type  of  Andreas  Hofer,  or  the  Buttnerbauern, 
or  of  Jorn  Uhl  has  passed  for  all  times  (some  will  say  unfortunately; 
others,  fortunately).  Nevertheless  peasant  agriculture  will  always  be 
a  portion  of  economic  life  that  will  permit  the  full  development 
of  the  soul,  for  it  can  never  be  completely  captured  by  capitalism  or 
socialism.  Its  internal  essence  is  proof  against  that.  The  spirit  of  the 
peasantry  can  never  be  a  purely  capitalistic  one,  for  the  exclusive  pre- 
dominance of  the  striving  for  profit  is  excluded.  It  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion because  agriculture  will  never  be  evaluated  solely  from  the  view- 
point of  rentability;  love  for  agricultural  pursuits,  loyalty  to  the  soil, 
desire  for  independence,  and  self-sufficiency,  the  hunger  for  land, 
family  tradition,  and  other  entirely  irrational  motives  play  a  role  in  ad- 
dition to  the  purely  economic  ones.  Where  those  irrational,  noneco- 
nomic  motives  predominate,  men  are  governed  by  the  need  for  sub- 
sistence rather  than  the  desire  for  gain.  TschajanofFs  remarks  on  this 

*  W.  Sombart,  Das  Wirtschajtsleben  Im  Zeitalter  des  HockfopitaHsmus,  Miinchen, 
Dunckner  &  Humblot,  1927,  II,  1019-1022. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  455 

subject  in  his  book  Die  Lehre  von  der  bauerlichen  Wirtschajt  (1923) 
are  worthy  of  attention. 

We  must  also  constantly  remember  that  agriculture  is  the  only  eco- 
nomic activity  that  may  be  carried  on  for  its  own  sake  and  is  therefore 
not  necessarily  the  means  to  an  end.  That  is  true  of  peasant  manage- 
ment, but  in  greater  degree  of  the  management  of  an  estate,  which 
similarly  can  never  be  completely  dominated  by  the  spirit  of  capitalism. 
'One  may  practice  agriculture  for  the  sake  of  agriculture,  may  acquire 
land  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  possession.  But  this  obviously  is  not  ap- 
plicable to  a  business  establishment,  a  steel  mill,  or  a  sulphuric  acid 
factory. 

But  even  if  the  individual  peasant  (and  agriculturalist  in  general) 
should  wish  to  devote  himself  entirely  to  the  capitalist  spirit  because 
of  personal  preference,  it  would  never  be  possible  for  him  to  make  his 
enterprise  a  purely  capitalistic  one,  for  the  complete  rationalization 
(V ergeistung)  of  the  enterprise  is  impossible  in  agriculture.  .  .  . 
[There  has  been  a  discussion  of  this  point  in  another  section  of  the 
book;  the  following  is  offered  as  additional  material.] 

1.  The  agricultural  enterprise  is  opposed  to  systematized  manage- 
ment, because  neither  the  individual  work  nor  the  management  of  the 
enterprise  can  be  completely  reduced  to  norms. 

Thus  piecework  is  much  less  applicable  in  agriculture  than  else- 
where, chiefly  because  the  individual  task  cannot  be  qualitatively  evalu- 
ated. It  cannot  even  be  evaluated  in  the  work  connected  with  harvest- 
ing, and  thus  not  at  all  in  that  connected  with  seeding,  for  the  results 
appear  only  much  later,  and  one  may  never  know  whether  poor  crops 
are  to  be  attributed  to  weather  or  to  labor.  All  agricultural  labor  is 
only  partially  routinized  and  capable  of  being  reduced  to  norms.  It 
must  therefore  be  individualized.  It  has  rightly  been  said  that  the  less 
an  agricultural  task  is  performed  according  to  a  priori  rules,  the 
greater  will  be  its  success. 

In  directing  an  enterprise,  however,  the  manager  must  select  in  each 
case  the  correct  one  from  among  various  possibilities.  "The  science  of 
farm  management  is  able  to  set  forth  only  general  points  of  view  and 
guiding  principles;  their  application  to  the  concrete  problems  of  man- 
agement is  left  to  the  discretion,  yes,  the  feeling,  of  the  individual  agri- 
culturalist." (Scruff.)  This  is  due  largely  to  the  fact  that  the  processes 
of  nature,  as  they  are  manifested  in  the  growth  of  plants  and  animals, 
can  never  be  predicted  exactly.  Hence  decisions  must  be  reached  and 
executed  or  changed  at  every  moment.  Hauling  home  the  harvest  may 
serve  as  an  example. 

2.  Agriculture  does  not  permit  of  a  complete  accounting  system,  for 


456  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

a  complete  evaluation  in  monetary  terms  is  impossible  because  o£  the 
widespread  use  of  farm  products,  the  intertwining  of  farm  economy 
with  household  economy,  and  the  complex  relationships  among  the 
various  branches  of  the  enterprise.  Walter  Scruff  has  attacked  this  prob- 
lem with  great  energy,  and  has  succeeded  in  throwing  some  light  on 
its  vital  points.  Accounting  systems  cannot  be  applied  to  the  entire  agri- 
cultural enterprise,  chiefly  for  the  following  reasons. 

(a)  The  agricultural  industry  is  a  unit  which  utilizes  many  of  its 
own  products.  Thus  raw,  auxiliary,  and  waste  products  of  one  branch 
of  the  industry  are  utilized  for  production  in  another  branch;  as  ma- 
nure, straw,  feed. 

(b)  The  agricultural  industry  is  a  unit  of  management.  Thus  most 
of  the  agents  of  labor  (machinery,  tools,  buildings,  teams),  human 
labor,  and  the  soil  serve  various  parts  of  the  industry  either  concur- 
rently or  successively  throughout  the  year. 

(c)  The  agricultural  industry  is  a  unit  for  the  exploitation  of  the 
soil.  The  expenses  are  distributed  over  a  number  of  economic  periods; 
the  yield  of  a  crop  in  one  year  is  determined  in  part  by  the  crop  that 
was  cultivated  on  that  plot  the  previous  year  and  in  turn  influences 
the  crop  that  will  be  planted  there  the  following  year. 

3.  The  agricultural  industry  is  not  suited  to  the  introduction  of  com- 
plete mechanization. 

Our  greatest  scientific  agriculturalist,  Friedrich  Aereboe,  states,  in 
somewhat  different  words,  the  thesis  which  I  have  developed  here,  that 
agriculture  is  not  susceptible  to  rationalization  (Vergeistung).  In  his 
Allgemdne  landwirtschajtliche  Betriebslehre  (3d  edition,  pp.  219-220) 
he  reports  the  conclusions  of  his  investigations  in  boldface  italics,  as 
follows:  "A  progressive  industrialization  of  agricultural  economy  may 
increasingly  deprive  agriculture  of  the  improvement  of  products  of  the 
soil,  but  the  growing  of  these  products  itself  can  never  be  industrial- 
ized. Agriculture  will  always  remain  that  portion  of  the  national  econo- 
my which  precludes  a  far-reaching  division  and  combination  of  labor; 
but  it  tends  toward  a  combination  of  energies  on  a  cooperative  basis 
when  it  is  on  a  high  level  of  development/' 

58.  M.  I.  TUGAN-BARANOVSKY:  SMALL  AND  LARGE  ENTERPRISES  IN 

AGRICULTURE* 

SPECIFIC  TRAITS  OF  AGRICULTURAL  PRODUCTION  ACTIVITIES 

In  agriculture,  biological  processes  in  their  natural  milieu  are  sub- 
jected to  the  activity  of  human  beings.  For  this  reason  the  agriculturist 

*From  M.  I.  Tugan-Baranovsky,  Foundations  of  Political  Economy  (Russ.)»  Riga, 
1924,  chap.  vii. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  457 

has  to  deal  with  nature  according  to  its  own  laws,  which  cannot 
possibly  be  modified  to  suit  human  desires.  There  is  no  continuous 
labor  in  agriculture;  during  winter  the  work  must  inevitably  stop. 
Time,  tempo,  speed,  and  the  general  surroundings  of  work  are  deter- 
mined by  external  conditions.  The  results  of  agricultural  labor  depend, 
to  a  great  extent,  upon  natural  conditions  that  are  not  under  man's 
control,  and  upon  elementary  forces  whose  action  cannot  be  foreseen 
(weather).  According  to  the  season,  agricultural  labor  must  undergo 
changes  in  its  type.  Plowing  and  sowing  must  be  done  m  the  spring; 
harvesting  in  the  summer.  Since  change  in  the  type  of  operation  is  an 
adaptation  to  the  biological  processes  of  plant  development,  it  cannot 
be  altered  nor  speeded  up,  neither  can  it  be  shifted  to,  or  postponed 
until,  another  time  of  the  year.  It  is  true  that  in  industry  also  there 
exist  certain  sequences  of  the  processes  of  production  in  time,  but  this 
sequence  does  not  hinder  the  possibility  of  a  simultaneous  performance 
of  these  processes.  For  instance,  several  persons  may  simultaneously 
spin,  weave,  and  dye  textile  materials.  In  agriculture,  on  the  contrary, 
each  season  of  the  year  requires  its  specific  types  of  work,  and  these 
types  must  follow  one  another  in  a  definite  order. 

In  industry  the  human  being  can  improve  and  elaborate  the  means 
of  production  indefinitely;  in  agriculture  his  influence  on  the  principal 
means  of  production,  the  earth,  is  very  limited.  In  industry  an  increase 
in  the  application  of  labor  is  not  followed  by  a  decrease  in  the  pro- 
ductiveness of  labor.  In  agriculture,  on  the  contrary,  we  find  a  specific 
natural  law  of  diminishing  retttrns  in  agricultural  labor.  This  law  rests 
on  the  fact  that,  beyond  a  certain  limit,  a  further  increase  in  the 
amount  of  labor  spent  in  cultivation  on  any  given  piece  of  land  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  decrease  in  the  productiveness  of  each  unit  of  labor  spent. 
Increasing  the  thoroughness  of  the  cultivation  of  the  soil  beyond  this 
limit  is  not  followed  by  a  proportional  increase  in  the  amount  of 
product  yielded  by  the  land. 

ADVANTAGES  OF  LARGE-  AND  SMALL-SCALE  PRODUCTION 
IN  AGRICULTURE 

Large-scale  capitalistic  production  as  contrasted  with  small-scale  pro- 
duction does  not  have  the  same  advantages  in  agriculture  as  it  has  in 
industry.  This  is  due  to  specific  peculiarities  of  agriculture.  It  is  true 
that  in  agriculture  a  large-scale  production  also  has  some  very  import- 
ant advantages.  Agricultural  enterprise,  for  instance,  needs  buildings. 
In  a  big  enterprise  the  buildings  are  of  larger  size  and,  if  calculated  per 
unit  of  capacity,  they  are  less  expensive  than  in  the  small  enterprise* 
The  large  agricultural  enterprise  is  also  more  advantageous  in  regard 
to  the  means  of  production. 


458  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

According  to  certain  German  calculations,  one  plow  can  be  utilized 
on  a  farm  not  smaller  than  30  hectares,  one  sowing  and  harvesting 
machine  on  a  farm  not  smaller  than  70  hectares,  one  steam  threshing 
machine  on  a  farm  not  smaller  than  250  hectares,  and  one  steam 
tractor  on  a  farm  not  smaller  than  1,000  hectares.  Similarly,  the  large 
agricultural  enterprise  can  utilize  to  greater  advantage  the  force  of 
working  cattle,  etc. 

However,  these  and  similar  advantages  of  the  large  agricultural 
enterprises  must  face  some  disadvantages:  large  capitalistic  enterprise 
(we  do  not  know  at  the  present  time  of  any  other  kind)  requires  hired 
labor,  and  a  hired  laborer  does  not  take  such  good  care  of  the  machin- 
ery and  cattle  as  the  small  owner.  Similarly  for  buildings:  a  small 
owner  can  himself  participate  in  the  work  of  building  and  thus  reduce 
his  building  expenses.  It  is  true  that  in  industry  also  hired  labor  is  not 
interested  in  taking  good  care  of  the  instruments  and  means  of  pro- 
duction. In  agriculture,  however,  this  point  has  far  greater  significance 
as  compared  with  industry,  because  in  agriculture  the  process  of  labor 
is  taking  place  on  a  large  territory  and,  therefore,  is  less  accessible  to 
the  supervision  of  the  owner;  in  addition,  the  living  stock,  especially 
the  cattle,  requires  particularly  good  care. 

The  most  important  advantage  of  a  large  industrial  enterprise  in 
comparison  with  a  small  one  lies  in  an  enormous  increase  of  produc- 
tivity through  the  substitution  of  machines  for  hand  labor.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  the  factory  has  conquered  the  artisan.  This  advantage, 
again,  does  not  have  such  great  significance  in  agriculture.  The  essen- 
tial function  of  all  machinery  is  to  furnish  a  substitute  for  human 
labor.  But  in  agriculture  the  result  of  production  depends,  to  a  greater 
extent,  upon  nature,  which  cannot  be  replaced  by  machines.  The  best 
plow  cannot  transform  unfertile  soil  into  fertile.  Further,  in  agricul- 
ture, a  machine  has  to  operate  in  natural  conditions  that  are  often  so 
complex,  peculiar,  and  variable  as  to  make  any  complete  adjustment 
of  a  machine  impossible  (irregular  surface,  weather  conditions,  etc.). 
For  this  reason  the  machine  has  not  played  such  a  revolutionizing  r61e 
in  agriculture  as  it  has  in  industry.  The  steam  plow,  for  instance,  did 
not  achieve  much  importance  in  agriculture  and,  contrary  to  the  expec- 
tations of  Marx  and  Liebknecht,  did  not  cause  such  a  revolution  there 
as  did  the  mechanical  weaving  loom  in  industry.  "The  use  of  the  steam 
plow  requires  certain  natural  conditions,  which  do  not  exist  every- 
where. It  cannot  be  used  on  sandy  soil  and  in  districts  with  irregular, 
rough,  and  very  uneven  surface." 

Furthermore,  in  the  factories  machines  are  stationary;  in  agriculture, 
they  have  to  be  moved  from  place  to  place.  Hence  agricultural  ma- 
chines have  to  be  small,  and  therefore  less  productive.  At  the  same 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  459 

time  in  agriculture  (due  to  the  temporary  use  of  machines  by  each 
farmer)  an  arrangement  for  the  cooperative  use  of  machinery  can  be 
made  quite  easily.  Several  small  owners  can  buy  machinery  for  a  com- 
mon use  and  in  this  way  derive  the  advantages  of  a  large  capitalistic 
enterprise. 

In  general,  the  saving  of  labor  through  use  of  machinery  is  much 
more  limited  in  agriculture  than  in  industry.  According  to  the  com- 
putations of  Fischer  for  Germany,  the  mowing  of  one  hectare  by  ma- 
chine is  only  eight  marks  cheaper  than  mowing  by  hand.  The  cultiva- 
tion and  harvesting  of  wheat  by  machinery  decreases  the  expenses  only 
seventeen  marks  per  hectare.  This  reduction  of  the  expenses  of  produc- 
tion through  machinery  is  relatively  insignificant. 

One  of  the  very  important  ways  of  increasing  efficiency  in  industry  is 
through  specialization  of  labor.  In  agriculture,  again,  specialization  of 
labor  is  very  much  restricted  because  the  changes  of  the  seasons  call 
forth  seasonal  changes  in  the  type  of  labor  demanded.  For  instance,  an 
agricultural  workman  cannot  specialize  in  mowing,  for  under  such 
circumstances  he  would  have  work  only  a  few  weeks  a  year.  For  this 
reason  we  see  only  very  limited  specialization  of  labor  in  agriculture; 
the  larger  agricultural  estate  that  employs  a  considerable  amount  of 
workmen  cannot  increase  the  efficiency  of  its  work  by  using  the 
labor  of  specialized  workmen. 

The  larger  agricultural  estate  unquestionably  has  an  advantage  in 
that  it  does  not  lose  much  space  in  roads  and  boundaries,  and  requires 
less  expenditure  for  fencing  the  land.  But  these  advantages  are  rather 
small.  As  to  the  advantages  of  the  larger  estate  in  carrying  on  big 
operations  because  it  has  the  facilities  of  credit  for  buying  and  selling- 
all  these  advantages  are  available  to  the  small  owners  through  coop- 
eration. 

In  big  industry  the  possibility  of  employing  scientific  experts  for  the 
guidance  of  the  enterprise  and  at  the  same  time  for  preserving  its 
secrets  is  of  great  importance.  For  a  large  estate  this  advantage  is  of 
small  significance,  because  the  fields  are  open  for  everyone  and  cannot 
hide  any  secrets.  Agricultural  productiveness  in  its  nature  is  an  open 
and  demonstrative  productiveness;  every  intelligent  peasant  can  learn 
its  secrets  from  his  neighbor,  a  large  estate  owner.  As  for  the  advantage 
of  scientific  guidance,  public  agronomy  and  public  specialists  in  agri- 
culture can  give  information  and  are  making  this  advantage  fully  as 
accessible  to  farmers  and  peasants  as  it  is  to  a  large  landlord.1 

The  other  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  the  large  and  small  enter- 
prises in  agriculture  are  not  as  clear  and  unquestionable  as  in  indus- 

1  See  a  sketch  of  the  organization  of  social  agronomy  by  A.  Tschuprow,  Small  Agri- 
culture and  Its  Principal  Needs  (Russ.),  1907,  chap.  iv. 


460  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

try.  Small  farming  has  one  conspicuous  advantage,  the  great  interest 
of  the  producer  in  the  process  of  his  work,  which  is  of  special  signifi- 
cance and  which  is  less  in  a  capitalist  agriculture.  Farming  requires 
very  careful  work  since  it  has  to  deal  with  living  organisms.  It  is  not 
surprising,  therefore,  that  the  best  breeds  of  cattle  were  produced  by 
small  farming  (Swiss,  Bavarian,  Dutch,  Jersey).2  Generally  the  more 
intensive  the  agricultural  production,  and  the  more  work  and  care 
invested  in  it  per  unit  of  land,  the  greater  are  the  advantages  of 
smaller  farms  as  compared  with  larger  agricultural  enterprises.  Every 
agricultural  enterprise  is  adjusting  itself  to  a  certain  amount  of  land. 
In  the  process  of  agricultural  production  heavy  loads  have  to  be  carried 
over  from  one  place  to  another  (manure,  agricultural  machinery,  har- 
vested products),  and  hence  the  distance  from  the  dwellings  to  the 
fields  plays  an  important  role.  The  longer  the  distance,  the  greater  the 
labor  that  must  be  spent  in  the  transportation  of  the  loads. 

A  German  economist,  Thiinen,  has  made  a  computation  of  how  the 
factor  of  distance  between  the  piece  of  land  and  farm  buildings  influ- 
ences the  rent,  that  is,  the  net  profit  from  a  lot  of  land  after  subtracting 
all  the  expenditures  of  production  and  interest  on  the  capital  invested. 
According  to  his  computations,  if  the  above-mentioned  distance  is 
equal  to  zero,  the  land  rent  will  be  23  marks  from  one  hectare,  the  yield 
from  the  hectare  being  equal  to  25  hectoliters  of  rye.  If  the  land  under 
cultivation  is  at  a  distance  of  1,000  meters  from  the  -estate,  the  rent  will 
be  equal  to  17  marks;  if  at  2,000  meters,  14  marks;  at  3,000  meters,  10 
marks;  at  4,000  meters,  5  marks;  at  5,000  meters  the  rent  is  equal  to 
zero.  The  greater  the  distance  between  the  cultivated  land  and  the 
estate,  the  smaller  is  the  rent  of  the  landowner;  at  too  great  a  distance 
transportation  swallows  all  the  rent. 

But  with  an  increase  in  the  intensity  of  farming  more  loads  have  to 
be  transported  per  land  unit;  consequently  the  expenditure  for  trans- 
portation per  unit  of  distance  becomes  greater. 

Indeed,  facts  indicate  that  large  capitalistic  enterprises  are  found  for 
the  mast  part  in  the  field  of  extensive  agriculture.  For  instance,  lum- 
bering, in  which  capitalistic  enterprise  results  in  an  extermination 
of  the  natural  forests,  permits  the  largest  enterprises.  In  fact,  in  colo- 
nies with  small  population  the  lumbering  enterprises  are  of  very  great 

2  The  best  analysis  of  the  peculiarities  of  agricultural  production  and  the  comparative 
advantages  of  large  and  small  farming  is  given  in  the  well-known  book  of  David,  So- 
riahsmus  und  Landwirtschajt.,  1903.  See  also  S.  Bulgakov,  Capitalism  and  Agriculture 
(Russ.),  1900;  Hertz,  Agrarische  Fragen,  1899;  Bychovsky,  "Limits  of  Capitalism  in 
Agriculture,"  in  Eorba  za  zemlu  (Russ.),  1908;  N.  Sukhanov,  On  the  Problem  of  the 
Evolution  of  Agriculture  (Russ.),  1909.  This  last  book  is  of  special  interest  as  in  it,  as 
well  as  in  other  works  of  the  same  author,  a  clear  separation  of  the  economic  and  tech- 
nical aspects  of  the  different  forms  of  agricultural  enterprise  are  given.  In  most  of  the 
books  on  the  agricultural  problems  there  is  a  confusion  of  these  two  aspects. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  461 

size.  The  condition  is  similar  in  countries  with  extensive  cattle  grazing. 
In  Australia  certain  large  ranchers  have  several  hundred  thousand 
sheep.  Agriculture,  using  the  term  in  a  strict  sense,  requires  some- 
what smaller  enterprises.  The  largest  agricultural  enterprises  were  the 
American  wheat  farms  of  the  far  West,  which  carried  on  very  ex- 
tensive exploitative  farming  with  the  aid  of  most  elaborate  machinery. 
Some  of  these  farms  reached  as  many  as  10,000  or  even  more  hectares, 
and  represented  regular  wheat  factories. 

After  agriculture  has  reached  the  intensive  stage,  such  large  farms 
cannot  exist.  In  England,  for  example,  farms  larger  than  500  hectares 
are  a  very  rare  exception.  The  majority  of  the  farms  are  considerably 
smaller,  consisting  of  only  a  few  dozens  of  hectares. 

Aside  from  natural  obstacles,  a  large  capitalistic  enterprise  in  agri- 
culture has  to  meet  certain  social  obstacles  which  hinder  its  growth. 
Capitalistic  farming  has  considerable  difficulty  in  finding  farm  labor- 
ers; this  constitutes  the  labor  problem  in  agriculture.  It  is  not  profitable 
for  an  agricultural  enterprise  to  employ  a  large  number  of  workmen 
permanently,  since  they  are  needed  only  temporarily;  on  the  other 
hand,  the  city  laborers  cannot  be  utilized.  Hence  capitalistic  farming  is 
deeply  interested  in  the  coexistence  of  small  peasant  farming,  which 
would  furnish  working  hands  to  the  capitalistic  entrepreneur.  Mean- 
while the  number  of  farm  laborers  is  decreasing  in  practically  all  capi- 
talistic countries  (migration  to  the  city). 

However,  the  principal  basis  for  the  stability  of  the  small  agricul- 
tural enterprise  is  not  its  economic  advantages  as  contrasted  with  large 
farming,  but  the  fact  that,  while  large  farming  as  a  really  capitalistic 
enterprise  exists  for  the  purpose  of  rent  and  profit,  small  farming  exists 
to  provide  the  means  of  subsistence  for  the  producer.  A  peasant  will 
continue  his  farming  even  if  conditions  are  such  that  he  receives  noth- 
ing but  an  average  wage;  capitalistic  farming,  on  the  contrary,  ceases 
if  conditions  are  such  that  the  income  covers  only  expenses  and  yields 
no  profit  or  rent.  Small  farming,  therefore,  can  exist  and  develop  with 
a  considerably  smaller  gross  income  than  would  be  essential  in  capi- 
talistic enterprise.  In  addition  to  these  facts,  small  farming  depends  less 
upon  the  fluctuations  of  the  market  prices  on  agricultural  products 
than  does  large  capitalistic  farming,  for  the  small  farmer  produces 
partly  for  family  consumption  while  the  large  enterprise  produces  ex- 
clusively for  the  market.  The  lowering  of  the  prices  of  agricultural 
products,  which  very  often  ruins  large  farming,  is  not  as  destructive  to 
smaller  farming,  as  a  small  producer  consumes  a  considerable  propor- 
tion of  his  products  on  his  own  farm. 

In  drawing  up  the  balance  between  the  comparative  vitality  and  sta- 
bility of  large  capitalistic  as  against  small-labor  farming,  we  have  to 


462  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

conclude  that  at  the  present  time  this  balance  is  rather  in  favor  of 
small  farming.  The  fact  that  in  several  countries  capitalistic  agriculture 
is  practiced  to  a  great  extent  and  that  in  certain  countries,  notably  in 
England,  it  is  almost  the  only  type  of  agriculture,  does  not  contradict 
the  above  conclusion.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  development  of  capital- 
istic agriculture  has  not  been  the  result  of  a  greater  economic  power  as 
compared  with  peasant-labor  agriculture,  but  has  been  merely  a  direct 
result  of  large  estate  ownership,  which  in  its  turn  originated  through 
political  violence  and  coercion.  The  concentration  of  the  ownership  of 
land  in  the  hands  of  a  small  group  of  the  ruling  classes  was  not  due  to 
any  greater  economic  power  of  the  large  agricultural  enterprise  as  com- 
pared to  the  small.  The  land  was  taken  by  force  by  the  ruling  classes, 
together  with  the  peasant,  who  was  turned  into  a  slave  or  serf.  Later 
the  peasant  received  his  freedom,  but  a  considerable  portion  of  the  land 
remained  in  the  hands  of  the  landlord.  This  is  the  origin  of  large  capi- 
talistic landownership  as  it  exists  in  all  countries  of  Europe;  the  logical 
result  has  been  capitalistic  agriculture. 

Large  landownership  originated  very  long  ago  when,  during  the 
period  of  very  extensive  types  of  farming,  the  ruling  classes  took  the 
land.  At  the  present  time,  when  intensive  farming  is  gradually  replac- 
ing the  extensive  type,  conditions  are  less  favorable  for  the  develop- 
ment of  large  agricultural  farming.  And  yet  we  do  not  see  any  radical 
changes  and  substitution  of  one  form  of  agricultural  farming  for  the 
other.  This  can  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  all  agrarian  relationships 
are  very  conservative.*  In  order  to  increase  the  extent  of  an  agricultural 
enterprise,  it  is  necessary  to  increase  the  land  space.  This  could  be 
achieved  either  by  renting  or  by  buying  the  necessary  land.  However, 
renting  land  is  not  always  possible.  Buying  and  selling  is  also  accom- 
panied by  considerable  difficulty.  Due  to  primogeniture  entails  and 
other  juridical  restrictions,  it  is  very  often  impossible  to  sell  land  under 
any  conditions;  in  England  three-fourths  of  the  privately  owned  land 
is  bound  in  this  manner  to  the  owners. 

On  the  other  hand,  similar  restrictions  exist  in  regard  to  small  land- 
holdings.  The  selling  of  land  is  very  heavily  taxed  in  favor  of  the 
state.  These  factors,  as  well  as  some  others,  cause  agrarian  relations  to 
be  very  stable  and  subject  only  to  very  slow  changes. 

Generally  speaking,  there  are  no  universal  laws  of  the  development 
of  agricultural  enterprises  that  would  be  true  for  all  countries.  In  in- 
dustry large  enterprise  is  growing  faster  than  small;  in  agriculture  the 
reverse  situation  exists,  for  there  has  been  a  noticeable  growth  of  small 
farming  at  the  expense  of  large.  In  general  the  agrarian  relationships 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — This  was  written  before  the  World  War  and  the  accompanying 
revolutions. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  463 

and  agrarian  development  cannot  be  described  in  any  universal  formula 
because  they  are  extremely  individual  and  peculiar,  varying  from  coun- 
try to  country  and  from  time  to  time.  Most  unusual  combinations  of 
various  forms  of  agriculture  are  found  in  different  countries.  At  least, 
it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  peasant  farming  has  not  been  retreating, 
as  contrasted  with  capitalistic  farming,  but  has  been  gaining  at  the 
expense  of  the  latter. 

This  is  clearly  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that,  contrary  to  the  situation 
in  industry,  the  percentage  that  the  workmen  employed  in  agriculture 
form  of  the  total  population  engaged  in  agriculture  has  been  decreas- 
ing rather  than  increasing,  and  the  percentage  of  independent  farm 
owners  has  been  increasing.  This  is  shown  by  the  following  German 
data:3 

DISTRIBUTION  OF  POPULATION  OCCUPIED  IN  AGRICULTURE 


NUMBER 

PER  CENT 

Owners 

Upper 
Employes 

Hired 
Workmen 

Owners 

Upper        Hired 
Employes  Workmen 

1895 
1907 

2,568,725 
2,500,974 

96,173 
98,815 

3,724,145 
3,400,437 

40.3 

41.7 

1.5         58.2 
1.6         56.7 

A  somewhat  similar  condition  is  observed  in  other  countries.  In  the 
United  States,  for  instance,  the  percentage  of  employes  and  workmen 
in  the  total  population  engaged  in  agriculture  has  changed  as  follows* : 

1870  1880  1890  1900 

52  43.3  41.4  34.6 

In  1870  the  number  of  farm  laborers  in  America  exceeded  the  num- 
ber of  independent  owners.  In  1900  the  owners  constituted  two-thirds 
of  all  the  agricultural  population  of  America. 

Social  relationships  connected  with  agricultural  production  are  pecu- 
liar to  a  great  extent  and  do  not  permit  any  generalizations  such  as  can 
be  made  for  industry.  The  reason  for  this  fact  is  that  the  human  being 
in  agriculture  is  more  dependent  upon  the  environmental  factors.  In 
management  in  agriculture  there  are  fewer  specific  laws  that  are  inde- 
pendent of  the  laws  of  the  material  environment  than  there  are  in  in- 

*  Official  data  of  the  German  census  give  entirely  different  figures  for  agricultural 
laborers.  It  is  necessary  to  remember,  however,  that  German  statistics  compute  as  work- 
men all  the  members  of  the  farm  owner's  family  if  they  are  helping  the  owner  in  his 
work.  To  determine  the  number  of  real  hired  laborers  it  is  necessary  to  subtract  all  these 
helping  members  of  the  family  from  the  total  number  of  workmen.  See  Albert  Hesse, 
"Berufhche  und  sociale  Gliedenmg  im  deutschen  Reich,"  Jahrbiicher  /.  Nationalo^ono' 
mte  uber  $tatisti\,  III.  F.,  Band  XL,  Heft  6. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Though  the  trend  was  that  indicated  by  the  author,  later  data  give 
somewhat  different  figures.  See  U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook,  1923,  p.  511. 


464  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

dustry.  Therefore,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  economists  have  studied 
industry  proper  much  more  than  agriculture.  In  the  field  of  industry 
an  economist  feels  himself  more  competent  than  in  the  field  of  agricul- 
ture, for  in  the  latter  case  the  laws  of  the  surrounding  nature,  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  investigate,  control  the  situation. 

As  a  result  of  this  situation  economists  developed  a  tendency  to  sub- 
stitute laws  obtained  from  the  study  of  industrial  conditions  for  those 
that  might  have  been  obtained  from  an  independent  investigation  of 
agrarian  relationships.  This  tendency  was  especially  strong  among 
those  economists  who  did  much  toward  transforming  political  econo- 
my into  an  exact  science,  for  only  on  the  basis  of  the  study  of  relation- 
ships in  industry  could  such  a  science  be  built.  Karl  Marx,  in  particu- 
lar, gave  no  more  or  less  careful  study  to  agrarian  relationships.  He 
was  quite  familiar  with  English  industry,  particularly  with  the  cotton 
industry.  Sombart  rightly  remarks  that  when  Marx  is  talking  about 
a  factory  in  general,  he  has  always  in  mind  one  particular  type  of 
factory,  namely  the  cotton  mill.  He  was  not  deeply  interested  in  agrar- 
ian relationships  and  his  factual  knowledge  of  this  field  was  very  lim- 
ited, as  is  clearly  shown  in  the  third  volume  of  Capital,  a  volume 
devoted  to  a  great  extent  to  agrarian  problems. 

Nevertheless,  agrarian  relationships  play  too  important  a  role  in 
modern  social  life  to  be  ignored  or  neglected,  even  by  Marx.  Marx, 
without  a  special  study  of  agriculture,  simply  extends  his  conclusions 
about  industry  boldly  into  agriculture;  hence  his  generalizations  con- 
cerning agriculture  result.  In  industry  there  has  been  a  tendency  to- 
ward concentration  of  production  and  the  replacement  of  handicraft 
manufacturing  by  the  capitalistic  factory.  He  thought  that,  in  a  similar 
way,  peasant  farming  was  bound  to  be  driven  out  and  replaced  by 
capitalistic  agriculture.4 

There  is  no  question  now  that  this  was  the  viewpoint  of  Marx,  in 
spite  of  the  denial  of  some  of  his  followers.5  Following  their  teacher, 

4  See,  for  instance,  "the  existing  lower  and  middle  classes,  small  producers,  merchants, 
rentiers,  craftsmen,  and  peasants — all  these  classes  are  becoming  proletarians,"  Com- 
mumst  Manifesto,  5th  ed.,  1891,  p.  15,  In  volume  III  of  Capital  Marx  expresses  some- 
what similar  ideas.  "The  causes  for  the  decrease  xn  small  farming  are  as  follows:  the 
annihilation  by  the  large  industry  of  home  manufacturing,  which  was  a  normal  supple- 
ment to  small  farming;  decrease  in  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  exploited  in  small  farming; 
concentration  in  the  hands  of  larger  estate  owners  of  the  communal  land,  which  every- 
where forms  the  second  supplement  of  small  farming  and  which  gives  the  possibility  of 
keeping  cattle;  the  competition  of  large  agricultural  estates,  which  may  be  either  of  the 
plantation  or  the  capitalistic  type."  (Das  Kapital,  1894,  III,  341.) 

6  Konstedt,  the  author  of  the  book  Agrarfrage  und  Social  democratic  (1906),  whose 
historical  analysis  is  recognized  by  Kautsky  as  "all  in  all  spotless,"  indicates  that,  accord- 
ing to  Marx,  the  peasant's  property  and  peasant's  farming  have  passed  their  time.  Marx 
believed  that  not  only  the  future  of  agriculture  but  also  its  present  (namely,  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century)  belongs  to  large-scale  capitalistic  production. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  465 

all  Marxians  up  to  the  present  were  of  the  same  opinion.  I.  Ekkarius 
in  his  book  Eines  Arbeiters  Widerlegung  der  nationalofypnomischen 
Lehren  von  /.  S.  Mill  (1869),  which  was  read  by  Marx  before  printing 
and  which  was  to  some  extent  edited  by  him;  Liebknecht  in  his  work 
Zur  Grund  und  Bodenfrage  (1870) ;  Kautsky  in  his  famous  commen- 
taries on  the  Erfurt  program;  all  these  authors  expressed  similar  belief 
in  the  inevitable  conquest  of  peasant  by  capitalistic  agriculture.  This 
belief  is  also  expressed  in  the  program  of  the  German  Social  Demo- 
crats, which  was  accepted  at  the  Erfurt  congress  in  1891  and  which 
has  been  the  official  party  program  to  the  present  time.0 

Facts  have  shown,  however,  that  agriculture  has  been  developing  in 
an  entirely  different  way  from  that  of  industry.  This  had  to  be  accepted 
more  or  less  by  the  Marxians,  and  as  an  expression  of  the  new  view- 
point of  Marxism  on  the  agrarian  problem  there  appeared  Kautsky's 
book  Die  Agrarfrage  (1899).  In  this  book  Kautsky  denied  his  previous 
conclusions  and  accepted  the  fact  that,  under  existing  conditions,  small 
farming  is  stable.  He  explains  this  stability  by  the  suppressed  status  of 
peasants  and  by  their  ability  to  endure  a  pauper's  existence  on  their 
own  piece  of  land  rather  than  to  give  it  up.  In  his  work,  however, 
Kautsky  does  not  hold  that  a  peasant  agriculture  will  ever  reach 
the  technical  level  of  capitalistic  agriculture. 

The  book  of  Kautsky  caused  a  big  controversy.  In  this  dispute  the 
victory  was  not  obtained  by  the  partisans  of  Marxism.  The  German 
Social  Democratic  party  formally  retained  the  previous  uncompromis- 
ing attitude  which  it  had  taken  at  the  Breslau  congress  in  1895.  It  re- 
jected the  project  of  the  agrarian  program,  which  favored  the  develop- 
ment of  peasants'  agriculture.  In  reality,  however,  the  members  of  the 
Social  Democratic  party  of  southern  Germany  systematically  supported 
all  the  bills  that  were  directed  toward  improving  peasant  farming;  and 
the  resolutions  of  the  Breslau  congress  remained  only  on  paper. 

The  Social  Democrats  of  other  countries  are  depending  upon  the 
peasants  for  their  votes  and,  therefore,  their  attitude  toward  them  has 
to  be  more  favorable.  Agricultural  cooperation  is  often  mentioned  in 
a  series  of  Social  Democratic  programs  as  a  means  for  increasing  the 
standard  of  peasants'  agriculture.  This  is  true  for  the  programs  of  the 

0  In  order  to  restrict  citations,  only  the  Erfurt  program  is  given.  The  program  begins 
with  the  following  words:  "The  economic  development  of  bourgeois  society  leads  with 
the  necessity  of  natural  laws  to  the  annihilation  of  small  production.  It  separates  the 
workman  from  his  means  of  production  and  makes  him  a  proletarian,  while  the  means 
of  production  become  the  property  of  a  small  group  of  capitalists  and  large  estate 
owners.  For  the  proletarians  and  the  perishing  middle  classes  of  society — the  small 
bourgeoisie,  peasants — this  change  means  a  continuous  growth  of  the  insecurity  of  their 
existence  and  poverty,  of  suppression,  dependence,  and  exploitation."  (Cited  after  Kon- 
stedt,  136.)  EDITORS'  NOTE. — After  the  World  War  the  German  and  other  socialist  par- 
ties gave  up  this  viewpoint.  See  further,  the  paper  of  Schafir. 


466  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

French,  Italian,  Danish,  Belgian,  Austrian,  Swiss,  Finnish,  and  other 
Social  Democratic  parties. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY.  Agrarian  problem  in  general. — CHODSKY,  Land  and  Land- 
owner (Russ.)  (1895),  2  vols.;  BUCHENBERGER,  Fundamental  Problems  of 
Agricultural  Economy  and  Politics  (1901);  VON  DER  HOLZ,  Agrarian  Prob- 
lem (1902);  A.  SKVORZOV,  Influence  of  Steam  Transport  on  Agriculture 
(Russ.)  (1894);  A.  SKVORZOV,  Fundamentals  of  Economics  of  Agriculture 
(Russ.)  (1900-1905),  Vols.  I  and  II;  SOBOLEV,  Mobilization  of  Land  Prop- 
erty and  New  Tendencies  in  Agrarian  Politics  in  Germany  (Russ.)  (1899); 
LEWITSKY,  Agricultural  Crisis  in  France  (Russ.)  (1899);  KAUTSKY,  Die 
Agrarjrage  (1899);  F.  HERTZ,  Agrarische  Fragen  (1900);  S.  BULGAKOV, 
Capitalism  and  Agriculture  (Russ.)  (1900),  2  vols.;  N.  KABLUKOV,  Labor 
Problem  in  Agriculture  (Russ.)  (1884);  N.  KABLUKOV,  Conditions  for  the 
Development  of  Agriculture  in  Russia  (Russ.)  (1908),  2d  ed.;  DAVID, 
Sozialismus  und  Landwirtschajt  (1903);  VANDERVELDE,  Socialism  and  Agri- 
culture (1907);  KRJIVITSKY,  Agrarian  Problems  (Russ.)  (1906);  KOSSINSKY, 
Agrarian  Problem  (Russ.)  (1906);  GATTI,  Socialism  and  Agrarian  Prob- 
lem (1906);  A.  TSCHUPROW,  Small  Agriculture  and  Its  Needs  (Russ.) 
(1907);  V.  ILJIN,  (LENIN),  Agrarian  Problem  (Russ.)  (1908);  Struggle 
for  Land  (Russ.)  (1908),  Vols.  I  and  II;  N.  SUKHANOV,  The  Problem 
of  the  Evolution  of  Agriculture  (Russ.)  (1909);  The  Agrarian  Problem 
and  Marxism  (Russ.);  KONSTEDT,  Agrarjrage  und  Socialdemo\ratie  (1906); 
TCHERNOFF,  Marxism  and  the  Agrarian  Problem  (Russ.)  (1906);  SHISHKO, 
The  Labor  Movement  and  the  Agrarian  Program  in  Germany  (Russ.) 
(1906);  Agrarian  Programs  of  Socialistic  Parties  in  Western  Europe  and 
Russia  (Russ.)  (1906). 

59.  MICHAEL  HAINISCH:  CRITICISM  OF  DR.  LAUR'S  THEORIES* 

EDITORIAL  INTRODUCTION. — M.  Hainisch,  like  many  others,  agrees  that 
the  large  farm  has  several  advantages  over  the  small  farm  from  a  purely 
technical  standpoint.  In  a  large  farm  a  smaller  proportion  of  the  land  is 
wasted  for  roads  and  boundaries;  the  expenses  for  buildings  are  relatively 
lower;  there  is  a  better  opportunity  to  use  good  machinery;  division  of 
labor  may  be  more  appropriate;  there  is  a  better  and  a  larger  use  of  farm 
animals;  and  better  and  more  diversified  crops  may  be  cultivated.  How- 
ever, these  purely  technical  advantages  have  their  own  drawbacks  and  often 
are  theoretical  rather  than  real,  since  a  series  of  social  and  other  influences 
often  annul  them.  First,  many  large  land  properties  are  not  managed  as  one 
agricultural  enterprise  but  instead  are  rented  in  small  lots  to  tenants.  In 
this  case  large  landownership  is  not  associated  in  any  way  with  large,  capi- 
talistic farming  and  hence  does  not  possess  its  advantages.  Further,  in  order 
for  the  large  agricultural  enterprise  to  possess  the  above  advantages  the 
owner  must  be  a  competent  manager,  whereas  actually  a  considerable  pro- 
portion of  the  big  landowners  are  quite  incompetent.  Then  a  large  enter- 

*From  M.  Hainisch,  Die  Landftucht,  Jena,  Gustav  Fischer,  1924,  pp.  154-191.  Trans- 
lated and  printed  with  permission  of  the  publisher. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  467 

prise  must  be  carried  on  with  hired  labor,  and  the  laborers  will  probably 
work  less  efficiently  and  carefully  than  would  the  farmer  or  peasant  owner. 
Inasmuch  as  the  care  of  cattle  and  other  stock  is  of  very  great  importance 
for  agricultural  success,  this  greater  care  and  efficiency  of  the  working 
force  constitutes  one  of  the  advantages  of  the  small  enterprise  of  a  small 
landowner. 

A  series  of  other  circumstances  also  makes  the  advantages  of  large  agri- 
cultural enterprises  very  questionable.  Machinery  can  be  used  in  agricul- 
tural enterprises  to  a  lesser  extent  than  in  industrial  enterprises.  Large  farm 
enterprises  can  exist  only  as  long  as  the  profit  of  the  entrepreneur  and  the 
interest  on  the  capital  invested  is  sufficiently  high,  while  the  small  enter- 
prise may  be  continued  even  when  these  are  low.  Actual  data  show  that 
large  enterprises  often  fail  to  realize  these  high  profits  and  interest.  As  a 
result  they  carry  heavier  mortgages  than  the  small  peasant  farms.  In  1902 
in  the  eastern  provinces  of  Germany  41.4  per  cent  of  the  small  farms  were 
not  mortgaged,  while  only  9.4  per  cent  of  the  enterprises  of  the  largest  land- 
owners were  free  from  mortgage. 

These  and  similar  conditions  show  that  the  technical  advantages  of  the 
large  farm  enterprises  are  often  nonexistent  and  that  when  they  do  exist 
they  often  possess  their  own  drawbacks.  Hence  one  can  make  no  uniform 
generalization  concerning  trends  in  the  size  of  the  farm  enterprise.  The 
general  conclusion  to  the  above  discussion  may  be  stated  somewhat  as  fol- 
lows. Whether  a  large  or  a  small  farm  is  more  advantageous  depends  on 
many  local  and  personal  conditions;  in  one  place  and  under  one  set  of  cir- 
cumstances a  small  enterprise  may  be  more  advantageous,  and  vice  versa. 
For  each  locality  and  each  set  of  conditions,  there  is  theoretically  an  opti- 
mum size  of  farm,  neither  too  small  nor  too  large  and  most  advantageous 
under  the  existing  conditions.  (Hainisch,  Die  Landflucht,  pp.  74-119.) 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  question  as  to  whether  a  small  or  a  large  farm 
enterprise  yields  greater  gross  revenue,  net  revenue,  and  proportion  of  the 
marketable  products.  Dr.  Hainisch  is  inclined  to  believe  that  the  large  enter- 
prise yields  a  greater  net  revenue  and  a  greater  proportion  of  marketable 
produce  per  unit  than  the  small  enterprise.  This  conclusion  is  rather  com- 
monly accepted.  Hainisch  questions  the  conclusion  of  Laur  and  other  in- 
vestigators that  the  gross  produce  per  unit  of  land  is  greater  for  a  small 
enterprise  than  for  a  large  one.  He  also  criticises  Laur's  data  and  presents 
a  series  of  data  that  show  that  Laur's  conclusions  are  not  invulnerable.  This 
criticism  follows  in  the  subsequent  translated  fragment. 

I  believe  that  important  objections  may  be  raised  against  the  con- 
clusions of  Laur. 

If  we  now  study  the  elements  out  o£  which,  according  to  Laur,  the 
gross  proceeds  are  composed,  we  come  first  to  the  rental  value  of  the 
dwelling.  I  will  admit  that  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  consid- 
ering this  rental  value  as  income.  But  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  this 
noteworthy  condition:  through  this  treatment  the  more  luxurious  the 
dwelling,  the  greater  becomes  the  gross  earning  of  the  establishment. 


468  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

To  include  as  income  the  benefit  that  a  farmer's  wife  derives  through 
a  direct  disposal  to  the  consumer  could  be  allowed  only  if  it  were  not 
included  as  a  part  of  the  community  or  social  income.  Because  the  com- 
munity income  will  not  be  increased  through  this  direct  contact  with 
the  consumer,  but  only  postponed.  One  absolutely  cannot  credit  the 
income  from  the  apiary  to  the  acreage  in  possession,  since  the  bees  do 
not  gather  pollen  exclusively  from  the  area  of  one  estate.  No  less  a  per- 
sonage than  Albert  Thaer  has  therefore  asserted  that  bee  culture  is  not 
a  branch  of  agriculture.  In  the  country  not  a  few  public  school  teachers 
keep  a  few  beehives.  I  myself  am  personally  acquainted  with  a  cabinet- 
maker living  in  the  Vienna  district  of  Dobling,  in  which  the  houses 
extend  to  the  Vienna  forest  and  the  vineyards.  This  man  carries  on 
bee  culture  from  a  garret  window.  And  therewith  I  come  to  the  de- 
cisive point.  Laur  himself  points  out  the  fact  that  the  high  gross  income 
of  the  small  producer  is  derived  from  the  converting  of  raw  material 
into  a  finished  product.  The  small  farmers  buy  hay  and  grain  foods  in 
order  to  use  them  for  feed.  These  farmers  are  therefore  completely  de- 
pendent, are  compelled  to  purchase  hay,  straw,  and  bedding  from 
others. 

The  Swiss  peasant  farm  establishments,  which  practice  this  refine- 
ment process  also  buy  feed.  There  are  many  small  producers,  however, 
who  receive  permission  from  neighboring  large  estates  to  herd  geese  on 
their  fields,  to  mow  grass  along  the  field  edges,  and  similar  things.1 
The  proceeds  of  these  small  producers  should  therefore  in  part,  at  least, 
be  added  to  the  proceeds  of  the  large  establishments. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the  fact  that  Laur  has  made  the 
assertion  that  small  establishments  have  derived  not  only  a  higher  gross 
income,  but  also  a  greater  market  production.  It  is  unusually  praise- 
worthy that  the  present  farm  secretariat  (Bauernsefyretariat)  under 
Laur's  direction  has  calculated  the  market  production  not  only  in 
money,  but  also  in  calories.  This  is  given  in  the  following  table. 

NUTRITIVE  VALUE  OF  THE  RAW  MATERIAL  (IN  CALORIES,  PER  ONE  HECTARE) 


SIZE  OF  FARM 
IN  HECTARES 

SELF- 
CONSUMPTION 

MARKET- 
PRODUCTION 

TOTAL 
PRODUCTION 

3-5 
5-10 

1,038,354 
677,479 

1,384,263 
1,622,156 

2,422,617 
2,299,635 

10-15     

.  .     .       518,549 

1,514,504 

2,033,053 

15-30   

.  .     .  .       447,150 

1,538,437 

1,985,587 

Over  30     .... 

313,092 

1,387,536 

1,700,628 

1  Dr.  Emil  Wehriede,  "The  Gross  Proceeds  of  German  Agriculture  during  the  Last 
Generation,"  Thick  Jahrbuch,  1907,  XXXVI,  161. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  469 

According  to  this  table  the  large  farming  establishments  make  a  poor 
showing.  But  these  are  in  the  majority  of  cases,  it  will  be  noted,  moun- 
tain and  grazing  establishments.  Fully  85  per  cent  of  the  land  in  these 
farms  is  meadow  land,  and  in  fact  in  the  greatest  part  nothing  but 
grazing  land.  Of  the  2,674  Swiss  farms  with  over  70  hectares  specifi- 
cally only  585  contained  arable  land,  and  1,085  had  meadow  land.  It  is 
clear  that  such  large  farms  situated  in  the  high  mountains  cannot  com- 
pare with  smaller  farms  on  the  level  ground.  Under  more  favorable 
conditions  these  large  establishments  could  probably  easily  increase 
their  proceeds  by  two-tenths,  and  thereby  equal  the  best  categories  of 
the  small  producer.  And  we  must  remember  that  two  large-scale  farm- 
ers achieved  the  largest  gross  income  per  hectare  in  money. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  without  interest  to  observe  what  shifting  took 
place  when  the  market  production  was  determined  in  calories  instead 
of  in  money.  The  small  establishments,  which  received  the  highest 
market  payment  in  money,  are  dropped  back  to  the  last  place.  At  the 
same  time  the  differences  in  the  market  production  of  the  larger  farms 
are  noticeably  reduced.  This  may  incidentally  serve  as  proof  to  show  the 
waste  of  foodstuffs  with  which  the  transformation  of  grain  and  pota- 
toes into  meat  products  is  carried  on.  Since  agricultural  production  in 
Switzerland  is  decreasing  and  the  larger  establishments,  instead  of 
selling  more  actually  sell  less  grain  than  the  smaller,  these  facts  do  not 
appear  so  prominently.  It  is  entirely  different  in  those  places  where,  as 
in  Germany,  the  large  producers  are  chiefly  engaged  in  plant  produc- 
tion.2 

In  an  article  that  appeared  in  the  Vienna  Landwirtscha-ftliche  Zei- 
tung  I  have  moreover  computed  how  unproductive  the  operation  of 
the  Swiss  small-scale  farm  is.  In  order  to  bring  one  million  calories  to 
market  from  one  hectare  of  agricultural  land  the  following  amounts 
of  calories  were  consumed  by  the  producer: 

SIZE  OF  FARMS  r 

rr  CALORIES 

IN  HECTARES 

3-5  750,000 

5-10     418,000 

10-15    ....  342,000 

15-30  .    .  291,000 

Over  30 ....  226,000 

2  As  far  as  I  have  read  the  literature,  Gamp  first  pointed  out  the  waste  occurring  in 
the  transformation  of  food  products. 


470  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

It  is  easy  to  compare  the  small  farm  with  a  machine  that  works  for  the 
market  with  the  least  efficiency.3 

As  regards  the  productions  of  the  various  large  estates  much  atten- 
tion has  been  given  to  the  delivery  of  produce  during  the  war.  The 
report  o£  Hansen,  o£  the  Agricultural  Institute  of  the  University  of 
Konigsberg,  deserves  special  attention.  This  report  is  based  on  data 
taken  from  six  East  Prussian  regions,  including  13,969  small  farms, 
and  617  large  farms,  making  a  total  of  449,969  hectares.  On  the  basis 
of  this  report  the  following  table  was  compiled. 

PRODUCTION  PER  HECTARE  OF  FARMS 


KILOGRAMS 

NUTRITIVE  VALUES 

Under 
100  Ha. 

Over 
100  Ha. 

Under 
100  Ha. 

Over 
100  Ha. 

Grains          .                      ... 
Legumes     .  .         .              ... 
Edible  potatoes     
Edible  and  distillery  potatoes   . 
Hay  and  straw  (per  hectare  of 
agricultural  land) 
Cattle,  live-weight        
Butter 

205.9 
4.3 
255.9 

257.8 

69.6 
39.5 
2.1 
24.9 

413.7 
10.0 
418.0 
603.9 

60.3 
34.3 
45 
5.5 

143.2 
2.9 
5.4 
50.8 

285.4 

6.9 
82.3 
118.9 

Esf9"s  (per  each)     

Hansen  has  neglected  to  calculate  the  nutritive  value  for  hay  and 
straw  as  well  as  for  animal  products.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however, 
that  the  general  production  of  the  large  producer  is  much  larger  in 
nutritive  value  than  that  of  the  small  producer.  Also  in  Austria  during 
the  war  the  large  establishment  delivered  much  more,  at  least  of  grain, 
than  the  small  farm.  Thus,  for  example,  according  to  Medinger,  in 
Bohemia  the  1917  production  of  farms  larger  than  100  ha.  averaged 
5.56  q.  per  ha.,  while  on  the  other  hand  farms  of  less  than  100  ha.  pro- 
duced 2.29  q.  per  ha. 

A  similar  superiority  of  the  larger  producers  over  the  small  pro- 
ducers is  revealed  in  upper  Hessia,  where,  to  be  sure,  the  large  farms 
are  far  behind  those  of  East  Prussia  in  extent.  Here  a  farm  with  an 
area  of  about  40  ha.,  situated  in  the  vicinity  of  the  town  Friedberg  and 
bordering  on  two  communities  that  enjoyed  better  soil,  produced 
much  more  than  the  peasants  of  the  latter.  The  production  in  1918  was 
as  follows; 

*The  French  writers  who,  under  the  influence  of  Law,  defend  the  small  farm  are 
asked  by  Auge-Laribe1  how  it  happens  that,  in  a  country  in  which  the  small  establishment 
is  so  prominent  as  in  France,  it  should  produce  so  little  in  comparison  with  other  coun- 
tries. (Auge-Laribe,  Lc  paysan  jran$ais  .  .  .  ,  p.  253.) 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  471 


THE  FARM 

THE 
COMMUNITY 

Potatoes,  per  hectare 

170  Mtz. 

98  Mtz. 

Grain,  per  hectare 

.    26.83  Mtz. 

16.90  Mtz. 

Sugar  beets,  per  hectare 

.    278  Mtz. 

256  Mtz, 

Milk,  per  cow 

.    1992  litres 

236  litres 

Butter,  per  cow     .  . 

.    31.50kg. 

~kg- 

Slaughtering  cattle,  per  100  hectares: 

Beeves 

..    15.20  Mtz. 

8.00  Mtz. 

Calves                             

11.  80  Mtz. 

15.20  Mtz. 

A  comparison  was  also  made  between  large  farms  and  178  small 
farms  of  from  10  to  15  Morgen  and  179  farms  of  15  to  20  Morgen  in 
the  region  of  Friedberg.  This  showed  that  the  large  farms,  with  full 
consideration  of  the  self -supporters,  produced  respectively  from  105.10 
to  88.83  per  cent  more  than  the  above-mentioned  small  farms.  Farms 
under  10  acres  produced  practically  nothing.  Similar  conditions  pre- 
vailed in  the  region  of  Holstein  called  Plohn.  Here  the  production  of 
grain  on  the  part  of  the  large  farms  exceeded  that  of  the  peasants 
by  far. 

The  estates  also  produced  more  milk  than  the  small  farms.  Milk 
was  produced  in  Hesse  in  1918  as  follows: 

ESTATE  SMALL-FARM 

PRODUCTION          PRODUCTION 
IN  LITRES  IN  LITRES 

Per  cow                         ..     .  1.819  .524 

Per  100  hectares 68.783  24.830 

The  superiority  of  the  large  estates  in  milk  production  is  shown  also 
in  the  milk  supplied  to  the  city  of  Frankfurt.  This  was  produced  by  14 
communities  with  3,016  cows  and  34  estates  with  1,187  cows.  The  com- 
munities sent  to  the  city  1.73  litres  per  cow,  but  the  large  estates  sent 
5.13  litres  per  cow,4  In  the  comparison  of  the  supply  delivered  during 
the  war,  or  market  supply  in  peace  time,  one  must  always  bear  in  mind 
how  many  children  and  young  people  were  self-supporting  or  were 
supported  by  guardians.  In  the  larger  peasant  farm  establishments,  in 
which  unmarried  help  is  employed,  the  percentage  of  children  and 
young  people  among  the  dwellers  on  the  farm  can  be  smaller  than  on 
the  large  estates  with  their  married  employes. 

One  must  point  out  regarding  these  tables,  especially  those  of  Han- 
sen,  that  the  purchase  of  produce  and  nutritive  values  is  not  considered 

*  City  Supply  and  Farm  Production,  Reformbund  dcr  Gutshofe,  2d  ed.,  1920. 


472  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  that  accordingly  a  complete  balance  of  nutritive  values  is  lacking. 
Furthermore,  the  delivery  during  time  of  war  can  give  no  complete 
information  regarding  the  market  production.  According  to  Gutknecht 
from  one-fourth  to  one-third  of  the  entire  production  was  sold  under- 
handedly.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  peasant  farms,  because  of  the 
smaller  possibility  of  their  control,  participated  to  a  large  extent.  Be- 
sides, factors  of  a  social  nature  may  have  operated,  so  that  the  larger 
landowner  was  more  often  called  upon  for  deliveries  than  the  smaller. 
Doubtless  this  was  the  case  in  the  requisition  of  cattle.  It  would  not  do 
to  take  the  only  cow  from  a  small  farmer,  even  though  this  procedure 
from  the  standpoint  of  production  was  of  doubtful  wisdom.  Thus  the 
safeguarding  of  the  small  owner  resulted  often  in  the  sparing  of  less 
valuable  cattle  and  the  leading  of  the  valuable  animals  to  the  slaugh- 
terhouse. We  must  accordingly  endeavor  to  find  other  points  for  the 
consideration  of  the  achievements  of  farms  of  different  sizes. 

It  may  therefore  be  pointed  out  that  in  the  Hessian  region,  Blidin- 
gen,  the  threshing  yield  in  four  estates  and  five  communities  was  de- 
termined by  sworn,  weighmasters.  According  to  these  figures  each 
hectare  earned  as  follows: 


THE  ESTATES 
MTZ. 

THE 
COMMUNITIES 
MTZ. 

Wheat   

27.2 

19.6 

Rye    

30.6 

15.7 

Barley 

23.4 

14.3 

Oats          

28.7 

15.9 

The  differences  in  the  threshing  yields  are  so  great  that  the  superiority 
of  the  large  estates  could  hardly  have  been  essentially  influenced  by 
falsification  of  the  figures.  Furthermore,  let  us  refer  to  Dade,  who  in- 
forms us  that  the  agricultural  establishments  of  over  100  ha.  sold 
1,850,000  tons  of  small  grain,  and  the  farms  of  less  than  100  ha.  sold 
2,800,000  tons.  Since  the  farms  of  over  100  ha.  comprised  only  about 
a  fourth  of  the  German  farm  land  area,  the  market  production  of  the 
large  producer  in  grain  was  disproportionately  large.  The  small  deliv- 
ery of  bread  grains  on  the  part  of  the  small  farms  is  now  doubtless 
explained  by  the  larger  self-consumption  as  well  as  the  larger  amount 
of  feeding  the  cattle.  The  productivity  of  grain  on  the  large  estates 
appears  to  be  constantly  greater  than  on  the  small  farms.  According 
to  Ballard  there  were  produced  by  100  agricultural  operators: 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  473 

TONS  OF  GRAIN 

Ostelbien             342 

South   Germany     191 

West  Germany     ...    .- 264 

Central  Germany 386 

Pommerania  and  Mecklenburg       .         .            . .  470 

The  German  realm          281 

Even  if  one  thinks  that  grain  production  does  not  play  the  same  role 
everywhere,  one  would  still  have  to  admit  that  human  labor  in  the 
production  of  grains  was  more  profitable  on  large  estates  than  on  small 
farms. 

As  in  the  German  Empire,  so  also  in  old  Austria,  the  large  farm  was 
noticeably  superior  to  the  small  farm  in  the  production  of  grains  and 
vegetables  (Rac^jruchten) .  Medinger  estimates  that  the  large  farm 
produces  from  20  to  40  per  cent  more.5  In  lower  Austria,  according  to 
Strakosch,  the  production  per  hectare  in  1910  was  as  follows: 


AVERAGE  FOR 
THE  COUNTRY 
MTZ. 

LARGE-SCALE 
OPERATOR 
MTZ. 

Wheat             .... 
Grain     

11.6 
12.3 

19.8 
18.4 

Barley    

10.2 

22.7 

Oats 

...      9.2 

18.0 

The  superiority  was  accordingly  great,  even  if  one  allows  for  the  errors 
in  computation. 

In  Germany  the  study  commission  for  the  preservation  of  the  peasan- 
try, for  small  farms  and  farm  labor,  has  undertaken  investigations  in 
the  manner  of  Laur,  upon  the  results  of  which  Ehrenberg  reports.  The 
small  establishment,  he  explains,  delivers  indeed  more  animal  products 
on  a  similar  area,  and  the  gross  proceeds  of  the  same  are  in  proportion 
to  the  area  very  much  larger  than  those  of  the  large  producer;  but  not 
in  proportion  to  the  labor  used  and  the  total  population.  The  small 
producer  employs  on  a  similar  area  more  people  than  the  large  pro- 
ducer. In  that  fact  consists  the  social  significance  of  the  small  establish- 
ment and  the  small  holding.  But  they  cannot  produce  enough  grain 
for  the  nourishment  of  the  denser  population  of  town  and  country. 

0  Franz  Schindler,  Die  Getreideprodufyion  Qsterreich-Ungarns  im  HinUic\  auf  Krieg 
und  Volkserndhrung,  1916;  Dr.  Wilhelm  Medinger,  "Land  Reform  Plans  in  the  Czecho- 
Slovakian  State,"  Die  osterreichische  Volfytvirtschajt,  1920,  Vol.  XII,  No.  33. 


474  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  more  dense  the  population  becomes,  on  the  one  hand,  the  more 
necessary,  on  the  other  hand,  becomes  the  large  estate  and  the  large 
peasant  production  of  grain.  Southwestern  Germany,  although  it  has 
not  for  a  long  time  had  so  many  industries  as  the  North,  needs  never- 
theless a  considerable  addition  of  grain,  which  only  the  North  or 
foreign  countries  can  deliver.  The  report  of  Ehrenberg  reminds  one  of 
the  result  of  Laur's  investigation.  In  addition  the  statement  that  a 
greater  money  value  in  gross  proceeds  is  on  hand  in  the  small  farms  of 
Germany  is  disputed  by  authorities. 

At  the  meeting  of  the  German  Agricultural  Society  in  February, 
1919,  Dr.  Burg  reported  regarding  the  collecting  of  records  in  the 
Rhine  province.  Burg  used  108  farms  as  the  basis  for  study.  He  did  not 
consider  those  of  less  than  two  hectares,  since,  according  to  his  opinion, 
they  failed  to  be  self-supporting.  He  divided  the  farms  into  six  classes: 
those  from  2-5,  5-10,  10-20,  20-50,  50-100,  and  100-250  ha.  He  is  chiefly 
interested  in  determining  the  intensity  of  management,  wherein  he 
considered  as  a  measure  of  intensity  the  money  spent  per  hectare.  By 
the  amount  of  these  expenditures  he  is  able  to  establish  a  scale  of  in- 
tensity. On  the  other  hand  he  is  interested  in  the  total  income,  which 
consisted  of  the  cash  income  together  with  the  value  of  the  produce 
consumed  in  the  home.  I  consider  that  the  cash  income  is  a  net  in- 
come and  am  strengthened  in  my  opinion  since  Burg  excludes  the 
expenditures  for  cattle.  The  result  of  this  comparison  is  that  the  high- 
est intensity  as  well  as  the  largest  total  production  took  place  on  the 
farms  of  from  20  to  100  hectares.  The  greater  intensity  of  the  smaller 
producer,  especially  the  farms  of  from  two  to  five  hectares  is  followed 
by  no  correspondingly  high  total  production;  the  small  farms  are 
excelled  in  this  respect  by  the  large  farms.  This  is  even  more  true  of 
the  market  production. 

On  the  basis  o£  these  results  Burg  points  out  with  emphasis  that  the 
opinions  defended  on  various  sides,  especially  by  Laur,  to  the  effect 
that  the  production  of  raw  material  was  greatest  in  small  establish- 
ments and  fell  with  the  increase  of  larger  producers,  are  especially  not 
tenable  in  this  generalization,  at  least  not  regarding  the  Rhine  prov- 
ince. The  experiences  of  Switzerland  could  not  be  applied  to  other 
regions  with  intensive  agriculture.  He  could  have  added  that  the  condi- 
tions in  Germany  were  also  in  other  respects  different  from  those  in 
Switzerland.  In  Switzerland  the  large  peasant  establishments  are  gen- 
erally located  in  mountainous  regions;  in  Germany,  however,  large 
tracts  of  fertile  ground  find  themselves,  through  the  influence  of  trie 
former  political  conditions  of  power,  in  the  hands  of  the  large  land- 
owners. Burg  believes  that  conditions  similar  to  those  in  the  Rhine 
province  prevail  also  in  central  and  southern  Germany.  Perhaps  few 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  475 

changes  would  be  shown  by  more  extensive  management.  Burg  as- 
sumes that  further  investigation  will  show  the  following  to  be  the  rule: 
The  final  gross  production  (money  value  of  raw  products  per  unit  of 
land  area)  of  the  farm — similar  conditions  of  production  being  taken  for 
granted — is  determined  by  the  quality  of  the  methods  used  and  the  intensity 
of  expenditure  (size,  form,  and  most  effective  manner  of  application  of 
capital  and  labor),  not  by  the  size  of  the  farm.  The  greatest  intensity  results 
in  the  largest  gross  production.  In  view  of  the  comparatively  large  number 
of  men  and  working  animals  per  unit  of  land  area  in  the  small  establish- 
ments, the  latter  as  a  rule  have  a  very  large  expenditure  of  capital  and  labor. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  more  efficient  farm  equipment  and  the  better  meth- 
ods (better  general  and  professional  training)  are  present  in  the  larger 
peasant  farms  and  the  smaller  estates.  The  better  farm  manager,  with  a 
smaller  expenditure  of  capital  and  labor,  is  able  to  produce  the  same  or 
a  larger  gross  yield  than  the  less  capable  operator  with  a  larger  expenditure. 
The  high  expenditure  for  capital  and  labor  on  the  small  farms  and  peasant 
establishments  is  often  in  a  measure  unproductive,  since  there  the  labor 
capacity  of  both  men  and  animals  is  not  utilized,  due  to  the  average  ineffi- 
cient management.  It  is  self-evident  that  fewer  but  more  capable  catde, 
more  rational  breeding,  keeping,  and  feeding  of  the  working  animals  guar- 
antees a  similar  or  greater  gross  return  than  the  thoughtless  breeding,  keep- 
ing, and  feeding  of  a  larger  number  of  less  capable  working  animals.  Often 
excessive  expenditure  of  capital  for  building  in  the  small  establishments 
raises  the  cost  but  not  the  gross  receipts. 

The  cost  of  production,  continues  Burg,  stands,  as  a  rule,  in  a  rela- 
tionship corresponding  to  the  total  expenditure.  Over  against  the  high 
total  expenditure  of  the  small  farms,  however,  stands  a  high  cost  of 
production.  Because  of  rational  management  large  peasant  farms  and 
estates  produce  intensively  under  normal  conditions  with  a  smaller 
cost  of  production  per  unit  of  land  and  of  goods  produced.  The  farms 
with  the  largest  yield  of  raw  material  show  the  highest  market  supply, 
and  they  themselves  use  comparatively  little  to  support  the  enterpriser's 
family  and  employes  in  the  shape  of  board,  pensions,  and  rent.  For 
this  reason  the  small  establishments  cannot  have  the  highest  market 
supply,  but  rather  the  intensively  operated  large  peasant  farms  and 
estates.  As  a  rule  the  estates  produce  more  largely  plant  products,  the 
small  farms  more  animal  products.  Intensive  large-scale  farming  would 
be  able  to  produce  the  same  in  animal  products  as  the  small  farm  but 
significantly  more  of  plant  produce.  Burg  brings  his  reflections  to  an 
end  by  stating  that  the  increase  of  production  which  Germany  so  seri- 
ously needs  cannot  be  reached  through  parcellation  of  the  large  estates. 
One  must  not  destroy,  but  must  develop  the  farms  from  a  politico- 
economical  point  of  view  and  along  practical  lines.  There  are  neces- 
sary measures  to  be  taken  against  the  small  farms  in  the  same  way  as 
against  the  large  estates,  thus  against  the  two  extreme  forms.  Not  force 


476  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

but  progressive  measures  themselves  in  the  course  of  time  can  bring  to 
pass  the  desired  development  in  the  most  suitable  form  without  de- 
stroying politico-economic  values.  Large  estates  and  peasant  farms 
complement  each  other.  It  is  too  bad  that  internal  colonization  (that  is, 
parcellation  of  the  estates  in  Germany)  has  become  the  fashion.  "One 
might  almost  say  that  what  is  now  being  planned,  especially  by  incom- 
petent parties,  is  in  large  part  a  gross  nuisance."  Hansen  agrees  with 
Burg  in  so  far  as  he  explains  that  large  amounts  of  field  products  for 
the  provisioning  of  other  classes  of  people  could  be  produced  only  by 
estates  or  large  establishments.  But  he  cannot  prove  his  assertion  in  the 
same  measure  as  Burg  has  done,  on  the  basis  of  records. 

From  the  economic  standpoint,  accordingly,  we  must  stress  the  ques- 
tionability  of  the  superiority  of  the  small  farm  with  reference  to  the 
raw  materials,  especially  with  reference  to  market  production.  From 
the  data  which  we  have  discussed  above,  it  seems  to  me  rather  to  be 
shown  with  much  more  certainty  that  the  large  estates,  with  reference 
to  market  delivery,  were  remarkably  superior  to  the  small  farms. 
Where  this  was  not  the  case,  as  for  example  in  the  delivery  of  meat 
products  in  Germany,  the  cause  lay  in  the  insufficient  profitability  of 
keeping  live  stock.  An  improvement  in  the  conditions  of  profitability 
would  also  have  increased  the  market  supply  of  animal  products. 

In  the  meantime  the  question  is  not  open  to  discussion  whether  or 
not  the  large  estate  is  in  general  always  to  be  preferred  to  the  small 
farm.  Our  landownership  distribution  is  the  product  of  a  century  of 
development.  Internal  displacements  of  this  distribution  are  brought  to 
completion  very  slowly.  It  is  very  true  that  at  present  the  prevalent 
tendency  is  toward  parcelling  rather  than  toward  concentrating  areas 
of  land.  This  division  of  large  estates  is  done  artificially  in  part, 
as  was  the  case,  for  example,  in  East  Prussia  and  in  New  Zealand. 
Even  with  this  forceful  development  of  internal  colonization  larger 
estates  and  peasant  farms  will  still  for  a  long  time  occupy  a  considera- 
ble share  of  the  land  area.  Through  this  inner  colonization  only  the 
proportion  of  the  individual  estates  managed  on  a  large  scale  could 
gradually  be  changed.  Even  there,  moreover,  where  any  influence  of 
open  force  was  lacking  in  the  distribution  of  landownership,  the  in- 
crease of  small  farms  at  the  cost  of  large  estates  and  large  landholders 
is  in  no  way  a  result  of  agricultural  technique,  but  exclusively  and 
entirely  of  social  conditions.  It  is  the  equal  division  by  inheritance  and 
the  low  investment  return  in  agriculture,  which  does  not  allow  the  pay- 
ment of  such  high  wages  to  the  laborers  as  to  cause  the  principal  mo- 
tive of  migration  to  fall  away — it  is  these  which  menace  the  greater 
estate.  I  should  consider  a  further  division  of  estates  in  Austria  and  in 
large  parts  of  Germany  to  be  so  much  more  dangerous  because  the 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  477 

large  establishments  in  no  wise  predominate.  On  the  other  hand,  Aus- 
tria as  well  as  Germany  possesses  a  disproportionately  large  urban  and 
industrial  population.  To  supply  it  with  the  products  of  native  agricul- 
ture seems  even  more  imperative  than  before.  We  find  ourselves  in 
a  condition  similar  to  that  which  existed  in  England  at  the  time  of 
Arthur  Young.  In  judging  of  the  advantage  and  disadvantage  of  land 
distribution  we  must  put  the  main  emphasis  upon  market  production, 
and  this  latter  could  be  considerably  increased  by  the  guaranteeing  of 
sufficient  profitableness.  Therefore  I  consider  the  efforts  to  diminish 
the  possession  of  large  estates  to  be  exceedingly  dangerous.  The  large 
estates  should  not  be  destroyed,  but  rather  legally  and  economically 
so  endowed  that  their  technical  possibilities  may  be  utilized.  But  if  the 
large  estates  and  especially  the  large  and  medium-sized  peasant  farms 
are  conserved,  the  labor  question  still  remains.  The  problem  could  be 
solved  by  internal  colonization  only  if  one  took  the  whole  land  area 
and  completely  divided  it  into  small  farms  which  could  be  worked  by 
the  farmer  himself  with  his  wife  and  children.  Such  farms  would 
be  small  since,  as  we  have  seen,  the  full-grown  children  can  no  longer 
be  kept  on  the  farm.  After  all  that  has  been  said,  even  if  the  small  pro- 
ducers should  be  permanently  satisfied  with  their  lot,  in  consideration 
of  the  unproductiveness  of  labor  and  the  small  market  delivery,  not 
disputed  even  by  Laur,  I  would  very  much  deplore  this  division  of 
land  into  farms  of  less  than  five  hectares.6 

60.  N.  LENIN:  CAPITALISM  AND  AGRICULTURE  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES* 

INCREASE  OF  CAPITALISTIC  ELEMENTS  IN  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE 

It  is  customary  to  judge  whether  an  agricultural  enterprise  is  or  is 
not  capitalistic  on  the  basis  of  the  size  of  the  farm,  or,  for  a  group  of 
farmers,  on  the  number  and  importance  of  the  large  farms.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  point  out,  however,  that  the  size  of  the  farm  does  not  always 
indicate  that  the  enterprise  is  really  large  and  capitalistic  in  its  nature. 

Data  concerning  the  amount  of  hired  labor  are  unquestionably  more 
significant  for  this  purpose.  Agricultural  censuses  of  recent  years  (Aus- 
trian of  1902  and  German  of  1907,  for  example)  show  that  the  use  of 

*Kautsky  is  also  of  the  opinion  that,  after  the  solution  of  the  labor  problem,  the  large 
establishment  will  come  into  its  own  and  will  become  a  very  dangerous  competitor  of 
the  medium-sized  farm.  On  the  other  hand  he  sets  forth  the  assertion  that  there  is  no 
remedy  for  the  scarcity  of  labor  ( Arbciternot]  in  the  capitalistic  social  order.  (Karl  Kaut- 
sky,  The  Agrarian  Question,  1899,  pp.  228  ff.)  Konig  correctly  emphasizes  that  the 
large  English  estates,  with  halfway  tolerable  prices,  would  produce  more  and  be  more 
profitable  than  the  small  farms. 

*  From  N.  Lenin,  Capitalism  and  Agriculture  in  the  United  States,  Vol.  IX  o£ 
(Russ.),  Moscow,  1925,  pp.  198-202,  212-218,  245-251,  259-260. 


478  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

hired  labor  in  contemporary  agriculture,  and  especially  in  small  farm- 
ing, is  considerably  larger  than  was  customarily  believed.  These  facts 
invalidate  the  common  opinion  of  the  middle  classes  that  small-scale 
agriculture  is  "laboring"  agriculture.* 

In  American  statistics  there  has  been  collected  abundant  material  con- 
cerning this  problem.  In  some  questionnaires  sent  out  to  farmers  there 
was  a  special  question  as  to  whether  or  not  the  farmers  spent  any 
money  for  hired  laborers,  and,  if  so,  how  much.  The  figures  for  1900, 
which  are  somewhat  better  analyzed,  will  be  considered  later.  Here  we 
give  the  figures  from  the  1910  census,  referring  to  the  years  1899  and 
1909. 


DISTRICTS 

PERCENTAGE  OF 
FARMS  WITH 
HIRED  LABOR 

PERCENTAGE  OF 
INCREASE  OF 
EXPENDITURE  FOR 
HIRED  LABOR  FROM 
1899  TO  1909 

EXPENDITURE  FOR 
HIRED  LABOR  CAL- 
CULATED PER  ACRE 
OF  CULTIVATED 
LAND  (DOLLARS) 

1899              1909 

North 
South 
West 
U.SA. 

55.1 
36.6 
52.5 
45.9 

+  70.8 
+  87.1 
+119.0 

+  82.3 

0.82           1.26 
0.69           1.07 
2.07           3.25 
0.86           1.36 

From  these  figures  we  may  make  the  following  conclusions.  The 
capitalistic  type  of  agriculture  is  most  prevalent  in  the  North,  with 
55.1  per  cent  of  all  farms  using  hired  labor;  the  second  place  is  occu- 
pied by  the  West  with  52.5  per  cent;  and  the  third  place  by  the  South 
with  36.6  per  cent.  Such  a  result  is  to  be  expected  because  it  is  normal 
to  find  the  percentage  of  farms  utilizing  hired  labor  higher  in  populous 
industrial  districts  than  in  pioneer  belts  or  in  regions  in  which  share 
tenancy  (croppers)  prevails. 

In  the  North  and  West,  which  include  two-thirds  of  all  the  culti- 
vated land  and  two-thirds  of  all  the  cattle  of  the  country,  more  than 
half  the  farmers  are  using  hired  labor.  In  the  South  the  percentage  em- 
ploying hired  labor  is  lower  only  because  a  half-feudal  exploitation  of 
labor  still  exists  in  the  form  of  cropper  tenancy.  The  poorest  farmers 
in  America,  as  in  other  capitalistic  countries,  are  obliged  to  sell  their 
labor.  However,  American  statistics  do  not  give  data  that  would  enable 
us  to  depict  this  situation.  German  statistics,  on  the  contrary,  give  all 
the  data,  analyzed  very  thoroughly.  According  to  the  German  data, 
1,940,867  of  a  total  of  5,736,082  farm  owners  (including  the  very  small- 
est owners),  or  more  than  30  per  cent,  are  but  farm  laborers  if  they  are 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE, — These  censuses  included  among  "the  laborers'*  helping  members 
o£  the  farmer  or  peasant  family.  If  these  are  excluded  from  the  laborers,  Lenin*s  state- 
ment loses  its  significance. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  479 

classified  according  to  their  principal  source  of  income.  These  farm 
laborers  who  also  have  their  own  piece  of  land  are  naturally  among 
the  lowest  class  of  agriculturists. 

In  the  United  States  small  farms  under  three  acres  generally  were 
not  registered.  If  we  suppose  that  only  10  per  cent  of  all  farmer-owners 
are  selling  their  labor,  we  may  assume  that  the  number  of  farmers 
directly  exploited  by  landlords  and  capitalists  is  greater  than  one-third 
of  the  total  number  of  farmers  (24  per  cent  of  croppers  who  are  ex- 
ploited in  a  feudal  manner  by  previous  slaveholders  and  10  per  cent 
exploited  as  hired  laborers  by  the  capitalists  give  a  total  of  34  per  cent). 
This  means  that  only  a  minority  of  the  total  number  of  farmers,  one- 
fifth  or  one-fourth,  neither  hire  labor  nor  are  themselves  hired.  Such 
are  the  conditions  in  the  country  with  a  "perfect  and  advanced"  type 
of  capitalism,  in  the  country  with  millions  of  acres  of  land  given  free 
of  charge.  As  a  result,  the  existence  of  a  so-called  "labor"  or  "non- 
capitalistic"  small  agriculture  in  the  United  States  is  but  a  myth. 

What  is  the  number  of  hired  laborers  in  agriculture  in  the  United 
States?  Is  their  number  steadily  decreasing  or  increasing  as  compared 
with  the  total  number  of  farmers  or  with  the  total  number  of  the 
rural  population?  All  these  questions  are  not  answered  by  American 
statistics.  Let  us  try  to  find  some  approximate  answers. 

The  census  o£  1910  makes  an  attempt  to  throw  light  on  the  situation, 
to  correct  some  errors,  and  to  separate  that  part  of  the  laborers  who  are 
working  "out"  from  those  who  are  working  on  the  home  farm.  Ac- 
cording to  the  census  data,  the  number  of  hired  farm  women  not 
working  on  the  home  farm  was  220,248  in  1900  and  337,522  in  1910, 
an  increase  of  53  per  cent.  The  number  o£  male  farm  laborers  was 
2,299,444  in  1910.  If  we  assume  that  the  percentage  relation  of  farm 
laborers  to  the  total  number  of  males  engaged  in  agriculture  was  simi- 
lar in  1900  to  what  it  was  in  1910,  the  number  of  hired  men  in  1900 
would  have  been  approximately  1,798,165.  In  this  case,  we  would  ob- 
tain the  results  indicated  in  the  following  table.* 


1900 

PERCENTAGE 
1910             OF  INCREASE 

Number  of  farmers  . 
Number  of  hired  men  .    . 
Total   number  of  people 
in  agriculture    

5,674,875 
.   .    ,   .      2,018,213 
occupied 
10,381,765 

5,981,522             5 
2,566,966          27 

12,099,825           16 

This  shows  that  the  percentage  of  increase  of  hired  laborers  from 
1900  to  1910  was  five  times  as  great  as  the  percentage  of  increase  of 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — How  these  figures  in  the  text  and  in  the  table  are  obtained  by 
the  author  and  how  they  are  to  be  reconciled  with  one  another  is  not  clear. 


480  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

farmers.  The  proportion  of  farmers  tn  the  total  agricultural  population 
decreased  while  the  proportion  of  hired  laborers  increased.  The  pro- 
portion of  independent  owners  decreased  while  the  proportion  of 
dependent  and  exploited  increased. 

In  Germany  in  1907,  of  a  total  of  15,000,000  people  engaged  in  agri- 
culture, 4,500,000,  or  30  per  cent,  were  hired  laborers.*  According  to 
the  computations  given  above,  in  America  of  a  total  agricultural  popu- 
lation of  12,000,000,  2,500,000,  or  21  per  cent,  were  hired  laborers.  It  is 
possible  that  the  existence  of  unoccupied  land  and  the  large  percentage 
of  share  tenants  results  in  some  lowering  of  the  total  number  of  hired 
laborers  in  America. 

In  addition,  the  figures  for  the  expenditures  for  the  hired  laborers 
in  agriculture  in  1899  and  1909  are  significant.  For  the  same  period  the 
number  of  hired  laborers  in  industry  increased  from  4.7  millions  to 
6.6  millions,  or  40  per  cent.  Their  wages  increased  from  2.008  millions 
to  3.247  millions  of  dollars,  or  70  per  cent.  (It  is  necessary  to  remember 
that  this  increase  in  wages  is  rather  fictitious  because  there  was  also 
an  increase  in  the  cost  of  living.) 

If  the  relationship  between  the  increase  of  wages  and  the  number  of 
laborers  in  agriculture  is  the  same  as  in  industry,  then  with  an  82 
per  cent  increase  in  the  expenditures  for  hired  labor  in  agriculture 
between  1900  and  1910  we  would  have  a  48  per  cent  increase  in  the 
number  of  hired  laborers.  And,  assuming  this  relationship  to  be  the 
same  in  agriculture  as  in  industry,  we  secure  the  following  estimates 
for  the  three  regions  of  the  United  States. 

PERCENTAGE  OF  INCREASE  FROM  1900  TO  1910 


DISTRICTS 

TOTAL  RURAL 
POPULATION 

No.  OF  FARMS 

No.  OF  HIRFD  MEN 

North 

3,9 

0.6 

40 

South 

14.8 

18.2 

50 

West 

49.7 

53.7 

66 

U.  S.  A. 

11.2 

10.9 

48 

These  computations  show  that  the  increase  in  the  number  of  owners 
for  America  as  a  whole  was  less  than  the  increase  in  the  total  popula- 
tion, and  that  the  increase  in  the  number  o£  hired  men  was  greater 
than  the  increase  in  the  total  rural  population.  In  other  words,  the 
percentage  of  independent  farmers  was  decreasing  and  the  percentage 
of  the  dependent  workers  was  increasing,  a  fact  that  shows  again  the 
progress  of  capitalism  in  American  agriculture. 

The  conspicuous  difference  between  the  estimated  increase  in  the 
number  of  hired  laborers  according  to  the  two  methods  of  computation 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  the  note  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  481 

(27  per  cent  by  the  first  and  48  per  cent  by  the  second)  is  easily  ex- 
plained. In  the  first  computation,  only  regular  farm  laborers  were  in- 
cluded, while  in  the  second  computation  every  case  o£  the  employment 
of  hired"' labor  was  included.  In  agriculture  the  use  of  hired  labor  for 
a  shgrt  time  is  of  great  significance.  The  division  of  the  laborers  into 
Jje*manent  and  temporary  is  not  sufficient,  but  for  a  correct  represen- 
tation of  the  facts  the  total  expenditures  for  labor  should  really  be 
given. 

At  any  rate  both  computations  show  that  in  the  United  States  the 
increase  of  capitalism  in  agriculture  is  accompanied  by  an  increase  in 
farm  labor  and  that  this  increase  is  greater  than  the  increase  of  either 
the  total  population  engaged  in  agriculture  or  the  number  of  farm 
owners. 

DRIVING  OUT  OF  SMALL  BY  LARGE  FARMS   (CONCENTRATION  OF  LAND) 

Amount  of  land  cultivated. — We  have  considered  the  principal 
forms  of  the  development  of  capitalism  in  American  agriculture  and 
have  seen  that  the  ways  of  this  development  are  many  and  various. 
The  disintegration  of  the  slave  system  (latifundia)  in  the  South,  the 
growth  of  large  farm  enterprises  in  the  extensive  regions  of  the  North, 
and  the  rapid  growth  of  capitalism  in  the  smallest  farms  in  the  inten- 
sive region  of  the  North  are  the  principal  types  of  capitalistic  develop- 
ment in  agriculture.  The  facts  show  that,  according  to  the  region,  the 
growth  of  capitalism  may  manifest  itself  sometimes  in  an  increase  in 
the  size  of  the  farms,  and  sometimes  in  an  increase  in  the  total  number 
of  farms.  For  this  reason  the  average  size  of  the  farms  in  the  entire 
country  does  not  give  an  adequate  representation  of  the  actual  situa- 
tion. 

What  is  the  general  result  of  various  local  agricultural  peculiarities 
in  this  respect?  Taking  various  factors  into  consideration,  the  general 
trend  of  the  process  in  the  United  States  is  shown  by  the  following 
data: 


SIZE  OF  FARMS 
IN  ACRES 

No.  OF  FARMS 
IN  THOUSANDS 

No.  OF  FARMS  IN 
PER  CENT 

INCREASE  OR 
DECREASE 

1900 

1910 

1900 

1910 

20  and  under 
20  to  49          

674 
1,258 
1,366 
1,423 
868 
103 
47 

839 
1,415 
1,438 
1,516 
978 
125 
50 

11.7 
21.9 
23.8 
24.8 
15.1 
1.8 
0.8 

13.2 
22.2 
22.6 
23.8 
15.4 
2.0 
0.8 

+1.5 
+0.3 
—1.2 
—1.0 
+0.3 
+0.2 

50  to  99 

100  to  174  
175  to  499  
500  to  999  
1,000  and  above  , 

Total  5,738         6,361  100.0         100.0 


482  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  number  of  latifundia  as  compared  with  the  total  number  of  the 
farms  remained  the  same.  The  changes  in  the  relationship  of  the  re- 
maining groups  were  characterized  by  the  elimination  of  the  middle 
groups  and  by  the  increase  of  the  extreme  groups.  The  middle  groups, 
59  to  99  and  100  to  174  acres,  decreased.  The  greatest  increase  is  found 
in  the  smallest  farms  and  also  in  the  large  capitalistic  enterprises  (175- 
999  acres). 

The  total  amount  of  land  in  farms  of  various  sizes  is  given  in  the 
next  table.  In  the  first  place  we  notice  here  a  considerable  decrease  in 
the  proportion  of  the  land  occupied  by  latifundia.  Let  us  remember 
that  the  absolute  decrease  of  land  is  restricted  by  the  South  and  the 
West,  where  the  percentage  of  uncultivated  land  in  the  latifundia  in 
1910  was  from  77.1  to  91.5  per  cent. 


TOTAL  AMOUNT  OF 

TOTAL  AMOUNT  OF 

SIZE  OF  FARMS 
IN  ACRES 

LAND  IN  THOUSANDS 
OF  ACRES 

LAND  IN 
PERCENTAGES 

INCREASE  OR 
DECREASE 

1900 

1910 

1900 

1910 

20  and  under  .  . 

7,181 

8,794 

0.9 

1.0 

+0.1 

20  to  49  

41,536 

45,378 

5.0 

5.2 

+0.2 

50  to  99 

98,592 

103,121 

11.8 

11.7 

—0.1 

100  to  174  .   .    . 

192,680 

205,481 

23.0 

23.4 

+0.4 

175  to  499  

232,955 

265,289 

27.8 

30.2 

+2.4 

500  to  999  

67,864 

83,653 

8.1 

9.5 

+1.4 

1,000  and  above 

197,784 

167,082 

23.5 

19.0 

—4.6 

Total  .       .    . 

838,592 

878,798 

100.0 

100.0 

There  is  a  very  insignificant  decrease  in  the  proportion  of  the  total 
land  area  in  the  upper  of  the  small  groups  (0.1  per  cent  in  the  group 
from  50  to  99  acres).  The  greatest  increase  is  seen  in  the  large  capi- 
talistic groups  (from  175  to  499  and  from  500  to  999  acres).  The  in- 
crease in  the  amount  of  land  in  the  small  farming  groups  is  insignifi- 
cant. In  the  middle  group  (from  100  to  174  acres)  there  is  practically 
no  change  (0.4  per  cent). 

The  table  on  page  483  presents  data  concerning  the  amount  of  land 
cultivated. 

With  some  exceptions  the  amount  of  land  cultivated  is  the  only 
adequate  indicator  of  the  size  of  the  farm  enterprise.  We  see  that  the 
proportion  of  cultivated  land  in  latifundia  increased  in  proportion  to 
the  total  amount  of  the  land  cultivated  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
proportion  of  land  in  latifundia  to  the  total  amount  of  land  decreased. 
All  the  capitalistic  groups  of  enterprises  increased,  and  most  of  all  the 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  483 


SIZE  OF  FARMS 

CULTIVATED  FARM 
LAND  IN  THOUSAND 

PER  CENT  OF  CULTI- 
VATED FARM  LAND 

INCREASE  OR 

IN  ACRES 

OF  ACRES 

DECREASE 

<S~ 

1900 

1910 

1900 

1910 

f 

20^fid  under  . 

6,440 

7,992 

1.6 

1.7 

+0.1 

Sff  to  49 

33,001 

36,596 

8.0 

7.6 

-0.1 

50  to  99 

67,345 

71,155 

16.2 

14.9 

—1.3 

100  to  174 

118,391 

128,854 

28.6 

26.9 

—1.7 

175  to  499 

135,530 

161,775 

32.7 

33.8 

+1.1 

500  to  999 

29,473 

40,817 

7.1 

8.5 

+1.4 

1,000  and  above 

24,317 

31,263 

5.9 

6.5 

+0.6 

Total 

414,498 

478,452 

100.0 

100.0 

group  from  500  to  999  acres.  The  middle  groups  showed  the  largest 
decrease  (1.7  per  cent).  It  was  followed  by  the  decrease  of  the  smaller 
groups,  with  the  exception  of  the  smallest— 20  acres  and  under— which 
showed  an  insignificant  increase  (0.1  per  cent). 

The  general  results  of  the  preceding  analyses  lead  to  an  unquestion- 
able conclusion,  namely:  an  increase  of  the  large  farms  and  a  decrease 
of  small  farms.  Or,  in  other  words,  as  far  as  it  is  possible  to  judge  about 
capitalistic  and  noncapitalistic  elements  in  agriculture  on  the  basis  of 
the  amount  of  land,  the  United  States  definitely  showed  a  general 
growth  of  capitalistic  enterprises  at  the  expense  of  small  farms  during 
the  decade  studied. 

Some  additional  evidence  concerning  the  same  phenomenon  is  given 
in  the  table  on  page  484,  which  shows  an  increase  in  the  number  of 
farms  and  an  increase  in  the  amount  of  land  cultivated.  These  figures 
make  the  above  conclusions  still  more  certain. 

The  greatest  increase  in  the  amount  of  land  cultivated  is  found  in 
the  last  two  largest  groups.  The  smallest  increase  of  the  amount  of 
land  is  found  in  the  middle  group  and  the  small  group  that  is  next  to 
it  (from  50  to  99  acres).  In  the  two  small  groups  the  percentage  of 
increase  in  the  land  cultivated  is  smaller  than  the  percentage  of  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  farms. 

EXPROPRIATION  OF  THE  SMALL  LANDOWNERS 

The  problem  of  expropriation  of  the  small  landowners  has  great 
importance  for  a  correct  understanding  of  capitalism  in  agriculture.  It 
is  very  typical  of  contemporary  political  economy  and  statistics,  satu- 
rated as  they  are  with  bourgeois  tendencies,  that  the  above  problems 
either  have  not  been  studied  at  all  or  have  been  studied  carelessly. 

Data  for  all  capitalistic  countries  show  an  increase  in  the  growth  of 


484  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


SIZE  OF  FARMS 
IN  ACRES 

PERCENTAGE  OF  INCREASE,  1900-1910 

No.  of  Farms 

Amount  of  Culti- 
vated Land 

20  and  under 

24.5 

24.1 

20  to  49       .  . 

12.5 

10.9 

50  to  99 

5.3 

5.7 

100  to  174                     .       . 

6.6 

8.8 

175  to  499  

12.7 

19.4 

500  to  999 

22.2 

38.5 

1,000  and  above     . 

63 

28.6 

Total 

10.9 

15.4 

the  urban  population  and  a  decrease  in  the  growth  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion. There  is  a  migration  of  people  from  the  country  to  the  city.  In 
the  United  States  this  migration  proceeds  steadily.  The  percentage  of 
the  urban  population  has  increased  from  29.5  per  cent  in  1880  to  36.1 
per  cent  in  1890,  to  40.5  per  cent  in  1900,  and  to  46.3  per  cent  in  1910. 
The  urban  population  has  been  increasing  faster  than  the  rural  popula- 
tion in  all  parts  of  the  country.  From  1900  to  1910  the  rural  population 
of  the  industrial  North  increased  by  3.9  and  the  urban  by  29.8  per 
cent;  in  the  South,  where  slavery  previously  existed,  the  rural  popula- 
tion increased  by  14.8  per  cent  and  the  urban  by  41.4  per  cent;  in  the 
western  pioneer  belts  the  rural  population  increased  by  49.7  per  cent, 
and  the  urban  by  89.6  per  cent. 

Such  an  important  problem  should  be  studied  carefully  by  the  agri- 
cultural census.  The  main  problem  here  is  to  discover  which  strata  of 
the  rural  population  migrate  most  intensively  to  the  city,  and  under 
what  conditions  they  migrate.  The  most  detailed  data,  often  about  the 
most  insignificant  details  of  agricultural  enterprise,  are  collected  by  the 
census.  Hence  it  seems  as  if  it  should  have  been  easy  to  include  ques- 
tions concerning  the  number  of  farms  sold  or  rented  by  people  migrat- 
ing to  the  city,  how  many  members  of  the  family  leave  the  farms,  and 
whether  they  leave  permanently  or  temporarily.  Yet  such  questions 
have  not  been  included,  and  thus  the  corresponding  data  are  usually 
lacking  in  agricultural  censuses.  Census  investigators  do  not  go  back 
of  such  routine  information  as:  "The  rural  population  decreased  from 
59.5  to  53.7  per  cent  between  1900  and  1910." 

The  investigators  apparently  do  not  suspect  what  enormous  misery, 
exploitation,  and  ruin  is  hidden  behind  these  figures.  And  the  bour- 
geois or  semi-bourgeois  economists  do  not  even  want  to  notice  the 
direct  connection  between  the  migration  of  the  population  from  the 
country  to  the  city  and  the  ruin  of  the  small  farmers. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  485 

In  order  to  clarify  this  problem  there  is  but  one  way.  We  must  try 
to  put  together  the  scanty  figures  of  the  1910  census  concerning  the 
expropriation  of  small  farm  owners. 

We  have  figures  as  to  the  type  of  ownership  of  the  farms;  the  num- 

ber/of  owners,  divided  into  those  who  own  the  entire  farm  and  those 

«who  own  only  a  part  of  it;  and,  further,  the  share  and  cash  tenants. 

These  data  are  given  by  regions  but  are  not  distributed  according  to 

the  classes  of  farm  enterprises. 

The  figures  for  1900  and  1910  give  the  following  distribution:  total 
farm  population  increased  by  11.2  per  cent;  the  number  of  farms  in- 
creased by  10.9  per  cent;  the  number  of  all  owners  increased  by  8.1 
per  cent;  the  number  of  owners  of  the  entire  farm  increased  by  4.8 
per  cent. 

These  data  indicate  very  clearly  the  increasing  expropriation  of  the 
small  agriculturist.  The  rural  population  grew  more  slowly  than  the 
urban.  The  number  of  farmers  increased  less  than  the  total  rural 
population;  the  number  of  farm  owners  increased  less  than  the  num- 
ber of  farmers;  and  the  number  of  owners  of  the  entire  farm  increased 
less  than  the  number  of  farm  owners  in  general. 

The  percentage  of  farm  owners  among  the  total  number  of  farmers 
has  decreased  steadily  during  the  last  decades.  This  is  shown  by  the 
following  figures: 

YEAR  PERCENTAGE 


1880  .  .       .  74.0 

1890         ....  .  71.6 

1900  .  647 

1910,  .  .  63.0 

The  percentage  of  tenants  has  been  correspondingly  increasing,  the 
number  of  share  tenants  increasing  more  rapidly  than  the  number  of 
cash  tenants.  The  percentage  of  share  tenants  among  all  tenants  was 
17.5  in  1880,  18.4  in  1890,  22.2  in  1900,  and  24.0  in  1910. 

That  this  decrease  in  the  number  of  farm  owners  and  increase  in 
the  number  of  tenants  meant  a  progressive  ruin  of  the  small  farmers  is 
evidenced  also  by  the  following  figures: 

PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMS  WITH 


TYPES  OF  FARMS 

Cattle 

Horses 

1900            1910 

1900             1910 

Owner      

.   .     ,  .    96.7          96.1 

85.1           81.5 

Tenants      

94.2          92,9 

67.9          60.7 

486  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  owners,  according  to  the  data,  are  economically  better  off  than 
the  tenants,  and  the  lowering  standard  of  the  tenants  declines  more 
rapidly  than  that  of  the  owners. 

The  capitalistic  tendency  toward  the  expropriation  of  the  small  agri- 
culturist has  been  going  on  so  intensively  in  the  northern  region  of 
America  that  the  number  of  farm  owners  there  has  been  decreasing,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  tens  of  millions  of  acres  of  free  land  have  been 
given  away. 

Two  factors  still  counteract  this  tendency  in  the  United  States:  first, 
the  presence  of  undivided  plantations  in  the  South  with  their  sup- 
pressed and  exploited  Negro  population;  and,  second,  the  sparse  popu- 
lation in  the  West.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  these  two  factors  are 
at  the  same  time  the  source  for  the  future  growth  of  capitalism  and  the 
basis  for  its  further  and  faster  development.  The  social  antagonism  be- 
tween the  large-  and  small-scale  farming,  and  the  elimination  of  the 
latter  by  the  former,  are  not  permanently  avoided,  but  merely  post- 
poned. The  capitalistic  conflagration  is  only  "slowed  up"  at  the  price 
of  the  preparation  of  a  new,  much  larger,  and  more  inflammatory  fuel. 

The  increase  of  the  expropriation  of  small  farmers  is  also  shown  by 
the  number  of  mortgages  on  the  farms. 

PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMS  MORTGAGED 
DISTRICTS         - 


1890  1900  1910 


North 

40.3 

40.9 

41.9 

South 

5.7 

17.2 

23.5 

West 

23.1 

21.7 

28.6 

U.S.A. 

28.2 

31.0 

33.6 

The  percentage  of  mortgaged  farms  has  been  steadily  increasing  in 
all  parts  of  the  country,  and  it  has  been  the  highest  in  the  populous  and 
industrialized  capitalistic  North.  American  statisticians  point  out  that 
the  increase  in  the  number  o£  mortgaged  farms  in  the  South  can  prob- 
ably be  explained  by  the  disintegration  of  the  plantations,  which  are 
being  divided  into  lots  and  sold  to  Negroes  or  to  white  farmers.  Only 
part  of  the  value  is  paid  in  cash,  the  remaining  part  being  settled  with 
a  mortgage.  Therefore,  we  see  a  peculiar  transaction  of  selling,  due  to 
the  slavery  system  of  the  South.  In  1910  Negroes  in  the  United  States 
owned  only  920,883  farms,  or  14.5  per  cent  of  the  total  number.  During 
the  period  from  1900  to  1910  the  number  of  farms  owned  by  the  white 
people  increased  by  9.5  per  cent,  and  the  number  owned  by  Negroes 
increased  by  19.6  per  cent,  or  twice  as  much.  The  desire  of  the  Negroes 
to  be  freed  from  the  planters  is  still  very  conspicuous,  notwithstanding 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  487 

the  fact  that  half  a  century  has  passed  since  the  time  of  "victory"  over 
the  slave  masters. 

A  mortgage  on  a  farm  does  not  necessarily  indicate  poverty  and 
need,,ds  is  indicated  correctly  by  American  statisticians.  It  is  sometimes 
buj/a  means  for  obtaining  money  or  capital  for  melioration  and  so  on. 
iiowever,  this  remark  should  not  hide  the  fact  that  only  a  small  pro- 
portion of  comparatively  wealthy  people  are  able  to  obtain  money  for 
melioration  and  other  improvements  in  the  way  indicated.  The  greater 
majority,  on  the  contrary,  become  still  more  impoverished  and  become 
a  victim  of  capital  in  its  new  form. 

The  dependence  of  the  farmers  upon  financial  capital  could  and 
should  attract  more  attention  from  investigators.  This  side  of  the  prob- 
lem, however,  notwithstanding  its  importance,  is  still  at  the  present 
time  completely  overlooked. 

The  increase  in  the  number  of  farms  mortgaged  is  an  indication  of 
the  transition  of  control  into  the  hands  of  the  capitalists.  Of  course  it 
is  understood  that,  outside  of  the  farms  that  are  mortgaged  officially 
through  the  notary  public,  there  are  many  farms  which  are  heavily 
mortgaged  to  private  people  and  therefore  are  not  included  in  the 
census  as  mortgaged  farms. 

SUMMARY  AND  RESULTS 

The  general  laws  of  the  development  of  capitalism  in  agriculture 
and  the  diversity  of  form  among  them  may  be  studied  very  conveni- 
ently by  using  the  United  States  as  an  illustration.  The  above-men- 
tioned study  leads  to  conclusions  that  may  be  summarized  briefly  as 
follows: 

Manual  labor  is  more  predominant  in  agriculture  than  in  industry. 
Machinery,  however,  is  steadily  progressing,  gradually  improving  the 
technique  of  the  enterprise  and  making  it  more  and  more  capitalistic. 
If  machinery  is  employed  in  agriculture  at  the  present  time  its  use  is 
only  in  capitalistic  enterprises. 

The  principal  indication  of  capitalism  in  agriculture  is  the  use  of 
hired  labor.  The  use  of  machinery  has  increased  considerably  in  all 
parts  of  the  country,  as  well  as  in  different  branches  of  agriculture.  The 
use  of  hired  labor  has  increased  with  the  increase  in  the  use  of  ma- 
chinery. The  increase  in  the  number  of  hired  laborers  is  more  rapid 
than  the  increase  of  both  the  rural  and  the  total  population  of  the 
country.  The  number  of  farmers  is  increasing  more  slowly  than  the 
total  rural  population.  Class  distinctions  become  more  prominent  and 
conflicting. 

The  small  enterprises  in  agriculture  are  decreasing  and  large  enter- 
prises are  being  substituted  for  them.  A  comparison  of  the  figures  for 


488  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

1900  and  1910  shows  this  tendency  quite  clearly.  The  real  significance 
of  the  decrease  has  not  been  shown  by  American  investigators,  how- 
ever, since  in  the  study  of  1910  they  were  satisfied  by  classifying  enter- 
prises on  the  basis  of  the  amount  of  land  alone.  With  the  increase  in 
the  intensity  of  agriculture  the  amplification  and  undermining  men- 
tioned above  become  more  conspicuous. 

The  growth  of  capitalism  is  manifest  not  only  in  the  development 
of  large  enterprises  in  the  districts  with  extensive  agriculture,  but  also 
in  the  creation  of  larger  enterprises,  which  produce  more,  in  the  dis- 
tricts with  intensive  agriculture.  As  a  result  of  the  concentration  of  pro- 
duction in  the  large  enterprises.,  the  elimination  of  small  enterprises  is 
going  on  faster  and  deeper  than  is  indicated  in  figures  concerning  the 
amount  of  land  alone.  The  figures  of  the  census  of  1900,  which  are  bet- 
ter elaborated  and  more  scientific,  leave  no  doubt  as  to  the  above  con- 
clusions. 

The  expropriation  of  small  agriculture  is  steadily  advancing.  The 
percentage  of  owners  as  compared  with  the  total  number  of  farmers 
has  been  steadily  decreasing  during  the  last  ten  years.  The  percentage 
of  the  latter  as  compared  with  the  total  increase  of  population  is  also 
smaller.  The  number  of  farmers  is  decreasing  even  in  the  North, 
which  is  the  main  district  for  agricultural  production.  And  in  the 
North  we  do  not  find  either  traces  of  slavery  or  pioneer  conditions. 
The  percentage  of  farmers  who  own  cattle  has  decreased  during  the 
last  decade.  As  contrasted  with  the  increase  in  the  percentage  of  farm- 
ers who  own  dairy  farms  and  cattle,  the  percentage  of  farmers  who 
own  horses  has  decreased.  This  latter  decrease  is  larger  than  the  in- 
crease of  the  first  group  and  is  found  mainly  among  the  small  farmers. 

In  general  the  comparison  of  corresponding  figures  in  agriculture 
and  industry  for  the  same  period  of  time  indicate  that,  though  the 
former  is  still  at  a  very  primitive  stage  of  development,  the  laws  that 
control  both  agriculture  and  industry  are  identical,  the  principal  tend- 
ency in  both  being  toward  the  substitution  of  large  enterprises  for 
small  ones. 

61.  J.  SCHAFIR:  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  AGRARIAN  PROGRAM  OF 
THE  SOCIALIST  PARTIES  OF  THE  SECOND  INTERNATIONAL* 

NEW  SOCIALIST  AGRARIAN  PROGRAMS 

The  years  following  the  [World]  War  were  characterized  in  a 
number  of  countries  by  a  fundamental  change  in  the  point  of  view  of 

*  From  J.  Schafir,  "Zur  Characteristik  der  Agrarprogramme  der  Parteien  der  Zweiten 
Internationale,"  Agrar-Ptobleme,  Berlin,  1928,  Band  I,  Heft  4,  617-639.  Translated  and 
printed  with  permission  of  the  publisher  (Paul  Parey), 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  489 

the  social  democratic  parties  concerning  the  role  and  significance  of 
the  peasantry  and  the  general  trend  of  agriculture.  Many  of  the  most 
important  parties  belonging  to  the  Second  International  formulated 
agrarian  programs.  In  1925  the  Austrian  Social  Democratic  party  de- 
veloped and  adopted  an  agrarian  program  which  has  served  many 
Bother  social  democratic  parties  as  a  model.  In  1925  the  agrarian  pro- 
gram of  the  English  Labor  party  was  adopted,  and  in  1927  the  Con- 
gress of  the  German  Social  Democratic  party  in  Kiel  adopted  its 
agrarian  program,  which  differs  only  in  minor  details  from  that  of  the 
Austrian  Social  Democrats.  In  the  same  year  the  French  Socialist  party 
drafted  the  sketch  of  a  general  program  whose  essential  part  consisted 
of  a  special  agrarian  program.  At  approximately  the  same  time  the 
agrarian  program  of  the  Czechoslovakian  Social  Democratic  party  was 
worked  out. 

In  these  new  agrarian  programs  of  the  social  democratic  parties 
there  remains  little  of  Marxism.  More  than  that,  the  agrarian  programs 
of  many  parties  of  the  Second  International  are  bare  even  of  Marxian 
phraseology. 

Let  us  review  in  a  few  words  the  former  general  attitude  of  the 
social  democrats  toward  agrarian  programs.  It  was  as  follows.  Every 
agrarian  program  of  a  party  of  the  labor  class  had  to  aim  primarily 
at  a  specified  objective:  the  deepening  and  strengthening  of  the  class 
war  between  the  proletarian  and  the  bourgeoisie,  of  the  rural  labor- 
ing class  against  the  middle  class  and  feudalistic  elements  in  the 
village.  Only  in  so  far  as  the  demands  of  the  program  met  this  funda- 
mental objective  were  they  acceptable  to  the  party  of  the  proletariat. 
The  class  war  constituted  the  highest  criterion  for  an  evaluation  of  the 
program.  For  this  reason  the  orthodox  Marxian  of  former  times  op- 
posed a  revisionistic  attempt  to  produce  a  program  whose  object  was 
the  "protection  of  the  farming  interests"  or  the  "betterment  of  rural 
culture,"  etc.  The  orthodox  Marxians  pointed  out  that  by  such  a  gen- 
eral formulation  the  class  character  of  the  socialist  movement  would 
be  destroyed;  that  such  general  objectives  as  "the  raising  of  culture," 
"protection  of  farming  interests,"  lacked  the  class  distinction,  and  that 
these  objectives  always  served  as  a  cloak  for  favoring  the  promotion  of 
capitalistic  principles  in  the  village.  Out  of  just  such  considerations  the 
German  Social  Democrats  in  their  time  repudiated  the  revisionistic 
agrarian  programs  of  David,  Vollmar,  Schonlank,  and  others.  This 
criterion  for  the  evaluation  of  socialist  agrarian  programs  was  gener- 
ally accepted  by  orthodox  Marxians. 

At  present  the  general  trends  of  the  new  socialist  agrarian  programs 
are  diametrically  opposed  to  the  old  usage  of  the  orthodox  Marxians. 
The  Austrian  socialist  agrarian  program  begins  with  the  following 


490  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  KURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

words :  "Increase  of  the  productivity  of  agricultural  labor  is  one  of  the 
most  important  presuppositions  in  bettering  the  economic  conditions 
of  the  masses  in  the  country  as  well  as  in  the  city."1 

Still  more  clearly  formulated  is  the  general  preface  to  the  agrarian 
program  of  the  English  Labor  party.  In  the  program  adopted  in  1925 
it  is  stated: 

The  soil  is  the  foundation  of  life.  The  most  complete  and  practical  utili- 
zation of  the  soil  is  therefore  a  question  of  the  greatest  importance  as  well 
for  the  city  as  for  the  rural  community.  Until  now  the  soil  (and  the  major 
agricultural  industries  that  depend  on  it)  has  not  returned  the  material 
income  nor  the  far-reaching  social  results  that  the  nation  has  a  right  to 
expect  from  it.  The  village  suffers  until  the  present  day  under  the  anti- 
quated soil  cultivation  and  the  inefficient  methods  whose  junction  is  to 
hasten  the  creation  of  its  prosperity.  The  nation  can  decidedly  no  longer  be 
satisfied  with  the  present  condition  of  things.  We  must  check  the  descent, 
which  has  made  itself  noticeable  in  the  last  fifty  years,  and  through  a  strong 
constructive  policy  achieve  a  three-fold  ideal:  "Better  soil  cultivation;  better 
management;  better  conditions  of  life."  The  labor  movement  stands  for  the 
ownership  in  general  of  the  soil  and  a  reorganization  of  agriculture  for  the 
community  welfare.  It  is  not  satisfied  with  the  continued  misuse  of  the  soil, 
or  the  present  living  conditions  of  the  agricultural  laborer.  The  object  of 
its  policy  is  to  transform  agriculture  into  a  blooming  industry  and  the  vil- 
lage into  a  village  society  which  enjoys  all  the  benefits  and  luxuries  to 
which  all  the  citizens  are  morally  entitled.2 

The  German  Social  Democratic  agrarian  program  repeats,  in  spite  of 
the  present  Marxian  phraseology,  essentially  the  same  general  suspen- 
sion of  the  above-quoted  program.  The  question  which  concerns  us  is 
confirmed  by  the  following  quotation  from  the  German  agrarian  pro- 
gram: 

The  increase  in  the  productiveness  of  manual  labor  through  the  con- 
stantly increasing  application  of  science  and  technique  is  the  mutual  con- 
cern of  the  laboring  class  in  city  and  country.  .  .  .  The  capitalistic  laws  of 
exchange  regulate  the  technical  and  organizational  progress  of  agricultural 
production  in  a  much  more  limited  measure  than  in  the  industrial  pursuits. 
Therefore  the  well-known  influence  of  society  and  its  organs  must  displace 
the  influence  of  the  market  laws  upon  the  increase  and  intensification  of 
agricultural  production.8 

In  all  mentioned  programs  the  fundamental  criterion  consists  of  the 
"increasing  of  productiveness  and  of  agricultural  labor."  The  "increas- 
ing of  productiveness"  is  the  interest  of  "the  entire  nation,"  o£  "the 

1  Das  Agrarprogramm  der  deutschosterrcicheischcn  Sozialdcmokratic,  Wicn,  1925. 

2  Report  of  the  Twenty-Sixth  Annual  Conference  of  the  Labor  Party,  London,  1926, 
p.  336. 

8  SoziaUcmokrarischer  Partfttag,  1927.  tn  Kiel,  Berlin,  1927,  p.  273. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  491 

entire  society,"  and  all  its  organs  (the  German  program),  or  again  of 
"the  masses,"  as  it  is  called  by  the  Austrian  Social  Democracy. 

This  general  position  stands  in  sharpest  contrast  to  what  the  ortho- 
dox Marxians  have  said  and  written  on  this  question  for  many  years. 
Already  in  such  a  general  formulation  one  must  recognize  a  radical 
revision  of  the  fundamental  position  of  the  social  democracy  on  the 
agrarian  question.  Indeed,  an  increase  in  the  productiveness  of  labor 
may  be  the  general  aim  of  all  classes  and  all  parties.  In  so  far  as  the 
social  democracy  now  regards  the  question  from  this  viewpoint,  it  em- 
phasizes from  the  beginning  the  thought  that  the  solving  of  the 
agrarian  question  is  dependent  not  upon  class  war  and  its  outcome, 
but  upon  the  raising  of  the  general  level  of  culture  in  the  village  by 
all  possible  agronomic  and  technical  measures  or  by  reforms  acceptable 
to  the  majority  of  the  bourgeois  parties. 

This  general  position  of  the  new  agrarian  programs  receives  a  fur- 
ther development  in  the  formulation  of  the  principles.  As  is  known, 
one  of  the  most  important  questions  in  the  field  that  concerns  us  is  the 
problem  of  large-  and  small-scale  husbandry,  its  role  and  significance 
for  agriculture.  With  reference  to  the  most  important  of  these  ques- 
tions the  new  agrarian  programs  repudiate  completely  the  old  view- 
point of  the  Marxians  and  locate  themselves  decidedly  on  the  side  of 
the  revisionists. 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CONCENTRATION  IN  AGRICULTURE 

Until  recently  the  orthodox  Marxians  had  decided  views  concerning 
concentration  in  agriculture.  They  were  of  the  opinion  that  agriculture 
must  gradually  be  subjected  to  the  general  industrializing  and  concen- 
tration process.  The  small  husbandmen,  in  one  way  or  another,  gradu- 
ally had  to  come  under  the  control  of  the  bank  and  business  capital; 
their  role  and  importance  in  the  entire  political  economy,  measured  by 
the  large  producers,  had  to  dimmish.  The  great  agricultural  enter- 
prises, organized  on  capitalistic  principles,  were  bound  to  displace  more 
and  more  the  countrified,  technically  backward,  small  and  medium- 
sized  farming  enterprises.  This  general  concentration  process  in  agri- 
culture must  lead  to  a  sharp  differentiation  in  the  village — within  the 
peasant  class — and  to  an  intensification  of  the  class  war. 

Such  a  war  between  the  strata  of  landowners  and  nonowners  in 
the  village  was  bound  to  increase.  It  could  be  brought  to  a  close  only 
after  a  socialistic  revolution  and  after  the  grasping  of  power  by  the 
laboring  class.  Such  was  the  standpoint  of  the  orthodox  Marxians,  and 
such  it  is  of  the  present  Communists* 

The  revisionists,  on  the  other  hand,  generally  assumed  that  in  agri- 
culture no  concentration  was  taking  place;  that  small-scale  farming 


492  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

was  not  backward  compared  with  large-scale  farming;  that  in  many 
cases  the  former  was  even  superior.  The  standpoint  of  the  revisionists 
until  recently  was  not  -officially  accepted  by  the  social  democracy.  We 
now  possess  a  complete,  unequivocal  declaration  of  an  opposite  nature. 
Fritz  Baade,  reporter  for  agrarian  questions  at  the  Kiel  Social  Demo- 
cratic Congress,  declares  that  in  the  dispute  between  Kautsky  and 
David  in  matters  pertaining  to  small  and  large  farm  enterprises,  right 
was  completely  on  the  side  of  David.  He  refers  to  the  figures  of  Ger- 
man statistics,  which  ostensibly  prove  that  the  small  enterprises  are  in- 
creasing, while  the  number  of  large  estates  is  decreasing. 

Likewise  Otto  Bauer,  in  his  report  at  the  Vienna  Socialist  Congress, 
expresses  the  thought  that  the  concentration  process  has  no  permanent 
place  in  agriculture.  With  reference  to  the  same  he  says  as  follows: 

Marxian  socialism  has  taught  us  a  different  method.  It  has  taught  us  ... 
that  the  new  society  will  be  prepared  through  the  objective  development  of 
capitalism  itself;  that  we  have  to  socialize  only  that  which,  through  the 
great  process  of  concentration  of  capital  within  the  capitalistic  social  order, 
and  under  the  command  of  the  capitalists  themselves,  is  already  socialized. 
We  have  only  to  break  the  capitalistic  shell  of  such  a  society  by  the  anni- 
hilation of  private  property  in  order  to  pass  from  a  capitalistic  to  a  so- 
cialistic organization  of  society.  Indeed,  this  is  true  for  industry,  for  whole- 
saling, for  the  banking  system,  but  not  for  the  domain  of  agricultural 
economy.  In  agriculture  such  a  process  of  labor  socialization  does  not  take 
place  within  the  capitalistic  social  order.  It  would  be  a  relapse  into  Utopian 
socialism  if  we  were  to  assume  that  society  could  be  socialized  with  a  simple 
powerful  stroke  where  such  a  stroke  is  opposed  not  to  a  capitalistically  con- 
centrated exploitation  of  property  but  to  individual  property  of  numberless 
peasants,  among  whom  property  and  labor,  means  of  production  and  pro- 
ducer, have  not  been  separated  through  the  process  of  economic  develop- 
ment. In  opposition  to  this,  today,  when  we  (Marxians)  understand  the 
developing  trends  of  agriculture  to  be  entirely  different  from  what  we  un- 
derstood them  to  be  in  the  nineties,  we  (Marxians)  must  .look  at  the  prob- 
lem in  quite  a  different  light.4 

In  a  similar  way  Fritz  Baade,  the  reporter  on  the  agrarian  program 
of  the  German  Social  Democrats,  says: 

Even  in  early  times  the  criticism  was  raised  within  the  socialistic  move- 
ment against  the  too  literal  application  of  the  laws  of  industrial  develop- 
ment to  agriculture.  It  was  known  that  the  agricultural  pursuit,  through  its 
being  bound  to  the  soil,  could  never,  through  a  combination  of  all  pro- 
ductive powers  in  a  single  place,  attain  to  a  similar  superiority  of  mass 
production  as  in  industry.  It  was  known  further  that  in  agriculture  the 
smaller  establishment,  especially  in  the  form  of  peasant  family  production, 
had  certain  advantages  over  large-scale  establishments  and  that  the  advan- 
tages of  a  large-scale  production,  such  as  the  use  of  machinery  and  the 

4  Protocol!  des  Sozialdemokratischen  Parteitages,  Wien,  1925,  pp.  308-309. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  493 

application  of  recent  scientific  improvements  in  the  field  of  artificial  fer- 
tilizing, animal  husbandry,  feeding,  and  cultivation  o£  plants,  are  also 
largely  applicable  to  the  peasant  enterprise.5 

In  continuation,  Baade  gives  statistics  from  the  census  of  1925  con- 
cerning the  composition  of  the  present  German  village,  with  reference 
to  the  division  of  establishments  according  to  their  size,  and  compares 
them  with  the  statistics  for  1907,*  from  which  he  arrives  at  the  follow- 
ing conclusion: 

With  these  statistics  at  hand,  there  can  no  longer  be  any  doubt  that  a  de- 
velopment of  large  grain-producing  farms,  and  a  replacement  of  the 
peasant  enterprise  by  the  large  enterprises  in  agriculture,  at  least  for  those 
decades  in  which  we  now  live,  is  entirely  out  of  the  question;  the  develop- 
ment going  on  in  agriculture  is  very  different  from  that  in  industry. 

Thus  Baade  accepts  the  anti-Marxian  viewpoint  of  those  who  are  of 
the  opinion  that  in  agriculture  a  tendency  toward  concentration  is 
lacking;  that  there  the  small  enterprise  is  superior  to  the  large  enter- 
prise. Baade  develops  his  "socialistic"  perspective  even  so  far  as  to  rec- 
ommend a  parcelling  out  of  the  large  estates  and  the  creation  and  mul- 
tiplication of  peasant  family  farms.  This  is  simply  a  complete  return 
to  David.  The  old  revisionistic  theories  of  David  are  completely  re- 
stored. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  believed  that  at  present,  in  the  epoch  of  monopo- 
listic capitalism,  in  the  age  of  powerful  trusts  and  gigantic  mergers, 
people  who  call  themselves  Marxians  can  express  such  platitudes  as 
this,  that  the  small,  peasant  farms  can  technically  be  compared  with 
the  capitalistically  equipped  large-scale  producing  estates. 

Even  the  greatest  nonsocialist  authorities,  such  as  Laur,  Hainisch, 
and  others  regard  the  technical  superiority  of  large-scale  farming,  con- 
trasted with  small-scale  production,  to  be  indisputable.  The  small  farm 
has  to  sustain  comparatively  enormous  building  costs.  The  small  farms 
can  use  agricultural  implements  only  in  a  limited  way,  and  in  addition 
the  machines  used  by  them  are  technically  inferior  to  those  employed 
on  the  large  estates.  Many  machines  (as,  for  example,  the  steam-plow, 
milking  machines,  and  others)  can  find  use  only  in  large  establish- 
ments. In  the  realm  of  grain  and  hay  production  a  peasant  farm  of 
less  than  ten  hectares  can  use  very  little  machinery.  Only  farms  of 
more  than  ten  hectares  can  use  machinery  to  a  comparatively  large 
extent,  but  the  use  of  such  in  small  establishments  will  cost  much  more 
than  in  the  large  establishments.  The  latter  liquidate  the  cost  of  the 
machinery  more  quickly,  while  the  small"  establishments  are  compelled 
to  pay  interest  on  the  machinery  much  longer.  This  condition  explains 

*F.  Baade,  Sozialdemokmtischc  A$rarpoUtit(f  Berlin,  1927,  p,  4, 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — These  data  arc  given  in  the  introduction  to  this  chapter. 


494  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  fact  that  in  agricultural  large-scale  production  the  machine  invest- 
ment on  a  hectare  basis  is  much  less  than  in  small-scale  production. 

The  above-mentioned  Hainisch,  in  his  book  The  Flight  from  the 
Land  analyzes  in  a  very  detailed  manner  all  positive  and  negative 
aspects  of  large-  and  small-scale  production  in  agriculture.  He  studies 
this  question  very  thoroughly  from  the  technical  and  socio-economic 
standpoints.  As  a  result  he  comes  to  the  following  conclusion  6  : 

After  all  the  investigations  I  feel  myself  justified  in  considering  the  good 
interest  and  profit  of  the  small  farm  to  be  a  fable  that  could  originate  only 
because  neither  the  products  of  the  soil  that  were  used  in  the  household  nor 
the  value  of  the  services  rendered  by  the  family  in  producing  the  same 
were  included  in  the  reckoning.  The  peasant  farms  are  not  investments  of 
capital,  but  places  of  labor,  on  which  the  owner  can  hope  to  exist  only 
through  industry  and  frugality.* 

Hainisch  sees  this  question  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  large  pro- 
ducer, and  it  is  not  to  his  interest  to  formulate  the  truth  clearly  re- 
garding the  condition  of  the  small  producer.  All  the  more  notable, 
therefore,  is  the  fact  that  he  is  compelled  to  substantiate  the  almost 
complete  hopelessness  of  the  small-scale  farmer.  His  words  with  ref- 
erence to  "industry  and  economy"  are  simply  a  confirmation  of  the 
old  assertion  of  the  Marxians  that  the  small  peasant  establishment 
exists  only  at  the  cost  of  an  unheard-of  exploitation  of  the  members  of 
the  family  (including  the  children),  the  labor  performed  by  them,  and 
their  undernourishment. 

Since  the  social  democrats  rely  upon  statistics  for  proof  of  the  as- 
sumption that  at  present  there  is  no  concentration  of  land  into  larger 
and  larger  estates  in  different  countries,  we  will  make  a  hasty  examina- 
tion of  the  statistics  referring  to  the  countries  in  which  we  are  inter- 
ested. According  to  the  statistical  compilation  Les  questions  agricoles 
au  point  de  vue  international  (The  Agricultural  Question  from  an 
International  Point  of  View)^  the  distribution  of  agricultural  enter- 
prises in  France  according  to  their  area  in  1892  was  as  follows 7  : 

SIZE  OF  FARMS  PERCENTAGE  OF     PERCENTAGE  OF 

IN  HECTARES  TOTAL  NUMBER       TOTAL  AREA 

0-10    -.     85.2  25.5 

10-40 12.4  29.0 

40-100    


1.8) 
0.6  J 


100  and  over 0.6 r  45'5 

aM.  Hainisch,  Die  Landflucht,  Jena,  1924,  p.  149. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE* — See  Dr.  Hainisch's  real  conclusions  in  his  paper  given  in  this 
chapter. 

7  Documentation  retinie,  L'usage  de  la  Conference  ficonomiqtte  Internationale  de 
Geneve,  Rome,  1927,  pp.  344-346. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  495 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  last  French  statistics  of  1908,  which  are 
given  in  the  following  table,  with  this  statement. 


SIZE  OF  FARMS 

PERCENTAGE  OF      PERCENTAGE  OF 

IN  HECTARES 

TOTAL  NUMBER        TOTAL  AREA 

0-10 

83.9                  25.6 

10-40 

.  .      13.6                 29.6 

40-100      . 

2.0) 

100  and  over  .  .  . 

0.5}               44'8 

We  see  hereby  that  in  these  sixteen  years  the  changes  taking  place 
with  reference  to  ownership  are  insignificant.  The  farms  of  more  than 
40  hectares  composed  2.4  per  cent  of  the  total  in  1892  and  2.5  per  cent 
in  1908.  On  the  other  hand,  the  area  of  these  farms,  even  though  insig- 
nificant, has  increased  from  22,493,393  to  22,500,000  hectares.  In  other 
words,  the  more  or  less  large  farms  have  in  general  retained  the  pre- 
vious extent  of  their  area/*  According  to  the  figures  of  the  census  for 
1920,  however,  it  is  to  be  accepted  that  the  number  of  the  laborers  em- 
ployed on  the  large  farms  has  considerably  increased.8  During  these 
years  agriculture  in  France  has  been  markedly  industrialized.  Even  if 
we  judge  only  on  the  basis  of  the  division  of  the  ground  area,  we  ar- 
rive at  the  following  conclusion  f  :  that  a  substantial  portion  of  the 
soil  was  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a  very  few  owners.  Over  32.4  per 
cent  of  the  total  area  of  agricultural  land  was  controlled  by  0.5  per  cent 
of  the  owners,  while  83.9  per  cent  of  all  farm  owners  control  only 
25.6  per  cent  of  the  total  acreage. 

In  England  the  division  of  the  land  shows  a  similar  picture  as  to  the 
stability  of  the  large  enterprises  with  reference  to  their  land  area.  There 
the  farms  of  less  than  8  and  more  than  61  hectares  have  lost  in  land, 
while  the  farms  of  from  0.4  to  2  hectares  have  lost  a  little  more  than 
the  farms  of  more  than  121  hectares;  on  the  other  hand,  the  farms  from 
8  to  61  hectares  have  gained  a  little  land.  Therefore,  on  the  basis  of  the 
above  statistics,  we  cannot  speak  of  a  deconcentration  of  land  hold- 
ings. (See  table  on  following  page.) 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — From  the  table  given  by  the  author  the  reader  can  see  that  he 
interprets  it  one-sidedly.  The  area  included  in  the  larger  estates  (40  and  more  hectares) 
did  not  increase  proportionately  but  was  less  in  1908  than  it  was  in  1892,  The  area 
included  in  small  farms  (0-10  and  10-40  hectares)  increased.  The  number  and  per- 
centage of  the  large  estates  (100  hectares  and  over)  also  decreased,  from  33,000  to 
29,000,  or  from  0.6  to  0,5  per  cent  of  all  establishments,  This  remark  is  to  be  kept  in 
mind  with  regard  to  the  author's  figures  and  interpretations  that  follow. 

*ttudes  spt'daks  (population  active  ds  77  diparicmtnts)t  1906-1921,  j>,  71. 

f  EDITORS'  NOTE, — It  is  evident  that  this  argument  does  not  prove  the  author's  con- 
tention at  all.  Uneven  distribution  of  land  has  always  existed.  In  order  to  prove  a  trend 
toward  concentration  the  author  should  have  shown  that  the  degree  of  concentration 
at  a  later  period  was  greater  than  before — which  he  did  not  show.  This  remark  is  to  be 
applied  to  subsequent  similar  data  and  conclusions  of  the  author, 


496 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


PERCENTAGE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  AGRICULTURAL  ESTABLISHMENTS  IN  ENGLAND 
ACCORDING  TO  AREA* 


SIZE  OF 
FARMS  IN 
HECTARES 

PERCENTAGE  OF  TOTAL 

NUMBER 

INCREASE  (  +  )  AND 
DECREASE  (  —  ) 
OF  No.  OF  FARMS 

TOTAL  AREA 

INCREASE 
(+)AND 
DECREASE 

(—  )OF 

AREA 

1924 

1921 

1913 

1913-1924 

1913-1921 

1921 

1913 

1913-1921 

0.4-2 

18.8 

19.3 

21.2 

—  16.7 

—  12.0 

1.0 

1.1 

—  11.2 

2-8 

27.4 

27.8 

28.0 

—  8.3 

—  4.5 

5.0 

5.1 

—  4.6 

8-20 

19.4 

19.3 

17.9 

+  1-9 

+  3.8 

10.4 

9.7 

+  3.7 

20-40 

14.8 

14.5 

13.6 

+  2.5 

+  2.9 

17.0 

15.9 

+  2.7 

40-61 

7.8 

7.6 

7.3 

+  0.3 

+  0.6 

15.1 

14.5 

+  0.3 

61-121 

8.7 

8.5 

8.6 

—  5.6 

—  4.7 

28.6 

28.9 

—  4.7 

Over  121 

3.1 

3.0 

3.4 

—11.4 

—10.8 

22.9 

24.8 

—  11.1 

Total 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

—  6.0 

—  3.6 

100.0 

100.0 

—  3.6 

When  we  turn  to  the  size  of  these  holdings  we  see  that  in  1921 
19.1  per  cent  of  farms  (with  more  than  40  hectares)  includes  66.6  per 
cent  of  the  total  area  of  agricultural  land,  i.e.,  by  far  the  largest  part 
of  the  land.  The  peculiarity  of  the  English  land-tenure  system  consists 
in  the  fact  that  the  owners  rent  out  the  land  and  do  not  cultivate  it 
themselves. 

In  Germany,  according  to  figures  from  the  census  of  1925,  farms 
with  more  than  20  hectares  composed  4.3  per  cent  of  the  total  number. 
In  the  hands  of  this  small  group  is  concentrated  46.6  per  cent  of  the 
land  area. 


SIZE  OF  FARMS 
IN  HECTARES 


PERCENTAGE  OF 
TOTAL  NUMBER 


PERCENTAGE  OF 
TOTAL  AREA 


Under  2  . 
2-5      .    .. 
5-20    .     . 
20-100 
Over  100 


59.5 

17.5 

18.7 

3.9 

0.4 


6.2 
11.4 
35.8 
26.4 
20.2 


Present  Austria  has  back  of  it  a  "reform"  of  the  laws  of  land  recla- 
mation. Besides,  with  the  exception  of  the  Burgenlandes,  none  of  the 
present  Austrian  provinces  were  typical  agricultural  regions.  Neverthe- 
less, the  figures  for  the  distribution  of  land  possession  show  here  also 
the  concentration  of  a  substantial  part  of  the  agricultural  land  area  in 

*  Les  questions  agricoles  au  point  de  vue  International,  pp.  348-349. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  497 

the  hands  of  the  large  landholders.  On  the  basis  of  the  figures  for 
1902  (for  Austria  these  are  the  latest  statistics)  the  area  of  agricultural 
land  of  the  provinces  that  compose  present  Austria  were  divided  in  the 
following  ways:  103  per  cent  of  all  farms  consisted  of  less  than  l/2  hec- 
tare; 41.6  per  cent  of  from  l/2  to  5  hectares;  44.1  per  cent  from  5  to  50 
hectares;  2.7  per  cent  from  50  to  200  hectares;  0.6  per  cent  over  200 
hectares;  and  445  estates  of  more  than  1,000  hectares.  We  present  below 
the  detailed  figures  with  reference  to  the  division  of  agricultural  land 
in  the  individual  provinces  by  the  various  groups  of  owners. 

PERCENTAGE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  FARMS  OF  VARIOUS  SIZES  IN  THE  INDIVIDUAL 
AUSTRIAN  PROVINCES 


HECTARES 

PROVINCE 

Under  2 

2-5 

5-20 

20-100 

Over  100 

Niederb'streich 

,        38.5 

17.9 

31.1 

11.9 

0.6 

Oberostreich 

.     .   .    31.5 

11.9 

31.2 

19.0 

0.9 

Salzburg               .    .  . 
Steiermark 

22.5 
.,    26.0 

14.2 
23.7 

36.0 
33.8 

22.0 
15.1 

4,4 
1.4 

Karnten         
Tirol     

.    .      21.9 

24.3 

16.9 
25.8 

32.7 
34.3 

25.2 
12.7 

3.3 
2.9 

Vorarlberg  .  .  . 

.     .      42.0 

26.2 

25.6 

4.4 

1.8 

These  figures  prove  that,  in  spite  of  the  assertion  of  the  revisionists 
that  there  is  a  tendency  toward  gradual  splitting  up  of  large  land- 
holdings,  they  continue  to  concentrate  within  their  limits  a  consid- 
erable portion  of  the  agricultural  land  area. 

As  we  have,  however,  already  pointed  out,  these  statistics  are  doubt- 
less not  sufficient  for  deriving  definite  conclusions,  and  at  any  rate  are 
entirely  unsuitable  for  conclusions  in  the  meaning  of  the  revisionists. 

The  figures  relating  to  the  number  of  farms  in  the  various  categories 
and  to  the  division  of  land  into  the  different  branches  of  agriculture 
can  in  no  case  decide  the  interesting  question  for  us.  It  is  not  sufficient 
in  the  question  of  the  developing  trends  in  agriculture  to  determine 
definitely  how  many  small,  large,  and  medium-sized  farms  were  in 
operation  during  18954907  and  in  1925.  In  addition,  the  specific  weight 
of  various  economic  classes  in  the  different  years  must  definitely  be 
established,  as  well  as  the  role  that  this  or  that  farming  class  plays  in 
supplying  the  city  and  the  trade  with  agricultural  products. 

In  the  same  way  it  is  necessary  to  ascertain  the  amount  of  indebted- 
ness of  various  farming  groups;  in  other  words,  to  establish  clearly  the 
degree  to  which  "independent"  farmers  are  dependent  upon  the  banks. 


498  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

If  we  approach  the  question  from  this  angle,  we  find  that  the  large 
producers,  all  in  all,  increase  their  specific  weight  in  the  general  and 
agricultural  economy.  It  is  precisely  the  large  producers  who,  being 
in  close  contact  with  the  banks,  regulate  at  present  the  market  for  agri- 
cultural products.  It  is  their  role  to  decide  all  administrative  questions 
relating  to  the  village.  Even  in  districts  where  the  small  peasant  farm 
predominates,  the  maintenance  of  the  .small  towns  is  accomplished 
principally  through  the  large  estates  and  not  through  the  small  farms. 
Furthermore,  the  presence  of  an  increasingly  sharply  defined  tendency 
toward  consolidation,  toward  pooling  of  agriculture,  must  lead  to  the 
creation  of  those  forms  of  concentration  that  have  already  existed  for 
a  long  time  in  industry.* 

On  October  31st,  1926,  there  already  existed  in  Germany  84  agricul- 
tural and  forestry  joint-stock  companies  with  a  capital  of  72  million 
marks.  Eleven  of  these  companies,  with  a  capital  of  27  million  marks, 
were  formed  into  combines. 

Just  in  the  last  years  the  organization  of  pools  in  agriculture  has 
begun  to  grow  very  rapidly.  Here  in  the  first  instance  we  must  men- 
tion the  wheat  pool  in  Canada.  In  1925-1926  this  pool  disposed  of 
187,247,886  bushels  of  wheat  and  in  1926  it  owned  more  than  4,000  ele- 
vators. This  tremendous  organization  practically  concentrated  in  its 
hands  the  most  important  products  of  agriculture  in  Canada.  In  the 
same  way  there  exists  in  Australia  an  organized  wheat  ring,  patterned 
after  the  Canadian  pool,  which  embraces  four  Australian  states  that 
export  wheat. 

In  Poland  the  effort  to  organize  a  cooperative  syndicate  to  export 
wheat  has  made  substantial  progress  in  the  last  few  years.  A  number 
of  local  syndicates  decided  to  merge  for  this  purpose.  In  the  same  way 
the  Central  Board  of  Control  of  the  agricultural  organizations  takes 
part  in  the  creation  of  this  organization. 

In  Italy  a  company  with  a  capital  of  60  million  marks  was  organized 
to  stabilize  the  grain  market.  The  Italian  government  has  an  interest 
in  this  company  to  the  extent  of  20  million  marks. 

In  Germany  in  1925  a  grain-handling  company  was  organized  with 
a  capital  of  40  million  marks.  Very  recently  all  German  papers  brought 
the  news  of  the  purchase  of  a  stock  majority  of  two  large  grain- 
handling  companies  by  two  banks.  The  communication  with  reference 
to  the  above  is  as  follows  9  : 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Here  the  author  undiscriminatingly  groups  the  state  and  co- 
operative organizations  of  the  farmer-peasants  with  private  organizations.  The  growth 
of  the  former  does  not  mean  the  alleged  capitalist  concentration  of  the  control  of  agri- 
culture. 

9  From  Fritz  Steding,  Die  Kartelherung  in  der  Landwirtschajt,  Berlin,  1928. 


SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION  499 

For  some  time  there  has  been  floating  about  in  the  circles  of  the  Prussian 
Central  Cooperative  Bank  and  of  the  German  Land  Bank  (RentenbanJ^- 
Kreditanstalt)  a  discussion  about  the  following  question:  in  order  to  estab- 
lish the  regulation  of  the  grain  market  and  especially  to  reduce  the  harmful 
variations  in  the  price  of  grain,  both  for  agriculture  and  for  consumption,, 
is  it  possible  in  association  with  the  cooperative  agricultural  implement  as- 
sociations to  reach  an  effective  regulation  of  the  selling  of  grain ?  These  dis- 
cussions have  now  been  brought  to  a  close,  but  have  led  to  an  understand- 
ing of  the  desirability  of  such  regulation  by  the  above  institutions  in  coop- 
eration with  the  Kom missions  A.  G.,  which  it  is  well  known  owns  the 
stock  of  the  German  Milling  Association.  The  two  interested  parties,  who 
have  decided  to  work  harmoniously,  among  other  things  will  also  give  the 
consumers  an  opportunity  to  participate.  The  banks  that  have,  until  the 
present,  been  leading  in  the  grain  industry,  and  Kommissions  A.  G.  in  par- 
ticular, have  taken  over  the  financing  both  of  the  commercial  business  and 
the  associated  mills.  They  will  act  as  a  credit  association  for  the  society, 
will  be  at  its  service  in  the  future,  and  also  will  be  on  the  board  of  directors 
of  the  grain  industry  and  the  Kommissions  A.  G.30 

This  signifies  that  the  new  combination  has  set  as  its  goal  to  rule  the 
entire  grain  market,  as  it  will  keep  in  hand  not  only  the  grain  imports 
but  also  the  mills  and  the  trade  organizations.  In  general  the  new  con- 
cern will  be  essentially  a  monopoly  and  will  regulate  the  sale  of  grain 
and  the  manufacture  of  grain  products.  Furthermore,  it  is  anticipated 
that  several  chemical  trusts,  such  as  the  potash  and  nitrogen  trusts,  will 
be  united  with  this  powerful  concern.  The  agrarian  press  already  boasts 
and  declares  that  Germany  now  has  a  competitor  for  the  Canadian 
wheat  ring.  The  new  combination  is  so  strong  that  it  can,  in  the  name 
of  the  entire  German  grain  market,  control  the  whole  situation  be- 
cause the  independent  grain  associations  and  mills  remaining  outside 
of  the  combination  have  not  the  necessary  weight  to  affect  the  move- 
ment of  prices  in  any  way. 

All  this  proves  that  in  the  field  of  agriculture  a  definite  course  of 
agrarian  industrialization  is  being  pursued  toward  the  creation  of  the 
same  mighty  capitalistic  consolidations  as  in  industry.  Financial  capital 
demands  of  agriculture,  when  investing  its  means,  a  rationalization 
and  a  determined  policy  of  logical  industrialization.  Agriculture  shows 
in  recent  years  a  tendency  in  the  direction  of  a  remarkable  concen- 
tration and  subordination  of  the  remaining  enterprises  to  the  hegem- 
ony of  the  capitalistically  organized  concerns. 

Under  these  circumstances,  to  spread  the  theory  that  the  small  farm 
is  stronger  than  the  large  producer  in  agriculture  signifies  the  creation 
of  intentional  illusions,  leading  astray  the  large  masses  of  laboring  peo- 
ple, as  is  done  indeed  by  the  agrarian  programs  of  the  parties  of 
the  Second  International 

10  German  daily  paper  of  July  10,  1928* 


500  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

CONCLUSION 

The  agrarian  programs  of  the  social  democratic  parties  orient  them- 
selves for  the  most  part  along  the  interests  of  the  prosperous  classes  of 
the  village.  In  their  tax  policy  the  social  democrats  especially  empha- 
size that  it  is  necessary  to  conform  their  program  to  the  interests  of  the 
powerful  peasants.  The  system  of  taxation  shall  be  so  built  up  that  "the 
transfer  of  the  soil  to  the  best  cultivator"  shall  be  furthered.  This  policy 
stands  in  the  closest  relation  to  the  policy  of  rationalization  and  inten- 
sification of  agriculture.  Whoever  takes  the  standpoint  of  capitalistic 
rationalizing  must  ally  himself  with  the ,  interests  of  the  well-to-do 
farmer.  The  policy  of  the  social  democrats  is  in  direct  opposition  to 
the  interests  of  the  small-  and  medium-scale  farmer. 

Hereto  must  be  added  that  in  the  same  way  as  the  agrarian  reforms 
which  were  carried  through  in  a  number  of  European  countries  in 
recent  years  followed  the  object  of  preventing  the  development  of  a 
revolution  among  the  peasants,  so  also  the  social  democratic  program 
is  being  pursued  with  the  same  object  in  view:  to  check  the  dissatisfac- 
tion in  the  villages  through  small  reforms,  to  increase  the  numbers  of 
the  followers  of  the  present  order,  and  in  this  way  to  postpone  the  final 
conflict  between  the  proletariat  and  the  bourgeoisie. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MOBILITY  OF  THE  RURAL  POPULATION 

I.  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  MOBILITY  OF  CULTIVATORS;  MOBILE 
AND  IMMOBILE  TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES 

An  adequate  knowledge  of  the  structure  of  any  organization 
requires  a  knowledge  both  of  the  forms  of  its  differentiation  and 
stratification  and  of  its  "metabolism,,"  i.e.,  the  vertical  and  hori- 
zontal mobility  of  its  members.  Two  organizations  may  be  similar 
in  regard  to  the  forms  of  differentiation  and  stratification  and  yet 
really  be  dissimilar  in  many  respects  if  the  mobility  of  their  mem- 
bers differs  quantitatively  and  qualitatively.  Hence  an  adequate 
study  of  rural  social  organization  necessitates  a  careful  analysis 
of  the  degree  and  forms  of  mobility  among  its  members.  This 
problem  is  outlined  briefly  in  this  section. 

The  numerous  forms  of  social  mobility  within  the  agricul- 
tural population  l  may  be  divided  into  two  fundamental  forms. 
There  is  vertical  mobility  when  a  member  of  the  agricultural 
population  changes  his  position  in  the  pyramid  of  social  stratifi- 
cation, moving  from  a  lower  social  stratum  to  a  higKeFone  or  vice 
versa.  A  hired  laborer  may  become  a  tenant  or  an  owner,  or  an 
owner  may  become  a  hired  laborer  or  a  tenant.  Any  shift  from 
one  of  the  strata  given  in  the  preceding  chapter  to  another,  repre- 
sents the  phenomenon  of  vertical  mobility  within  the  population 
studied.  There  is  horizontal  mobility  within  the  agricultural 
population  whenever  a  cultivator  shifts  from  one  farm  to  an- 
other or  from  one  rural  aggregate  to  another.  Horizontal  mo* 
bility  practically  coincides  with  the  territorial  migration  of  the 
agricultural  population  from  one  farm  to  another  or  from  one 
rural  aggregate  to  another.2 

1  The  cases  when  a  cultivator  goes  out  of  the  agricultural  class  and  enters  other  than 
an  agricultural  social  class  or  a  nonagriculturi&t  enters  the  agricultural  class  do  not 
concern  us  here  and  therefore  are  not  considered.  These  cases  are  discussed  in  the  chap- 
ters devoted  to  rural-urban  migrations  and  to  the  relationship  between  the  agricultural 
and  the  nonagricultural  classes  and  in  chapter  iv  of  this  volume. 

aSec  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  principal  forms  o£  social  mobility  in  Sorokin,  Social 

[501] 


502  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Although  the  mobility  of  the  rural  population  is  less  intensive 
than  that  of  the  urban  population,3  it  occurs  to  some  degree  in 
practically  all  rural  aggregates.  Rural  people  migrate  from  the 
country  to  the  city,  and  urban  people  migrate  from  the  city  to  the 
country.  Individuals  engaged  in  agriculture  leave  it  and  enter 
some  other  occupation,  while  individuals  engaged  in  nonagri- 
cultural  occupations  enter  some  other  occupation  or  agriculture 
(see  the  chapter  on  rural-urban  migration  and  also  chapter  iv). 
Within  the  agricultural  population  itself  the  processes  of  hori- 
zontal and  vertical  mobility  go  on  incessantly.  Cultivators  move 
from  one  farm  or  agricultural  aggregate  to  another,  and  from 
one  stratum  of  the  agricultural  population  to  another.  Thus  the 
particles  of  the  "rural  organisms"  continuously  change  their 
positions,  and  the  "rural  organisms  and  their  strata"  incessantly 
renew  their  "cells." 

Mobility  is  a  general  trait  of  any  aggregate,  but  it  is  not  equally 
intensive  and  qualitatively  identical  in  various  rural  aggregates. 
If  we  compare  the  Hindu  and  the  American  rural  aggregates  in 
this  respect,  we  see  that  the  former  exhibits  much  less  significant 
horizontal  and  vertical  mobility  than  the  latter.  Of  several  regu- 
larities observed  in  this  field,  the  following  approximate  generali- 
zations may  be  mentioned,  although  there  are  exceptions  to  all 
of  them.  First,  the  vertical  and  the  horizontal  mobility  of  rural 
populations  in  less  industrialized  and  urbanized  countries  and 
regions  is  generally  lower  than  that  in  the  more  industrialized 
and  urbanized  countries  and  regions.  Second,  the  mobility  of  the 
members  of  rural  communities  where  landownership  and  pos- 
session is  collective  or  joint  is  usually  less  intensive  than  that  of 
the  members  of  rural  aggregates  composed  of  the  farmers  and 
peasants  who  own  their  land  individually.  This  will  be  discussed 
further  in  the  next  chapter,  but  here  we  may  mention  the  fact 
that  mobility  is  much  less  intensive  in  such  collective  ownership 
systems  as  those  of  the  Russian  mir  and  the  village  landowner- 
ship  of  India,  China,  and  some  other  countries.  Third,  the  mobil- 

Mobthty.  Concerning  the  territorial  or  horizontal  mobility  of  the  agricultural  population 
see  also,  R.  Heberle,  Tiber  die  Mobilitat  der  Bevolfyrung  in  den  Vereinigten  Staaten, 
Jena,  1929.  See  also  most  of  the  works  cited  in  chap,  iv  of  this  work,  in  the  paragraphs 
devoted  to  the  study  of  rural-urban  mobility. 
3  See  evidences  of  this  in  chap,  iv  of  this  volume. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  503 

ity  of  an  unfree  agricultural  population  such  as  slaves  and  serfs  is 
lower  than  that  of  free  agricultural  populations.  Fourth,  the  mo- 
bility of  Negro  cultivators  in  the  United  States  is  lower  than  that 
of  white  cultivators.  Fifth,  in  countries  with  free  and  individual 
tenancy,  such  as  the  United  States,  the  horizontal  mobility  of 
owners  is  less  than  that  of  tenants,  and  theirs  in  turn  is  less  than 
that  of  farm  laborers.  (See  Heberle's  paper  in  the  readings.) 

II.   EFFECTS  OF   MOBILITY   ON  RURAL   POPULATION   AND 
RURAL  ORGANIZATION 

Mobility,  taken  as  a  factor,  has  several  important  effects  on  the 
population  and  its  behavior,  organization,  institutions,  and  histori- 
cal destinies.4  We  cannot  enter  here  into  an  analysis  of  all  these 
effects  but  must  limit  our  task  to  a  brief  enumeration  of  those 
which  influence  the  rural  population  and  its  behavior,  psychology, 
organization,  and  institutions. 

Any  horizontal  or  vertical  movement  of  a  cultivator  has  a  dou- 
ble aspect.  On  the  one  hand,  it  means  the  disruption  of  many  of 
his  social  ties  with  the  members  of  the  community  or  stratum  in 
which  he  had  been  living  previously.  On  the  other  hand,  it  means 
the  insertion  of  a  new  person  with  all  his  characteristics  into  the 
group  or  stratum  that  he  now  enters,  and  the  modification  of  the 
individual  himself  by  his  new  milieu.  Thus  every  shift  has  a  tend- 
ency to  shatter  the  social  relationships  and  structure  in  the  group 
from  which  the  migrant  goes  as  well  as  in  the  group  into  which 
he  enters.  When  the  vertical  and  horizontal  mobility  in  a  given 
stratum  or  aggregate  is  great,  these  movements  tend  to  produce 
considerable  modifications  in  the  corresponding  groups  as  well 
as  in  their  populations.  The  most  important  of  these  results  are  as 
follows: 

1.  Influence  on  the  composition  of  the  population  of  the  rural 
aggregation  or  stratum. — Other  conditions  being  equal,  the  popu- 
lation of  a  more  mobile  rural  aggregate  or  stratum  tends  to  be 
more  heterogeneous,  both  racially  and  culturally,  than  that  of  the 
less  mobile  aggregate  or  stratum.  Mobility  leads  to  an  intermix- 
ture of  populations  of  diverse  racial  stocks,  nationalities,  mores, 
religion,  language,  and  culture. 

*See  a  discussion  of  these  effects  in  Sorokin,  Social  Mobility,  Part  VI.  See  also 
Heberle's  work  quoted.  Part  II, 


504  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

2.  Influence  on  the  ''culture  pattern/'  of  the  rural  strata  and 
rural  aggregates. — The  mobility  of  the  rural  population  in  a  given 
area  tends  to  eliminate  the  peculiarities  of  the  culture  patterns  of 
that  locality  or  stratum,  whether  those  patterns  be  in  the  field  of 
religion,  mores,  language,  customs,  beliefs,  convictions,  rites, 
tastes,  or  what  not.  The  previous  uniformities  tend  to  be  replaced 
by  "individual"  differences  among  the  members  of  various  aggre- 
gates. Mobility  tends  to  disrupt  the  unique  and  peculiar  culture 
patterns  of  the  local  group  or  stratum  and  to  produce  differences 
between  individuals  and  subgroups.  In  India  and  in  some  regions 
of  Europe  that  are  characterized  by  relatively  immobile  rural 
populations,  practically  every  rural  community  has  its  own  "cul- 
tural face,"  which  is  dissimilar  from  that  of  other  rural  communi- 
ties. In  mobile  areas,  such  as  the  United  States,  these  peculiarities 
are  already  obliterated  to  a  considerable  extent  and  are  replaced 
by  general  standards  which  are  diffused  in  East,  West,  North,  and 
South.  The  greater  the  mobility,  the  greater  becomes  the  oblitera- 
tion of  the  local  cultural  face  of  the  rural  aggregate  and  the 
diffusion  of  general  cultural  standards  throughout  all  the  rural 
population.  Mobility  has  the  same  influence  on  the  strata  within 
the  rural  population  as  it  does  on  the  population  as  a  totality.  If  a 
given  stratum  maintains  itself  biologically  and  socially  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  without  migration  and  the  infusion  of  new- 
comers, it  will  preserve  its  own  unique  culture  patterns  in  a  rigid 
form.  If  a  stratum  recruits  its  members  to  a  considerable  degree 
from  migrants  from  other  strata,  each  bringing  the  mores,  habits, 
and  patterns  of  his  previous  stratum,  the  cultural  face  of  that 
stratum  will  tend  to  become  a  mosaic  of  the  mores  of  all  strata  and 
the  sharp  differences  in  cultural  patterns  of  various  strata  will 
tend  to  become  blurred. 

3.  Influence  on  the  behavior  and  psychology  of  the  population. 
— The  more  mobile  rural  populations  tend  to  have  a  more  plastic 
and  versatile  behavior,  less  specific  mores,  larger  mental  vistas, 
and  less  narrow-mindedness  than  the  less  mobile  rural  popula- 
tions. The  latter  are  more  traditional  than  the  former.  Correspond- 
ingly, the  mores,  habits,  beliefs,  convictions,  tastes,  moral  convic- 
tions, and  actions  of  the  more  mobile  rural  population  are  likely 
to  be  less  rigid,  less  stable,  more  flexible,  and  more  capable  of 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  505 

change.  Hence  mobility  has  a  tendency  to  facilitate  the  disin- 
tegration of  mores  and  morals  and  the  growth  of  criminality  and 
nonsocial  actions.  (See  the  chapter  on  social  control  and  crimi- 
nality.) 

4.  Influence  of  social  organization  and  institutions. — The  whole 
structure  and  institutions  of  more  mobile  rural  populations  are 
likely  to  be  less  traditional,  more  flexible,  less  stable,  and  often  less 
cared  for  than  those  of  the  less  mobile  rural  populations.  Each 
shifting  means  a  shock  to  the  group  from  which  the  individual 
comes  as  well  as  to  the  group  into  which  he  enters,  and  hence  in- 
tense mobility  of  the  members  of  a  rural  community  or  stratum 
keeps  the  whole  structure  in  a  state  of  incessant  shattering.  In  ad- 
dition, the  migrants  naturally  care  less  for  the  proper  maintenance 
of  the  schools,  churches,  welfare  agencies,  political  organizations, 
and  other  institutions  of  a  given  aggregate  than  do  those  individ- 
uals who  reside  there  for  life.  Since  they  remain  only  for  a  limited 
length  of  time,  the  shifters  are  less  inclined  to  invest  much  of  their 
energy,  funds,  labor,  and  care  in  the  institutions  from  which  they 
will  soon  be  separated. 

5.  As  a  specific  detail  of  this  general  fact,  the  populations  of 
more  mobile  rural  communities  tend  to  be  less  patriotic  in  their 
attachment  to  their  temporary  community  (or  stratum)  and  to  be 
more  "broad-minded"  and  "cosmopolitan"  than  the  populations 
of  the  less  mobile  rural  aggregates. 

6.  The  members  of  the  more  mobile  rural  communities  tend 
to  be  less  intimate,  more  superficial,  more  formal,  more  lonesome, 
and  more  anonymous  in  their  mutual  relationships  than  do  the 
members  of  less  mobile  rural  communities.  The  system  of  social 
relationships  in  the  former  type  of  community  tends  to  approach 
that  of  the  city,  for  the  reasons  indicated  in  chapter  iv. 

7.  The  disruption  of  social  ties  connected  with  shifting  and  the 
infiltration  of  individuals  into  new  groups  is  likely  to  be  followed 
by  the  development  of  various  antagonisms  and  solidarities.  Some 
individuals  in  the  old  group  and  some  in  the  new  either  regret, 
loathe,  hate,  or  welcome  the  entrance  or  departure  of  the  shifter. 
Therefore  the  increase  of  mobility  usually  complicates  and  blurs 
the  configuration  of  the  lines  of  the  solidary  and  antagonistic  re- 
lationships, making  them  exceedingly  intricate  and  entangled. 


506  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

8.  There  are  many  other  satellite  effects  of  mobility  which  can- 
not be  enumerated  here.5  The  above  discussion  shows  that  the 
aspect  of  mobility  cannot  be  ignored  in  the  analysis  of  rural  or  any 
other  social  organization,  as  investigators  have  tended  to  do  up  to 
the  recent  time.  As  yet,  the  general  phenomena  of  a  social  mo- 
bility have  been  studied  very  little,  and  social  mobility  within  the 
rural  population  has  been  touched  only  very  slightly. 

We  present  five  papers  from  the  very  limited  literature  in  the 
field.  Those  of  Spillman  and  Heberle  depict  the  vertical  and  hori- 
zontal mobility  of  the  American  agricultural  population,  while 
that  of  Ashby  and  Jones  gives  a  glimpse  into  the  vertical  mobility 
of  the  rural  population  in  a  specific  region  of  England,  Finally, 
the  paper  of  Kavraiski  and  Nusinoff  gives  a  good  picture  of  the 
present  horizontal  and  vertical  mobility  within  the  peasant  popu- 
lation of  a  region  in  Siberia.  This  paper  shows  especially  clearly 
the  complex  processes  of  social  mobility,  which  go  on  incessantly. 
The  papers  of  Makaroff,  Tschaijanoflf,  and  Kubanin,  given  in 
other  chapters  of  the  work,  also  have  a  bearing  on  the  problems  of 
this  chapter. 

ADDITIONAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  works  of  Sorokin  and  Heberle  cited  give  a  vast  bibliography.  In 
addition,  see  most  of  the  literature  cited  in  the  chapters  on  migration  and 
the  paragraphs  in  chapter  iv  devoted  to  the  study  of  rural-urban  mobility. 
In  addition  to  this,  the  following  works  are  useful: 

ANDERSON,  NELS,  The  Hobo  (Chicago,  1922). 

BOWMAN,  LsRoy  R.,  "Population  Mobility  and  Community  Organization," 
Amer.  Journ.  of  Sociology,  Vol.  XXXII. 

BRADWIN,  E.  W.,  The  Challenge  of  the  Migratory  Workers,  U.  S.  Dept.  of 
Labor  Bull.  No.  311. 

BRANNEN,  C.  O.,  Relation  of  Land  Tenure  to  Plantation  Organization, 
U.  S.  D.  A.  Bull.  No.  1269  (Washington,  1924). 

DOBROVOLSKI,  V.  J.,  "Economic  Differentiation  of  the  Peasantry,"  Nashe 
Khosiaistvo,  No.  1  (Russ.)  (1925). 

DONALDSON,  W.  T.,  AND  ROSEBERRY,  L.  H.,  "Absent  Voting,"  Municip. 
Review  (October,  1914). 

DOUGLASS,  H.  P.,  The  Church  in  the  Changing  City  (New  York,  1927). 

FILIPPOFF,  T.,  "Fundamental  Problems  of  Differentiation  of  the  White- 
Russian  Village,"  SovtetsJ(pie  Stroitehtvo,  No.  1  (Russ.)  (1927). 

GALPIN,  C.  J.,  AND  ELY,  R.  T.,  "Tenancy  in  an  Ideal  System  of  Landowner- 
ship,"  Amer.  Econ.  Review,  Supplement  (March,  1919),  Vol.  IX. 

8  See  the  works  cited  of  Sorokin  and  Heberle. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  507 

GOLDENWEISER,  E.  A.,  AND  TnuESDELL,  L.  E.,  Farm  Tenancy  in  the  United 

States,  Census  Monograph  IV  (1924). 

GRAY,  L.  C,,  STEWART,  C.  L.,  TURNER,  H.  A.,  SANDERS,  J.  T.,  AND  SPILL- 
MAN,  W.  J,,  "Farm  Ownership  and  Tenancy,"  U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook 

(1923). 
HECKE,  W.,  "Die  Zahlung  des  Berufswechsels  in   Osterreich,"  Allgem. 

Statist.  Archiv  (1916-1917). 
HILL,  J.  A.,  "Recent  Northward  Migration  of  the  Negro,"  Monthly  Labor 

Review  (March,  1924). 
HOAG,  E.  F.,  The  National  Influence  of  a  Single  Farm  Community,  U.  S. 

D.  A.  Bull.  No.  984  (1921). 
JOY,  A.,  "Note  on  the  Changes  of  Residence,"  Amer.  Journ.  of  Sociology 

(January,  1928). 
KELSEY,  K.  J.,  "Immigration  and  Crime,"  Annals  of  the  Amer.  Academy 

of  Political  and  Social  Sciences,  (1926),  Vol.  CXXV. 
KHRIASCHEVA,  A.  L,  Peasant  Farms  According  to  the  Census  of  1899-1911 

(Russ.)  (Tula,  1916),  2  vols. 
,  "The  Conditions  of  the  Division  of  the  Peasant  Households," 

Economitcheskpie  Obosrenie,  No.  9  (Russ.)   (1928). 
KIDALOFF,  P.,  "Socio-Organic  Processes  in  Kursk  Province,"  Sputni^  Bol- 

shevify,  No.  9  (Russ.)  (1926). 
KNIPOVITCH,  B.,  Differentiation  of  Russian  Peasantry  (Russ.)  (St.  Peters- 

burg,  1913). 
KUBANIN,  M.,  Class  Character  of  the  Process  of  the  Division  of  the  Peasant 

Household  (Russ.)  (Moscow,  1929). 

LIND,  A.  W.,  A  Study  of  Mobility  of  Population  in  Seattle,  Thesis. 
MAURER,  G,  S.  VON,  Geschichte  des  Dorjverfassung  (1865-1877),  2  vols. 
MENDELSOHN,  "Wandcrarbeiter,"  Handworterbuch  der  Staatswissenschaften, 

1911. 

MERRIAM,  CH.,  AND  GOSNELL,  H.  F.,  Non-Voting  (Chicago,  1924). 
MITGAU-HEIDELBERG,  J.  H.,  Familienschicfyal  und  soziale  Ordnung  (Leip- 
zig, 1928). 
NYLANDER,  T.,  "The  Migratory  Population  of  the  United  States,"  Amer, 

Journ.  of  Sociology  (1924),  VoL  XXX. 
PARK,  R.  E.,  AND  BURGESS,  E.  W.,  The  City  (Chicago,  1925). 
PARKER,  C.  H.,  Casual  Laborer  and  Other  Essays  (1920), 
PAXSON,  F*  L.,  History  of  the  American  Frontier  (Boston,  1924). 
PESHEKHONOFF,  A.,  "Out  of  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Peasant  Farming," 

Russfoie  Bogatstvo,  No,  9  (1902). 
RXEHL,  W,  H.,  Die  Familie  (Stuttgart,  1862-1869),  3rd  volume  of  his 

Naturgeschichte  des  deuuchen  Voltes. 
SCARBOROUGH,  W.  S»,  Tenancy  and  Ownership  among  the  Negro  Farmers, 

U.  S.  D.  A,  Bull  No,  1404  (1924). 
STEWART,  C*  L,,  "Migration  to  and  from  Our  Farms,"  Annals  of  the  Amer. 

Acad.  of  Political  and  Social  Sciences  (January,  1925). 
TSCHERNENKOFF,  N.,  Characteristics  of  the  Peasant  Households  (Russ.) 

(1905). 


508  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

TRUESDELL,  L.,  'Farm  Population  of  the  United  States,  Census  Monograph 

VI   (1926). 

TURNER,  F.  J.,  The  Frontier  in  American  History  (New  York,  1921). 
WEBER,  ALFRED,  "Industrielle  Standortslehre,"  Grundriss  der  Sozialofono- 

mi\  (1914). 
WEHRWEIN,  G.  H.,  "The  Problem  of  Inheritance  in  Amer.  Land  Tenure," 

Journ.  of  Farm  Economics  (1927). 

62.  RUDOLF  HEBERLE:  MOBILITY  OF  THE  AGRICULTURAL  POPULATION 
IN  THE  UNITED  STATES* 

The  agricultural  population  in  the  United  States  numbers  almost 
thirty  millions.1  This  huge  mass  is  mobile  to  a  high  degree  if  compared 
with  the  country  population  of  Europe,  which  on  the  whole,  if  one 
ignores  the  migration  into  the  city,  is  still  quite  stationary. 

We  have  previously  shown  what  greaj:  numbers  have  moved  from 
the  farm  into  the  city  and  have  returned  again  to  the  country.  In  the 
following,  however,  we  will  speak  only  of  the  mobility  of  the  country 
population  in  the  agricultural  districts,  that  is,  their  movements  from 
farm  to  farm.  The  facility  with  which  the  American  farmer  changes 
from  one  farm  to  the  other  has  always  astonished  the  European  ob- 
server.2 There  are,  however,  strong  regional  differences  and  the  various 
strata  of  the  agricultural  population  are  not  mobile  to  the  same  degree. 
There  are  also  differences  in  the  degree  of  mobility  in  regard  to  vari- 
ous nationalities. 

For  the  measurement  of  mobility  of  the  agricultural  population  we 
may  use  three  different  kinds  of  data.  First,  statistics  in  regard  to  prop- 
erty transfer.  This,  however,  does  not  consider  the  mobility  of  the 
tenant,  and  one  cannot  recognize  to  what  extent  actual  movement 
from  farm  to  farm  has  taken  place,  because  doubtless  many  farm 
sales  take  place  without  moving  the  farmer — previous  owner — to  an- 
other place.  On  the  one  hand,  the  tenant  can  acquire  the  farm  upon 
which  he  lives  by  purchase;  on  the  other  hand,  a  tenanted  farm  may 
change  proprietors  without  the  necessity  of  a  change  in  tenants.  The 

*  From  R.  Heberle,  TJber  die  Mobilitdt  der  Bevolfarung  in  den  Vereinigten  Staaten, 
Jena,  Gustav  Fischer,  1929,  pp.  89-106.  Translated  and  printed  with  the  permission  of 
the  publisher  and  the  author. 

1  The  agricultural  or  farm  population,  as  given  in  the  U.S.  Census  of  Agriculture  for 
1925,  was  as  follows: 

NUMBER  PER  CENT 

1925 28.9  millions 

1920 31.6  millions  29.9 

1910          32.1  millions  34.9 

aSee  "Das  Agrar-Problem  in  den  Vereinigten  Staaten,"  in  Archiv  /.  Sozidlwissensch. 
u.  SozialpoUti\,  1928,  LVIII,  491  ft,  recently  published  by  W.  Ropke. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  509 

more  widespread  the  system  of  tenure,  the  less  is  it  possible  to  recog- 
nize the  actual  mobility  of  the  agricultural  population  on  the  basis  of 
the  statistics  in  regard  to  property  transfer. 

Second,  the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  estimates 
property  transfers  in  a  narrow  sense,  that  is,  the  number  of  farms,  culti- 
vated either  by  the  tenant  or  the  proprietor,  which  have  changed 
managers  during  a  one-year  period.3  However,  these  are  just  estima- 
tions and  they  do  not  show  clearly  whether,  in  a  definite  proportion  of 
farms  of  any  region  where  there  is  annual  change  of  manager,  we 
would  find  an  intense  mobility  of  a  small  group  of  farmers  or  a  lesser 
though  more  general  mobility  of  the  whole  farm  population. 

The  third  and  best  procedure  is,  therefore,  a  study  of  the  census  data 
in  regard  to  duration  of  cultivation.  Through  this  we  find  out  how 
long  a  farmer,  whether  tenant  or  proprietor,  has  cultivated  the  farm 
on  which  he  lives  at  the  time  of  the  census.  This  analysis  is  also  found 
imperfect,  since  a  short  cultivation  period  does  not  with  certainty  mean 
high  mobility,  because,  first,  in  newly  settled  localities  the  average 
duration  of  cultivation  is  apparently  low,  without  permitting  the  con- 
clusion that  the  new  settler  is  of  a  mobile  or  stable  type.  Secondly,  the 
tenant  who  after  having  cultivated  a  farm  for  many  years  acquires  it 
through  purchase  shortly  before  the  census,  will  appear  in  the  data  as 
a  proprietor  of  short  cultivation  period.  (The  same  is  true  of  the  tenant 
who  has  changed  his  place  of  tenure  shortly  before  the  census;  there- 
fore, the  season  in  which  the  census  is  made  is  important,  whether 
it  is  shortly  before  or  after  the  customary  time  for  moving.)  Thirdly, 
the  tenants  are  on  the  average  younger  than  the  proprietors4  and, 
therefore,  show  shorter  periods  of  cultivation.  And  fourthly,  this  analy- 
sis does  not  show  how  far  this  mobility  may  be  attributed  to  move- 
ment from  farm  to  farm  or  how  high  the  influence  of  the  migration 
from  country  to  city  is. 

If  one  groups  the  farmers  according  to  length  of  cultivation  (see 
Table  XIX)  and  if  one  takes  the  number  of  those  who  have  cultivated 
the  same  farm  for  five  years  or  longer  as  the  criterion  of  stability,  one 
finds  that  on  the  whole  the  average  of  mobility  is  higher  in  the  West 
and  South  than  in  the  Northeast. 

8  According  to  such  an  estimate  there  resulted  for  all  farms  in  the  United  States  dur- 
ing the  postwar  years  the  following  frequency  of  property  transfer.  Of  100  farms,  the 
number  having  different  owners  than  in  the  previous  year  are  given  below  for  the 
following  years: 

1925  1924  1922  1910 

14  14  19  17 

(From  The  Index  published  by  the  New  York  Trust  Co.,  New  York,  August,  1928, 
p.  14.) 

*The  average  for  owners  in  1920  was  48.8  years;  for  tenants,  39J  years,  (From  Hth 
Census,  Vol.  V,  chap,  vi,  Table  25,  p,  457  and  Table  3.) 


510  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  mobility  is  therefore,  lowest,  in  the  regions  settled  first,  like 
New  England,  where  in  the  state  of  Maine  773  per  cent  and  in  the 
state  of  New  Hampshire  75.2  per  cent  of  the  proprietors  cultivated 
their  farms  for  five  years  or  more,  If  the  mobility  of  the  western,  and 
especially  the  Rocky  Mountain  states,  seems  very  high  —  more  than 
a  third  of  the  farmers  in  these  last  named  groups  showed  a  cultivation 
period  of  less  than  five  years  —  one  must  remember  that  large  parts  of 
this  region  have  only  lately  changed  from  cattle  land  to  agricultural 
country.  This  is  substantiated  when  one  compares  the  average  cultiva- 
tion period  in  the  Rocky  Mountain  states  with  the  cultivation  period 
of  the  state  that  was  first  settled  by  an  agricultural  population.  I  refer 
to  Utah,  where  69.4  per  cent  of  the  proprietors  cultivate  their  farms  for 
five  years  or  more.  Among  the  western  group  of  states  the  west-north- 
central  group,  particularly  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  and  North  Dakota, 
are  distinguished  by  the  high  number  of  farmers  with  a  longer  culti- 
vation period;  this  may  be  ascribed  partly  to  the  high  stability  of  the 
farmers  of  European  origin,  who  are,  as  is  well  known,  strongly  repre- 
sented in  those  states.  The  high  mobility  of  the  entire  farm  population 
in  the  southern  states  is  partly  due  to  the  great  number  of  tenants;  in 
states  like  Oklahoma  and  Texas  the  recency  of  the  agricultural  settle- 
ment is  a  factor.  In  Oklahoma  only  57  per  cent  of  the  proprietors 
and  14.3  per  cent  of  the  tenants  held  their  farms  five  years  or  longer. 

The  mobility  of  the  tenants  is,  as  may  be  seen  from  Table  XIX  (ap- 
pended), decidedly  higher  in  the  whole  country  than  that  of  the 
owners;  the  difference  in  age  of  the  owners  and  tenants,  the  impor- 
tance of  which  we  mentioned  above,  cannot  explain  completely  this  dif- 
ference in  mobility  between  owner  and  tenant.  One  must,  however, 
remember  that  in  the  newly  settled  regions  of  the  West  the  system  of 
tenancy  is  comparatively  young,  and  for  that  reason  alone  one  must 
expect  a  smaller  number  of  long  cultivation  periods  than,  for  instance, 
in  regions  in  which  the  system  of  tenancy  is  an  old  and  widespread 
institution.  Even  in  Illinois  the  quota  of  stable  tenants  was  high,  42 
per  cent  as  compared  with  the  average  of  36.8  per  cent  in  the  east- 
north-central  states.  But  in  this  connection  we  must  also  consider  that 
the  system  of  tenancy  had  spread  here  sooner  than  in  the  other  states 
of  the  Middle  West;  already  around  1900  almost  40  per  cent  of  all 
farms  in  Illinois  were  tenanted,  while  in  Wisconsin  only  13.5  per  cent, 
and  in  Indiana  28,6  per  cent.5 

The  difference  between  the  cultivation  period  of  owner  and  tenants 


8  Cf  .  L.  C.  Gray  and  others,  "Farm  Ownership  and  Tenancy,"   U.  S.  D,  A. 
1923,  p.  513,  where  the  expansion  of  the  system  of  tenancy  since  1880  is  graphically 
represented. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  511 

is,  however,  in  all  states  so  great  that  the  observation  of  the  higher  mo- 
bility of  the  tenants  as  compared  to  the  owner  seems  infallible.  (See 
Table  XXI,  appended.)  Of  especial  interest  is  the  observation  of  that 
region  in  which  the  system  of  tenancy  is  spread  widest,  that  is,  the 
South,  and  particularly  in  the  states  belonging  to  the  cotton  region.6 

That  there  is  a  relation  between  the  age  of  the  system  of  tenancy  and 
the  participation  of  stable  tenants  seems  to  be  substantiated  in  Table  A 
(appended),  which  shows,  among  the  western  states,  a  pretty  regular 
positive  correlation  between  the  quota  of  stable  tenants  from  the  entire 
number  of  tenants  in  the  year  1920  and  the  percentage  of  rented 
farms  in  the  year  1900.  In  Minnesota  the  higher  percentage  of  tenants 
with  a  cultivation  period  of  five  years  and  more  may  be  ascribed  to 
the  notorious  high  stability  of  immigrants  and  their  immediate  de- 
scendants. 

We  have  shown  earlier  that  the  mobility  between  states  is  compara- 
tively small  among  the  population  of  the  southern  states.  It  is  shown, 
however,  that  the  mobility  of  the  agricultural  population  on  the  aver- 
age, considering  the  periods  of  cultivation,  is  very  high.7  The  low  mo- 
bility of  the  Negro,  to  which  attention  has  been  drawn  previously,  is 
remarkable;  the  average  cultivating  period  is  higher  with  the  Negro 
than  with  the  white  people,  and  this  difference  is  particularly  apparent 
in  regard  to  tenants.  Especially  in  the  South,  where  the  great  mass  of 
Negro  tenants  is  concentrated,  the  proportion  of  those  who  were  on 
their  farms  five  years  or  longer  was  decidedly  higher  than  among  the 
white  tenants,  whose  quota  remained  far  behind  the  average  for  the 
entire  country. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  proportion  of  those  tenants  who  remained 
less  than  two  years  on  their  farms  was  higher  for  the  white  tenants 
than  for  the  Negroes  (see  Table  XXI,  appended).  In  the  three  groups 
of  southern  states  more  than  half  of  the  white  tenants  remained  less 
than  two  years  on  their  farms  while  less  than  half  of  the  Negro  tenants 

*  Percentage  of  farms  tenanted  in  1925: 

UNITED  STATI.S    38.6  COTTON  REGION 

New  England  5,6         North  Carolina  , ,  45,2 

Middle  Atlantic   15.8         South  Carolina  65.1 

East  North  Central , , , .  26.0          Georgia   63,8 

West  North  Central 37.8         Alabama    60.7 

South  Atlantic 44,5         Mississippi  68,3 

East  South  Central 50.3         Arkansas  56,7 

West  South  Central 59,2         Louisiana    60.1 

Mountain 22,2         Oklahoma  , 58.6 

Pacific    15.6         Texas  60,4 

(From  U,  S.  Census  of  Agriculture,  1925,  summary,  pp. 

7  Sec  Tables  XIX,  XXI. 


512  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

quitted  their  farms  before  the  two-year  period.  The  proportion8  of 
these  very  mobile  white  tenants  as  compared  to  the  mobile  Negroes  was 
about  10  to  6,  while  the  whole  number  of  white  tenants  as  compared  to 
the  Negroes  was  in  a  proportion  of  10  to  7.9 

C.  O.  Brannen  reaches  similar  conclusions  in  a  survey  made  by  the 
United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  in  93  selected  counties  of  the 
plantation  region.  ("Relation  of  Land-Tenure  to  Plantation  Organiza- 
tion," 1924,  p.  48.)  While  53.2  per  cent  of  the  white  tenants  kept  their 
farms  less  than  two  years  this  was  the  case  with  only  39.6  per  cent  of 
the  Negroes. 

It  is  necessary  to  analyze  this  very  mobile  group  further  in  relation 
to  classes  of  tenants  and  degrees  of  mobility.  The  two  most  important 
classes  of  tenants  in  the  South  are  the  share  tenants  and  the  croppers,10 
and  behind  these  in  numbers  are  the  cash  tenants.  We  have  the  follow- 
ing division  of  farmers  in  the  South  in  1920: 

CLASSES  OF  FARMERS  NUMBER  OF  FARMS  PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMS 

Owners  ..     .  1,597,000  49.8 

Tenants  ..  .  1,591,000  49.6 

Share  tenants     651,000)  20.31 

Croppers     561,000) 1'212'000  17.5J37'8 

Of  the  561,000  croppers  there  were  only  227,000  white  and  334,000 
colored;  the  white  croppers  represent  25.6  per  cent  of  the  white  tenants 
(or  887,000)  while  the  colored  croppers  represent  47.4  per  cent  of  the 
colored  tenants  (or  703,000).  Of  651,000  share  tenants,  474,000  were 
white  and  177,000  colored;  the  white  share  tenants  represent  53.5  per 
cent  of  the  white  tenants,  the  colored  tenants  25.1  per  cent  of  the  col- 

8  The  following  data  is  taken  from  Census  Monograph  IV,  p.  136,  Table  51:  and 
14th  Census,  Vol.  V,  chap,  vi,  Tables  14  and  15,  p.  406. 

No.  of  Tenants  as  Far 

as  Cultivation  Period         No,  of  These  on 
Is  Known  (136,512          Farms  Less  Than 

Unknown)  1920  Two  Years 

United  States  .  ...     2,318,292  1,006,783 

In  the  South 

White  and  colored  1,481,639  707,116 

Whites  in  South 822,589  442,905 

e    t          Colored  in  South 659,050  264,211 

Since  we  do  not  deal  here  with  absolute  numbers  but  with  the  proportion  of  whites 
and  colored,  the  discrepancy  of  the  information  need  not  be  considered.  (See  14th 
Census,  Vol.  V,  p.  402.) 

By  share  tenants  is  understood,  in  the  census,  those  tenants  who  pay  part  of  their 
product,  possibly  a  half,  a  third,  or  a  quarter,  as  rent  and  supply  their  own  work  horses; 
the  croppers  are  share  tenants  who  are  supplied  with  work  horses  by  the  owner.  Accord- 
ing to  his  function  and  status  the  cropper  stands  between  a  tenant  and  a  laborer. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  513 

ored  tenants.  The  Negroes  are,  therefore,  predominantly  croppers,  and 
the  white  predominately  share  tenants.  Both  classes  together  represent 
79.1  per  cent  of  the  white  and  72.5  per  cent  of  the  colored  tenants.  The 
croppers,  just  because  they  are  closer  to  being  laborers  than  any  other 
tenant  class,  change  more  frequently  from  one  farm  to  the  other  (often 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  same  plantation)  than  the  share  tenants, 
and  these  in  turn  change  more  often  than  the  cash  tenants,  as  is  dem- 
onstrated in  Table  XXII  (according  to  Brannen).  Even  if  one  con- 
siders that  the  croppers  seem  very  mobile  simply  because  they  turn 
laborers  and  turn  back  into  croppers,  often  without  even  changing 
farms,11  and  that  on  the  other  hand  the  data  used  do  not  give  any 
exact  information  concerning  the  mobility,  it  may  nevertheless  be  sup- 
posed that  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  three  important  classes  of  tenants 
among  the  whites  and  about  one-sixth  among  the  Negroes  of  the  same 
classes  in  the  South,  altogether  some  250,000  to  300,000  tenants,12 
change  farms  at  least  once  a  year. 

If  one  adds  to  that  the  number  of  the  members  of  the  family,  one 
may  estimate  an  annual  wandering  mass  of  from  one  to  one  and  a  half 
million  people  in  the  tenant  classes  of  the  South  alone.  It  furthermore 
becomes  clear  that,  although  the  whites  are  more  mobile  on  the  average 
than  the  Negroes,  a  comparatively  great  number  of  the  latter  wander 
around  annually,  since  there  are  more  Negroes  than  whites  in  the  very 
mobile  class  of  the  croppers.  Even  if  these  very  mobile  sections  of  the 
white  and  colored  tenants  should  not  be  as  numerous  as  it  seems  from 
the  presented  data,  the  high  mobility  of  a  small  group  of  tenants  and 
croppers  can  be  very  disagreeable  for  the  plantation  owner,  since  the 
moving  often  happens  without  previous  notice,  frequently  in  time  of 
great  demand  for  labor  and  without  the  payment  of  any  money  ad- 
vanced by  the  owner.13 

Concerning  the  distances  covered  by  changes  from  farm  to  farm,  it 
is  desirable  to  know,  in  connection  with  later  observations  concerning 
the  social  effects  of  this  mobility,  that  the  owner,  although  less  mobile 
than  the  tenant,  covers  greater  distances  than  the  latter.  In  an  examina- 
tion of  the  mobility  of  the  farmers  in  certain  regions  of  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee  for  the  years  19104920,  the  result  showed  that  a  change  of 
farm  by  the  owner,  more  often  than  by  the  tenant,  brought  with  it 
changes  of  important  social  relations.  The  table  below  shows  that  with 
a  change  in  farm,  came  changes  in  the  following  u  ; 

11  Brannen,  op,  cit.,  p.  46. 

18  Tannenbaurn   (Darker  Phases  of  the  South,  New  York,  1924,  p,  130)  estimates 
300,000;  however,  I  have  been  assured  by  specialists  that  this  number  is  rather  low, 
"See  Brannen,  op.  dt,t  p.  48. 
14  "Farm  Ownership  and  Tenancy,"  U.S.D.A,  Yearbook,  1923,  p.  597. 


514  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


OWNER 

TENANT 

PER  CENT 

PER  CENT 

Trading  center 
School 

41 

.      44 

33 
40 

Church        

.   .                    44 

40 

Of  146  Negro  owners  and  111  tenants  in  Southampton  County,  Vir- 
ginia, 39.7  per  cent  of  the  owners  and  only  27.7  per  cent  of  the  tenants 
had  changed  one  of  the  three  most  important  centers  of  the  rural  com- 
munity life.15  The  result  of  this  local  study  seems  to  be  substantiated 
by  Table  XXIII  (appended),  which  is  based  on  a  survey  made  through- 
out the  United  States. 

As  far  as  general  conclusions  are  possible  on  the  basis  of  the  small 
amount  of  material  at  hand,  it  seems  in  any  case  remarkable  that  the 
radius  of  mobility  for  the  farmer  is  nevertheless  small;  practically  it 
keeps  within  the  distance  that  can  be  conquered  without  difficulty  with 
an  automobile  to  carry  personal  possessions  for  the  move.  As  a  rule  the 
most  mobile  elements  among  the  southern  tenants  move  in  narrow 
circles  and  return  not  infrequently  to  the  former  lessee.  On  the  other 
hand,  one  can  still  observe  in  the  West,  particularly  in  states  that  are 
not  completely  settled,  like  Oklahoma  or  Texas,  that  the  families  of 
farmers  with  the  aid  of  a  covered  wagon  move  great  distances,  with- 
out any  definite  goal,  to  search  for  a  new  homestead. 

We  must  be  content  with  this  fairly  sparse  information  concerning 
the  degree  of  mobility  of  agricultural  populations  and  go  on  to  a  dis- 
cussion of  its  causes.  In  the  nineteenth  century,  as  long  as  the  settling 
of  the  land  was  not  completed,  the  mobility  of  the  agricultural  popu- 
lation is  easily  understood.  The  possibility  of  acquiring  land  cheaply 
in  the  West  not  only  caused  the  surplus  from  the  older  and  thickly 
settled  regions  to  migrate  but  also  invited  the  farmers  from  the  various 
parts  of  the  country  who  had  already  settled,  particularly  from  the  new 
regions  of  the  frontier,  to  advance  again  and  again  in  new  wanderings 
toward  the  West.  One  must  consider  also  that  in  the  society  of  the 
West,  not  strongly  classified  according  to  labor  or  profession,  as  soon  as 
the  farmer  began  to  produce  for  the  market,  he  became  in  a  higher  de- 
gree a  trader  and  thus  left  the  land,  just  as  is  the  case  in  thickly  settled 
land  with  a  developed  division  in  society.16 

15  See  W.  S.  Scarborough,  Tenancy  and  Ownership  among  Negro  Farmers  in  South- 
ampton County,  Va.,  U.  S.  D.  A.  Bull.  No.  1404,  April,  1926,  Table  22. 

18  See  the  striking  description  of  the  trading  journeys  of  the  western  farmers  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions, 
1910,  p.  86.  Ferdinand  Kiirnberger,  in  his  tale  "Der  Amerikamude"  (Berlin,  1856), 
makes  a  western  farmer  close  an  enthusiastic  description  of  such  journeys  with  the 
exclamation,  "Yes,  the  peasant  class  does  not  rest  here,  everyone  who  feels  a  little  energy 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  515 

That  the  custom  of  migration  from  farm  to  farm,  historically  condi- 
tioned, continues  to  be  of  great  importance,  may  be  accepted.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  there  is  hardly  any  place  in  Europe  where  the  farmer 
feels  himself  so  little  bound  to  his  land  as  does  the  farmer  in  the 
United  States;  farms  here  are  bought  much  more  for  speculation  and 
investment  than  in  Europe,  where  any  big  property  as  well  as  the  farm 
property  remains  as  a  rule  for  generations  in  the  same  family,  or  at 
least  is  not  considered  exclusively  as  a  means  of  profit-making.  But  one 
must  warn  here  against  generalizations  and  must  remember  the  sta- 
bility of  the  farmers  emigrated  from  Europe  and  their  not  perfectly 
Americanized  descendants17;  also  among  the  real  Americans  there 
are,  as  we  found  out,  extremely  stable  groups  like  the  white  farmers  in 
the  southern  Appalachian  Mountains,  or  the  "poor  whites"  of  the 
sandy  plains  of  Carolina  and  Georgia,  as  well  as  the  farmers  of  the 
Ozark  Mountains  and  those  in  certain  parts  of  New  England.  Never- 
theless, in  regions  with  a  population  as  stable  as  that  in  the  north  of 
Virginia,  one  may  observe  that  a  farmer  clears  the  land  on  the  woody 
mountain  slopes  not  to  found  a  home  there  but  with  the  intention  of 
selling  the  new  farm  or  of  making  it  a  summer  resort  or  something 
similar. 

But  this  peculiarly  practical  fyirwillige*  (from  Tonnies)  relation  to 
land  and  property  is,  however,  less  important  than  the  objective  cir- 
cumstances that  favor  the  mobility  of  the  farmer.  Progressing  indus- 
trialization works  in  that  direction,  since  the  changes  it  causes  in  mar- 
ket conditions  require  changes  in  agricultural  management  and  in  the 
size  of  the  farms,  and  these  changes  cannot  take  place  without  rear- 
rangements in  the  agricultural  population* 

Furthermore,  up  to  this  time  even,  virgin  land  is  still  constantly 
available  in  new  regions,  while  in  others,  particularly  in  the  cotton  sec- 
tions of  the  Old  South,  careless  methods  of  agriculture  incite  migra- 
tion. 

The  settling  of  new  land  is  always  followed  by  the  failing  of  many 
settlers.  Land  speculators  are  not  always  inclined  to  delay  sales  of  land 
to  settlers  until  the  conditions — transportation,  local  market  prices, 
etc, — are  such  that  the  settler  can  keep  up  financially;  communities 
often  have  an  interest,  or  are  believed  to  have  it,  in  the  immigration  of 

trades  and  speculates."  To  this  the  traveler,  already  tired  of  America,  remarks^  4The 
uncornfortahlencss  of  this  country  life  could  not  have  been  expressed  more  strikingly." 

17Geo.  S.  Wchrwein  reports  ("The  Problem  of  Inheritance  in  American  Land 
Tenure,"  Journ,  of  Farm  Econ,,  April,  1927,  p.  186)  that  in  the  township  of  Newton  in 
Manitowoc  County,  Wisconsin,  settled  since  1855  mainly  by  Germans,  Irish,  and  Poles, 
many  farms  are  the  property  o£  the  same  family  now  in  the  third  generation.  This 
township,  however,  has  a  remarkably  stable  population. 

*  TRANSLATOR'S  NOTE. — KurwlUge  means  choosing  with  a  particular  aim  in  mind. 


516  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

settlers  at  any  price,  and  the  "fooled"  farmers  of  course  attempt  to  palm 
off  their  land  on  other  guileless  individuals.18  Such  misdirected  settling 
or  lack  of  information  for  the  settlers  leads  to  a  temporary  expansion 
in  a  region  in  which  certain  kinds  of  agriculture  are  never,  or  only 
under  particularly  good  conditions,  successful.19  Overexpansion  takes 
place  most  easily  at  times  of  very  favorable  prices  and  ends  as  a  rule  in 
a  mass  of  debts  for  the  settler  and  leads  finally  to  a  contraction  of  the 
settlement  through  the  departure  of  the  farmers.  As  long  as  the  agri- 
cultural productivity  and  the  cultivation  of  certain  lands  depend  on 
a  high  rainfall,  variations  of  the  climate,  as  E.  Bruckner  demonstrates, 
influence  the  contraction  or  expansion  of  agricultural  settling  in  the 
western  areas  of  America  that  have  little  rain.20 

Whatever  the  causes  may  be,  all  these  processes  result  in  the  shifting 
of  great  masses  of  the  agricultural  population.  This  tendency  towards 
overexpansion  was  so  apparent  during  the  whole  period  of  the  settling 
of  the  West  that  it  has  become  almost  proverbial  to  say  that  it  needs 
three  waves  of  settlers  to  settle  a  region  definitely.  This  condition  helps 
to  explain  the  short  cultivation  periods  in  Dakota  and  the  Rocky 
Mountain  states  and  is  a  sign  of  a  high  mobility  of  the  farmers  in  this 
region.  Estimates  of  property  transfers  made  by  the  Department  of 
Agriculture  show  that  in  all  the  Rocky  Mountain  states  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Utah,  and  Nevada  in  the  first  few  years,  the  forced  sales 
were  more  frequent  than  the  average  for  the  entire  country.21  (Table 
XXIV  appended.) 

Finally  one  must  think  of  the  relation  between  the  system  of  tenure 
and  the  mobility.  First,  the  social  rise  from  farm  laborer  to  tenant  and 
finally  to  owner  brings  with  it  many  moves  of  the  farmer  and  his 
family.  Here  we  must  observe  that  the  tenants  in  the  western  states 

"Experience  has  shown  that  with  sufficiently  strong  selling  methods  it  is  possible  to 
find  buyers  for  land  entirely  unsuitable  for  farming.  See  "Land-Utilization,"  U.  S.  D.  A. 
Yearbook  1923,  p.  503,  Report  of  L.  C.  Gray  and  others. 

10  "Large  areas  in  the  West,  more  suitable  for  grazing  than  for  crops,  have  been 
sporadically  settled  to  the  detriment  of  the  established  range  industry."  (Ebenda.) 

^  EDITORS'  NOTE.— For  details  see  E.  S.  Osgood,  The  Day  of  the  Cattleman,  1929, 
Minneapolis,  pp.  240  ff. 

^Eduard  Bruckner,  "The  Settlement  of  the  U.  S.  as  Controlled  by  Climate  and 
Climatic  Oscillations,"  in  Memorial  Volume  of  the  Transcontinental  Excursion  of  1912 
of  the  Amer.  Geogr.  Soc.  of  New  York,  1915. 

21  See  Table  XXIII,  p.  102,  in  E.  H.  Wiecking,  The  Farm  Real  Estate  Situation, 
1926-1927,  U.  S  D.A.  Circular  No.  15,  October,  1927.  According  to  Dr.  O.  E.  Baker 
of  the_U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  the  short  cultivation  in  the  Rocky  Mountain 
states  is  partly  explained  through  the  fact  that  many  discharged  soldiers  after  the 
World  War  bought  land  that  had  been  just  grazing  land  until  then;  on  this  they 
settled  according  to  the  homestead  laws,  which  applied  part  of  their  time  of  service  to 
the  required  period  of  possession.  The  cattlemen  were  forced  to  buy  back  these  so-called 
"farms,"  which  would  really  never  have  been  suitable  for  grain-growing?  neither  were 
they  acquired  with  the  intention  of  producing  grain. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  517 

have  a  good  chance  of  becoming  the  owners  of  farms,  while  in  the 
South  the  tenants  are  a  fairly  static  class  and  rise  there  is  rare.  The 
causal  connection  between  "social"  and  "geographical"  mobility  is, 
therefore,  found  to  a  great  extent  in  the  West  and  the  North  and  only 
to  a  small  degree  in  the  South.  Therefore,  the  higher  mobility  of  the 
tenants  may  be  traced  in  part  to  the  desire  of  the  owners  to  have  a 
fairly  free  hand  in  the  sale  of  their  farms  on  short  notice,  which  causes 
them  to  avoid  making  long-term  contracts  with  the  tenants.22  Of 
course,  one  should  not  for  this  reason  think  that  the  short-term  con- 
tracts necessarily  heighten  the  mobility  of  the  tenant;  long-term  con- 
tracts may  lead  to  a  situation  where  the  tenant  cultivates  the  land  with 
no  thought  but  for  his  own  gain  and  then  after  the  end  of  his  contract 
rents  another  farm,  since  through  short-term  contracts  both  parties 
will  probably  try  to  create  such  a  relation  that  the  renewal  of  the  con- 
tract is  certain.23 

A  further  circumstance  that  is  prone  to  heighten  relatively  the  mo- 
bility of  the  tenant  is  that  among  them  there  is  a  strong  element  of 
naturally  restless,  irresponsible  men,  incapable  of  rising  and  becoming 
independent  farmers.  There  are  among  the  tenants,  particularly  in  the 
Middle  West  and  the  South,  a  numerous  stratum  of  notoriously  rest- 
less people  who  on  account  of  their  incapacity  can  never  prosper.  Fur- 
thermore, in  all  one-crop  areas  the  desire  for  variety  is  an  important 
motive  for  a  frequent  change  of  tenure. 

Finally,  one  must  remember  that  in  a  system  of  tenure  that  concerns 
two  parties,  dissatisfaction  with  existing  conditions  arises  easily  and 
this  also  causes  (the  limitation  of  the  term  of  tenancy  and)  a  fre- 
quency of  changes.24 

How  much  the  peculiar  system  of  tenure  or  the  system  of  agricul- 
tural labor  can  influence  the  mobility  of  the  agricultural  population  is 
shown  by  an  examination  of  the  extremely  high  mobility  of  the  tenants 
in  the  southern  states,  especially  in  the  cotton  region,25  The  great  ma- 
jority of  the  farmers  of  this  region  are  cotton-growing  tenants;  two- 
thirds  of  these  cotton-growing  tenants  are  white  and  one-fourth  of 
these  white  tenants  are  croppers.  We  have  previously  seen  that  the 
whites  are  more  mobile  than  the  Negroes,  and  the  croppers  are  more 
mobile  than  the  other  tenants;  the  white  croppers,  therefore,  represent 
the  most  mobile  group.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  has  been  shown  before, 

52  Census  Monograph  IV,  pp,  68  jff. 

23  Census  Monograph  IV,  p.  135, 

2*U.S.D.A.  Yearbook,  1923,  p.  596. 

38  On  tobacco,  rice,  and  sugar  plantations  it  is  approximately  the  same  as  on  cotton 
plantations.  Besides  the  plantation  system  we  find  the  farm  system,  that  is,  the  produc- 
tion of  staple  products  on  small  rented  farms.  The  great  mass  of  white  tenants  work  on 
such  small  farms. 


518  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

a  great  number  of  the  tenants  of  both  races  in  the  cotton  region  change 
their  tenancy  annually  or  semiannually. 

This  high  mobility  is  obviously  the  result  of  a  peculiar  combination 
of  the  one-crop  system  and  the  system  of  partial  tenancy,  which  is 
characteristic  for  this  region.  The  tenant  is,  under  this  system,  almost 
entirely  dependent  on  the  cash  income  for  his  livelihood.  This  he  re- 
ceives once  a  year  after  the  harvest,  and  he  is  therefore  forced  to  ask 
the  owner  for  money  in  advance  in  small  or  larger  sums.  This  results 
frequently  in  regular  monthly  payments,  which  are  reckoned  up  at 
harvest  time.  A  bad  harvest  or  an  overproduction  that  causes  a  fall 
in  prices  often  leads  to  an  incapacity  on  the  side  of  the  tenant  to  pay 
his  entire  debt.  The  creditor  will  then  force  him  to  use  more  land  for 
the  cultivation  of  the  staple  product  upon  which  the  income  of  the 
owner  is  dependent,  and  the  tenant  cannot  produce  marketable  prod- 
ucts or  products  for  his  own  use  through  which  he  could  become  inde- 
pendent of  the  owner. 

In  this  manner  a  great  mass  of  tenants  have  slowly  come  into  a  kind 
of  peonage.  The  only  way  out  of  the  dilemma  seems  to  them  the 
search  for  a  better  tenancy,  and  they  often  move  without  bothering 
about  the  contracted  term  or  the  meeting  of  their  financial  obligations. 
Negroes,  on  account  of  little  education  and  a  continuous  plantation 
tradition,  fall  more  readily  into  this  peonage  than  white  people.  The 
white  tenant  is  in  a  position  to  forego  his  obligations  through  a  secret 
departure,  since  the  local  police  or  the  sheriff  have  little  desire  to  pur- 
sue him  because  in  such  cases  they  would  meet  forceful  resistance.  The 
Negro,  however,  as  a  rule  has  the  police  and  public  opinion  against 
him.  These  circumstances  may  in  part  explain  the  lesser  mobility  of 
the  Negro  tenant. 

The  mobility  of  the  tenants  again  helps  to  keep  up  the  one-crop  sys- 
tem, since  the  tenant  who  moves  annually  or  semiannually  is  not  in 
a  position  to  keep  cattle,  pigs,  or  chickens  in  sufficient  numbers  or  to 
cultivate  grain  and  forage  crops  for  his  own  use.26  The  result  of  spe- 
cialization in  tobacco  or  cotton  production  is  worn-out  land,  which 
again  favors  the  mobility  of  the  tenant.  Thus,  in  this  region,  the  spe- 
cializing of  agriculture  in  one  product  has  given  a  fateful  turn  to  the 
system  of  partial  tenancy— which  in  itself  is  not  unfavorable  to  the 
tenant — and  has  called  forth  the  shifting  of  vast  masses  of  agricultural 
people.27 

36  See  also,  Brannen,  op.  tit.,  p.  59. 

2T  See  what  has  gone  before;  Frank  Tannenbaum,  Darker  Phases  of  the  South,  1924, 
pp.  117  ff.;  a  thorough  presentation  of  the  system  of  tenure  as  well  as  the  credit  and 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  519 

Although,  as  we  have  seen  before,  the  interstate  wanderings  in  the 
South  are  of  less  importance  than  those  in  the  North  or  West,  the 
great  mass  of  the  poorer  country  population  is  extremely  mobile,  so 
mobile  in  fact  that  among  the  "poor  whites"  of  the  tobacco  and  cotton 
region  there  has  developed  a  certain  gypsy  class  that  is  in  strong  con- 
trast to  the  highly  stable  "poor  whites"  of  the  southern  Appalachian 
Mountains  and  the  "sandhills"  of  the  South  Atlantic  states.  While  the 
latter  are  free  farmers,  even  though  they  live  in  great  poverty,  the 
others  are  de  facto  proletarian  field  workers.  It  is  possible,  however, 
that  the  scarcity  of  workers,  which  is  to  be  observed  on  the  plantations 
in  many  places  since  the  war,  and  the  growing  recognition  of  the 
economic  and  social  damages  of  the  one-crop  system  will  lead  to  a 
greater  diversity  of  production  and  with  that  to  a  revolution  in  the 
condition  of  the  tenants  and  croppers.  This  again  may  cause  the  highly 
mobile  country  proletariat  to  become  stable.  Of  course  this  possibility 
is  just  now  encountered  because  the  sinking  of  farm  prices  in  the  plan- 
tation region  of  the  Old  South  caused  many  farms  and  tenancies  to  lie 
uncultivated,  so  that  the  general  scarcity  of  agricultural  workers  is  not 
yet  felt. 

If  we  attempt  to  form  a  complete  judgment  in  regard  to  the  mobility 
of  the  agricultural  population,  we  must  remember  the  previous  state- 
ment concerning  the  migration  between  farm  and  city,  because,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  these  wanderings  back  and  forth  between  the  country 
and  the  city  mainly  people  of  rural  origin  participate.  This  fluctuation 
is  strongly  tied  up  with  what  has  been  dealt  with  in  this  chapter,  the 
movement  from  farm  to  farm,  which  is  supposed  to  be  numerically 
much  more  important.  A  passing  move  into  the  city  takes  place  fre- 
quently between  the  departure  from  one  and  the  purchase  of  another 
farm.  The  degree  of  mobility  is  generally  less  in  old  regions  of  migra- 
tion than  in  newly  settled  regions,  and  apparently  this  is  due  to  the 
greater  stability  of  the  population  which  had  persisted.  We  have  come 
to  know  the  vicious  circle  that  exists  between  the  one-crop  system,  the 
system  of  tenancy,  and  mobility;  the  economic  results  of  this  could 
only  be  intimated  here. 

We  have  observed  with  the  population  of  the  Old  South  how,  on 
account  of  various  geographical  and  economic  conditions,  very  stable 
and  extremely  mobile  groups  of  population  can  find  themselves  side 
by  side  in  the  same  region. 

marketing  organization  on  plantations  given  by  Branncn,  Relation  oj  Land  Tenure  to 
Plantation  Organization,  U.  S,  D.  A.  Bull,,  Washington,  1924. 


520  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

TABLE  XIX 
DURATION  OF  CULTIVATION  ACCORDING  TO  CENSUS  OF  1920 

PERCENTAGE  REMAINING 

ON  THE  SAME  FARM 

_  FIVE  YEARS  OR 

REGION  MORE 


Owners 

Tenants 

United   States     
New  England 

69.2 

...     .    74.8 

25.4 
35.6 

Middle  Atlantic     .    . 
East  North  Central  
West  North  Central 

...     .        74.2 
72.7 
70.7 

35.7 
36.8 
29.1 

South  Atlantic 

72.9 

24.6 

East  South  Central 

67.1 

22.6 

West  South  Central 

61.7 

18.2 

Mountain           

58.4 

16.4 

Pacific         .  .           .                .  .   . 

.      .              60.5 

22.5 

(See  14th  Census,  Vol.  V,  chap,  vi,  Table  20,  p.  433.  See  also  card  diagram  in 
Appendix.) 


TABLE  A 


PERCENTAGE  OF 

STATE 

TENANTS  WHO 
MANAGED  THE 
SAME  FARM  FOR 
FIVE  YEARS  OR 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  FARMS 
TENANTED 
i  Qfin 

MORE 

1920 

Kansas        

32.1 

35.2 

Nebraska 

320 

369 

Iowa            ... 

31.4 

349 

Minnesota  . 

27.5 

173 

Missouri           

,    26.4 

305 

South  Dakota    .        .... 

....                  23.6 

21  8 

North  Dakota  

23.5 

85 

Oregon    

22.6 

17.8 

Washington     

20.8 

14.4 

MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION 


521 


TABLE  XX 
TENANTS  WHO  WERE  ON  SAME  FARM  FOR  FIVE  YEARS  OR  MORE 


DIVISION 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  WHITE 
TENANTS 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  NEGRO 

TENANTS 

South  Atlantic    
East  South  Central  .... 
West  South  Central      

,.    22,9 
17.7 
15.8 

26.3 
27.9 
23.1 

United  States 

25.1 

26.1 

TABLE  XXI 
TENANTS  WHO  WERE  ON  A  FARM  LESS  THAN  Two  YEARS 


REGION 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  ALL 
OWNERS 

PERCENTAGE 

OF  ALL 
TENANTS 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  WHITE 
TENANTS 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  COLORED 
TENANTS 

United  States     
New  England 

,  .  .      13.6 
.      10.8 

43.4 
35.5 

44.8 
35.5 

40.0 
23,5 

Middle  Atlantic  

....    11.1 

33.1 

33.1 

30.7 

East  North  Central  .  .  , 

,  ...    11.8 

31,4 

31.4 

32.3 

West  North  Central  . 
South  Atlantic 

13.0 
...    11.7 

37.4 
44.4 

37.4 
48.4 

36.3 
40.7 

East  South  Central  ,  . 

-    16.1 

47.2 

55.6 

38,1 

West  South  Central,  . 

17.2 

51.6 

50.5 

41.9 

Mountain     

.  .  .  .    14.4 

50.7 

51.0 

37,7 

Pacific          

.   .    19.8 

45.0 

46.0 

38.3 

(Sec  Census  Monograph  IV,  p.  137,  Table  52.) 


522  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

TABLE  XXII 

DURATION  OF  TENANCY  IN  1920  OF  229,083  TENANTS  IN  93  SELECTED 
COUNTIES  WITH  PLANTATION  MANAGEMENT 

T        rr  10  YEARS 

LESS  THAN 

1  YEAR 
CLASS  OF  TENANTS  LONGER 


Per  Cent  Per  Cent 


White  and  Colored 

Croppers     

21.2 

5.1 

Share  tenants  

18.2 

9.0 

Cash  tenants  

11.1 

17.7 

Total    

17.5 

9.8 

White 

Croppers   

28.4 

3.3 

Share  tenants  

22.9 

6.4 

Cash  tenants        

16.2 

11.6 

Total      

22.7 

6.9 

Colored 

Croppers     

19.7 

5.5 

Share  tenants        

14.4 

11.2 

Cash  tenants      .    .    

9.2 

20.0 

Total     

15.4 

11.0 

TABLE  XXIII 

DISTANCES  COVERED  BY  FARMERS  WHO  MOVED  TO  A  NEW  PLACE  AFTER  THE 

BUSINESS  YEAR  1926 
(According  to  a  Survey  Made  throughout  the  United  States) 

PERCENTAGE  OF  DISTANCE  TRAVELED 


By  Tenants  *  By  Owners 


To 

farms 

From 
farms 

To 

farms 

From 
farms 

1  mile    .  .         

14 

11 

14 

9 

3  miles  or  less  ... 

36 

33 

33 

25 

5  miles  or  less     

..   ..    52 

49 

46 

38 

10  miles  or  less  

75 

70 

66 

56 

More  than  10  miles      .... 

12 

17 

21 

32 

More  than  50  miles  

6 

10 

12 

21 

More  than  500  miles.    .    . 

....      1 

1 

1 

4 

Number  of  farmers  who  had 

moved  and  were  examined.  .5,052  4,673  1,854  2,236 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  523 

TABLE  XXIV 
PROPERTY  TRANSFERS  ON  1,000  FARMS 

FORCED  SALES  ALL  SALES 

STATE 


1925-1926    1926-1927   1925-1926   1926-1927 


United  States  . 

21.4 

22.8 

60.3 

60.4 

North  Dakota 

50.9 

61.1 

91.8 

92.5 

South  Dakota 

66.1 

66.1 

93.0 

69.2 

Rocky  Mountain  states 
Montana                 .    .  . 

70.9 

67.0 

105.7 

110.4 

Idaho     . 

47.4 

39.9 

82.3 

73.8 

Wyoming 
Colorado     .       ... 

42.4 
57.0 

39.3 
46.5 

76.4 
99.6 

79.5 
90.6 

Utah           
Nevada 

23.4 
30.9 

25.5 
26.6 

62.4 
58.7 

53.9 
54.9 

New  Mexico 

.     37.8 

35.7 

98.0 

95.3 

Arizona          ... 

53.9 

45.8 

89.6 

84.8 

63.  W.  J.  SPILLMAN:  THE  AGRICULTURAL  LADDER* 

The  first  rung  of  the  agricultural  ladder  is  represented  by  the  period 
during  which  the  embryo  farmer  is  learning  the  rudiments  of  his  trade. 
In  the  majority  of  cases  this  period  is  spent  as  an  unpaid  laborer  on 
the  home  farm. 

The  hired  man  stands  on  the  second  rung,  the  tenant  on  the  third, 
while  the  farm  owner  has  attained  the  fourth  or  final  rung  of  the  lad- 
der. This  paper  deals  with  the  rate  at  which  men  climb  this  ladder  and 
the  means  used  in  making  the  ascent.  We  shall  find  that  many  men 
are  able  to  skip  some  of  the  stages  above  enumerated.  There  are  also 
various  intermediate  stages.  Thus  the  hired  man  may  assume  some  of 
the  responsibilities  of  management  and  receive  part  or  all  of  his  pay  as 
a  portion  of  the  proceeds.  Under  this  arrangement  he  usually  makes 
a  larger  income  than  a  mere  hired  man  but  less  than  a  full  tenant. 
Some  men  pass  from  the  stage  of  hired  man  or  from  that  of  tenant  to 
the  position  of  hired  manager,  but  these  are  relatively  few.  The  stage 
of  owner  is  usually  divisible  into  two  periods,  the  first  being  the  early 
period  when  there  is  still  a  mortgage  on  the  farm.  Mortgages  may,  of 
course,  persist  indefinitely,  but  in  the  later  stages  of  ownership,  mort- 
gages frequently  represent  obligations  incurred  in  extending  the  hold- 
ings of  the  farmer. 

*  From  Papers  on  Tenancy,  Am,  Assoc,  for  Agricultural  Legislation,  University  o£  Wis- 
consin, Madison,  Bulletin  No.  2,  March,  1919,  pp,  29-38. 


524  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Table  I  shows  the  stages  passed  by  2,112  present  farm  owners  in  the 
states  of  Illinois,  Iowa,  Kansas,  Nebraska,  and  Minnesota.1  Twenty 
per  cent  of  the  number  climbed  the  entire  ladder,  omitting  none  of  the 
steps.  Thirteen  per  cent  skipped  the  tenant  stage,  32  per  cent  the  hired- 
man  stage,  and  34  per  cent  passed  directly  to  ownership  from  their 
fathers'  farms,  omitting  both  the  stages  of  hired  man  and  tenant.  Later 
it  will  be  seen  that  a  large  proportion  of  this  last  group  inherited  their 
farms  or  bought  them  from  near  relatives,  who  presumably  allowed 
very  easy  terms  of  payment. 

TABLE  I 

STAGES  PASSED  BY  2,112  MIDWESTERN  FARM  OWNERS  IN 
ACQUIRING  OWNERSHIP 

GROUPS  *  NUMBER  PERCENTAGE 


FHTO     . 

435 

20 

FHO       .   .       . 

268 

13 

FTO 

.     .          679 

32 

FO 

.   .                    730 

34 

Table  II  shows  the  methods  by  which  the  men  in  these  various 
groups  acquired  ownership.  Taking  all  the  groups  together,  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  just  two-thirds  of  these  men  acquired  their  farms  by  pur- 
chase, the  other  third  mainly  by  inheritance,  while  7  per  cent  of  the 
entire  number  married  their  farms.  A  few  obtained  them  by  home- 
steading,  but  these  are  old  men;  the  younger  generation  can  no  longei 

TABLE  II 

PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMERS  ACQUIRING  OWNERSHIP  BY  DIFFERENT  METHOD; 
(For  meaning  of  symbols,  see  Table  I) 


GROUPS 

HOME- 
STEAD- 

MAR- 

INHERI- 

PURCHASE 
FROM  NEAR 

PURCHASE 

FROM 

TOTAL  PUR 

ING 

RIAGE 

TANCE 

RELATIVES 

OTHERS 

CHASING 

FHTO 

..      1 

9 

1 

12 

77 

89 

FHOt   .. 

..    4 

28 

7 

6 

55 

61 

FTO      .. 

..     1 

5 

23 

30 

41 

71 

FO 

.     3 

4 

47 

30 

16 

46 

*The  data  on  which  this  paper  is  based  were  collected  by  Mr.  H.  H.  Clark  of  th< 
Office  of  Farm  Management,  under  the  joint  direction  of  Mr.  E.  H.  Thomson  and  thi 
writer. 

*  F  =  unpaid  laborer  in  the  home;  H=hired  man;  T=tenant;  O— owner. 

t  The  percentages  in  this  line  apply  to  Illinois,  Iowa,  Kansas,  and  Nebraska  only,  th< 
Minnesota  owners  being  omitted  for  reasons  stated  in  the  text. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  525 

obtain  farms  in  this  manner,  at  least  in  the  region  in  which  these 
studies  were  made. 

Table  III  shows  the  average  age  at  which  the  men  in  these  four 
groups  left  their  fathers'  farms.  Referring  again  to  Table  II,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  percentage  of  men  who  inherit  their  farms  rises  rapidly 
as  the  length  of  time  they  spend  on  the  home  farm  increases.  This  is 
undoubtedly  due  to  the  larger  size  of  farms  on  which  those  men  who 
remained  longest  at  home  were  brought  up.  Not  only  was  there  room 
for  them  on  the  home  farm,  but  there  was  also  land  enough  to  furnish 
many  of  them  homes  as  their  share  of  the  estate.  The  young  fellows 
brought  up  on  small  farms  left  home  early  and  made  their  way  to  the 
top  of  the  ladder  by  the  more  laborious  method  of  climbing  from  step 
to  step. 

TABLE  III 

AVERAGE  LENGTH  OF  STAGES 
(For  meaning  of  symbols,  see  Table  I) 


GROUPS 

F 
YRS. 

H 
YRS. 

T 
YRS. 

TOTAL 
YRS. 

ot 

YRS. 

1.  FHTO    .     . 
2.  FHO      .... 

19 
19 

7 
10 

10 

36 

29 

13 

20 

3.  FTO     .     . 
4.  FO    . 

.     .      23 

9 

33 

11 

17 

Not  only  is  the  percentage  of  inheritance  larger  the  longer  the  men 
remain  on  the  home  farm,  but  the  proportion  of  those  who  buy  from 
near  relatives  increases  in  like  manner.  The  group  who  skipped  the 
tenant  stage  are  of  special  interest.  Of  the  268  men  in  this  group,  160, 
or  60  per  cent  of  them,  own  farms  in  the  state  of  Minnesota.  One  hun- 
dred and  thirty-one  of  this  number  bought  their  farms  from  others 
than  near  relatives.  This  was  because  land  was  cheap  in  that  state  at 
the  time  those  men  were  acquiring  their  farms.  For  this  reason  the 
Minnesota  men  are  omitted  from  this  group  in  Table  II.  In  the  other 
four  states  28  per  cent  of  this  group  obtained  their  farms  by  marriage, 
4  per  cent  by  homesteading,  and  7  per  cent  by  inheritance.  This  group 
is  thus  made  up  quite  largely  of  men  who  did  not  acquire  ownership 
by  purchase.  Otherwise  most  of  them  would  have  been  compelled  to 
pass  through  the  stage  of  tenant. 

Table  III  shows  the  length  of  the  various  stages  and  the  average  age 
at  which  the  men  in  each  group  acquired  ownership.  Those  who  left 

*  Age  at  ownership. 

t  Years  since  ownership  was  acquired. 


526  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

their  fathers'  farms  to  become  hired  men  did  so  at  an  average  age  of 
nineteen  years.  This  applies  to  both  groups  1  and  2.  Group  3  were 
brought  up  on  larger  farms,  remained  at  home  four  years  longer,  and 
were  thus  enabled  to  skip  the  hired-man  stage.  Their  fathers  set  them 
up  as  tenants  as  a  reward  for  their  services  on  the  home  farm.  Group  4 
consists  for  the  most  part  of  men  brought  up  on  still  larger  farms. 
They  remained  at  home  till  on  the  average  they  were  twenty-six  and 
one-half  years  old.  We  have  already  seen  (Table  II)  that  most  of  these 
men  either  inherited  their  farms  or  bought  them  on  easy  terms  from 
their  fathers  or  other  near  relatives. 

Group  1  spent  an  average  of  seven  years  as  hired  men  and  ten  years 
as  tenants  before  acquiring  ownership,  which  they  did  at  an  average 
age  of  thirty-six  years.  In  general,  the  longer  these  men  remained  on 
the  home  farm,  the  earlier  the  age  at  which  they  acquired  ownership. 
This  is  an  argument  in  favor  of  farms  of  considerable  size.  The  young 
men  on  such  farms  are  less  liable  to  have  to  pass  through  the  stages  of 
hired  man  and  tenant. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  class  2  is  made  up  largely  of  men  who  ac- 
quired their  farms  a  long  time  ago  (twenty  years  on  the  average).  In 
a  less  degree  this  is  true  of  class  4,  while  classes  1  and  3  consist  more 
largely  of  men  who  acquired  their  farms  more  recently.  These  last- 
mentioned  classes  both  involve  the  stage  of  tenancy.  It  would  thus  ap- 
pear that  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult  to  acquire  farms  with- 
out passing  through  the  tenant  stage. 

We  have  seen  that  the  average  age  at  which  young  men  left  home 
to  become  hired  men  on  the  farm  was  nineteen.  The  largest  number 
left  home  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  Next  in  order  are  twenty-one  and  six- 
teen years,  respectively.  Two  started  out  at  twelve  years  of  age,  while 
two  others  left  the  home  farm  when  they  were  thirty-two  years  old. 

While  those  who  skipped  the  hired-man  stage  left  home  at  an  aver- 
age age  of  twenty-three,  by  far  the  larger  number  of  them  started  out 
at  twenty-one.  Men  who  remained  at  home  for  various  lengths  of  time 
and  then  went  directly  to  ownership  .  .  .  are  from  twenty-one  to  thirty 
years  of  age.  While  the  average  length  of  the  hired-man  stage  in  the 
group  that  omitted  none  of  the  stages  was  seven  years,  the  high  num- 
bers come  at  from  four  to  six  years.  The  average  is  raised  by  the  strag- 
glers who  remained  in  this  stage,  in  one  case,  as  long  as  28  years.  In 
this  same  group  the  average  length  of  the  tenant  stage  was  ten  years; 
however,  the  high  numbers  come  at  from  four  to  ten  years. 

It  would  thus  appear  that  the  usual  course  of  those  farm  owners  who 
start  out  without  capital  is  to  work  four  to  six  years  as  hired  men,  four 
to  ten  years  as  tenants,  after  which  they  make  a  first  payment  on  a 
farm  of  their  own.  If  this  were  a  settled  state  of  affairs  in  this  country, 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  527 

we  might  well  face  the  future  with  complacency.  Tenancy  would  be 
confined  mainly  to  young  men  who  are  just  winning  their  way  to  own- 
ership and  the  few  incompetents  and  unfortunates  who  are  unable  to 
climb  the  ladder  in  the  normal  way. 

But  the  price  of  land  has  been  increasing  at  a  rapid  rate  in  recent 
years.  As  a  result,  the  length  of  time  a  man  must  spend  in  the  stages 
of  hired  man  and  tenant  is  increasing.  In  order  to  determine  the  extent 
of  such  increase,  the  men  in  group  1,  who  passed  through  all  the  stages, 
were  divided  into  groups  according  to  the  decade  in  which  they  ac- 
quired ownership.  Those  who  acquired  their  farms  thirty-one  to  forty 
years  ago  spent  on  an  average  of  5.2  years  as  hired  men.  The  length  of 
this  stage  increases  gradually,  until  it  becomes  7.9  years  for  the  sub- 
group who  acquired  ownership  during  the  decade  ending  with  1917. 
This  is  an  increase  of  52  per  cent  in  three  decades,  an  average  of  about 
17  per  cent  to  the  decade.  The  rate  of  increase  is  slower,  however,  dur- 
ing the  later  periods. 

For  those  who  acquired  their  farms  thirty-one  to  forty  years  ago,  the 
length  of  the  tenant  stage  averages  4.9  years.  Three  decades  later  it  had 
increased  to  11.1  years,  an  increase  of  127  per  cent,  or  42  per  cent  per 
decade.  But  the  rate  of  increase  is  also  slower  here  in  the  last  decade 
than  in  the  two  previous,  being  for  the  three  periods  respectively  2.3, 
2.4,  and  1.5  years.  It  would  therefore  appear  that  even  under  present 
conditions  it  is  possible,  by  good  management,  for  the  young  man  who 
must  start  out  without  capital  to  pass  through  the  various  stages  neces- 
sary to  farm  ownership  and  acquire  economic  independence  by  the 
time  his  children  are  old  enough  for  college.  Whether  this  condition 
will  continue  will  depend  on  several  things,  one  of  which  is  the  price 
of  farm  land  in  the  future.  In  Europe  it  is  customary  to  state  the  price 
of  farm  land  in  terms  of  years'  rental  Twenty-five  years'  rent  is  con- 
sidered a  normal  price  for  land.  It  would  simplify  matters  if  a  similar 
custom  were  adopted  in  this  country.  The  man  who  buys  a  farm  on 
time  would  then  know  more  of  his  prospects  for  final  ownership  with- 
out debt. 

Governmental  action  in  aiding  young  men  to  acquire  farms  is  an  im- 
portant factor.  Other  nations,  notably  Denmark,  have  solved  this  prob- 
lem. There  is  no  fundamental  reason  why  this  country  cannot  do  the 
same  thing.  It  is,  however,  beyond  the  province  of  this  paper  to  pursue 
this  phase  of  the  subject.  Nevertheless  it  behooves  us  as  students  of 
agricultural  economics  to  consider  carefully  the  entire  subject  of  tenant 
farming  in  this  country  with  a  view  to  seeing  that  it  occupies  its  proper 
status  in  a  system  in  which  ownership  farming  is  the  rule. 

It  would  appear  to  be  the  part  of  wisdom  for  us  to  work  for  legisla- 
tion intended  to  aid  young  men  who  have  proven  themselves  as  hired 


528  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

men  to  become  tenants  on  good  farms.  Then  when  they  have  proven 
their  ability  as  farm  managers,  aid  should  be  extended  to  them  in  buy- 
ing farms.  Such  a  plan  would  be  in  harmony  with  the  normal  processes 
by  which  farms  are  acquired.  In  helping  tenants  to  buy  farms  it  would 
be  legitimate  to  limit  the  purchase  price,  say,  to  a  specified  number  of 
years'  rent.  This  would  tend  to  prevent  farm  land  from  rising  to  such 
prices  that  men  cannot  hope  to  pay  for  their  farms  during  their  work- 
ing life.  At  least  it  would  result  in  reducing  tenancy  to  its  normal 
status  in  those  sections  of  the  country  in  which  the  price  of  farm  land 
is  reasonable.  It  would  also  tend  to  reduce  the  price  of  land  in  sections 
where  it  is  too  high,  for  it  would  reduce  the  demand  for  such  land. 

64.  A.  W.  ASHBY  AND  J.  MORGAN  JONES:  THE  SOCIAL  ORIGIN 
OF  WELSH  FARMERS* 

The  data  here  dealt  with  were  collected  by  the  aid  of  local  corre- 
spondents in  the  winter  of  1924-1925.  They  cover  sections  of  each  of 
eleven  counties  in  Wales  and  Monmouth.  .  .  . 

The  records  obtained  in  some  degree  cover  conditions  during  a 
quarter  of  a  century  or  more,  for  they  include  farmers  who  have  re- 
cently begun  a  farming  career  with  others  who  may  have  spent  up 
to  forty  years  in  the  industry,  but  that  is  not  to  suggest  that  had  an 
investigation  been  made,  say  in  1906,  the  results  would  have  been  the 
same.  Changes  in  the  total  number  of  farmers  in  Wales  have  occurred 
during  the  last  fifty  years.  There  was  a  decrease  of  about  3,000,  or 
nearly  8  per  cent,  between  1871  and  1881,  while  numbers  remained 
fairly  steady  until  1911,  when  an  increase  of  about  3,000,  or  8  per  cent, 
occurred  in  the  next  decade.  The  later  increase  appears  to  be  partly  due 
to  legal  and  social  measures  to  increase  the  number  of  small  holdings. 
The  mere  fact  of  the  increase  in  numbers  would  not  point  to  any 
change  in  the  social  origin  of  farmers  in  recent  years,  but  the  increase 
together  with  known  social  measures  point  to  the  assumption  that  the 
farming  class  is  more  fluid  and  recruited  from  more  varied  sources 
than  it  was  two  decades  ago.  And  had  an  investigation  been  made 
between  1901  and  1911,  when  the  total  number  of  farmers  was  quite 
steady,  it  is  probable  that  the  farming  class  would  have  been  shown 
to  be  more  fixed  than  the  results  of  the  present  study  indicate.  How- 
ever, even  when  the  total  number  of  farmers  was  steady,  the  class  was 

*  From  A.  W.  Ashby  and  J.  Morgan  Jones,  The  Social  Origin  of  Welsh  Farmers,  in 
Welsh  Studies,  Univ.  College  of  Wales,  Aberystwyth,  1926,  pp.  12,  15-22.  Reprinted 
with  the  permission  of  the  authors. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  529 

a  fluid  one,  recruiting  members  from  outside  and  sending  members  or 
their  progeny  to  other  occupations. 

The  recorders  succeeded  in  recording  the  items  of  previous  occupa- 
tion of  the  present  farmer  and  the  occupation  of  the  farmer's  father  in 
834  cases  and  every  item  of  the  investigation  in  771  cases.  The  latter 
group  will  be  mainly  dealt  with  here,  but  in  certain  items  compari- 
son will  be  made  with  the  results  of  the  larger  group.  These  are  not 
large  samples,  for  the  larger  group  represents  only  2.04  per  cent  and 
the  smaller  group  only  1.9  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  farmers. 
Nevertheless,  the  samples  are  adequate  for  present  purposes,  and  they 
are  as  large  as  it  might  reasonably  have  been  expected  to  obtain.  And 
it  is  reassuring  that  in  some  respects  there  is  no  appreciable  difference 
between  the  results  shown  by  the  larger  and  by  the  smaller  sample.  In 
the  case  of  classification  of  holdings  by  rentals,  the  proportions  in  each 
group  are  almost  identical. 

PROPORTIONS  OF  HOLDINGS  IN  RENTAL  GROUPS 


RENTAL  GROUPS 
(RENT  OR  GROSS 
ESTIMATED  RENTAL) 

LARGER  GROUP 
(834  FARMERS) 

SMALLER  GROUP 
(771  FARMERS) 

No. 

Per  Cent 

No. 

Per  Cent 

£30  and  under 

194 

23.26 

177 

22.95 

£31-49 

155 

18.58 

144 

18.67 

£50-99 

322 

38.61 

303 

39.29 

£100-149 

104 

12.39 

95 

12.32 

£150  and  over 
Total 

59 

7.07 

52 

6.74 

834 

100.00 

771 

100.00 

The  larger  group  is  inclusive  of  the  smaller,  but  the  results  in  the 
smaller  group  show  no  important  deviation  from  those  of  the  larger 
group  in  respect  of  classification  of  holdings.  It  is  unfortunate  that 
there  are  no  means  of  ascertaining  to  what  degree  this  distribution  of 
farms  by  rentals  corresponds  with  the  general  distribution.  Even  if 
classification  were  made  by  area  this  would  be  the  case,  for  the  Agri- 
cultural Returns  give  numbers  of  "holdings"  as  units  of  land  tenure 
and  not  as  units  of  farming  businesses. 

PREVIOUS  OCCUPATIONS  OF  FARMERS 

As  regards  the  previous  occupations  of  the  present  members  of  the 
farming  class  the  two  samples  again  show  approximately  equal  results. 


530  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

PROPORTIONS  OF  FARMERS  IN  PREVIOUS  OCCUPATIONS 


PREVIOUS  OCCUPATION 

LARGER  GROUP 
(834  FARMERS) 

SMALLER  GROUP 
(771  FARMERS) 

OF  PRESENT  FARMER 

No. 

Per  Cent 

No. 

Per  Cent 

Farmer's  son           .    .  . 
Hired  farm  worker     . 
Other  manual  worker 
Artisan 
Other  occupations 
Requiring  capital 
Not  requiring  capital 

Total     

537 
186 
56 
29 

15 
11 

64.38 

22.30 
6.71 
3.48 

1.80 
1.31 

510 
165 
49 
24 

13 
10 

66.14 
21.40 
6.35 
3.11 

1.68 
1.29 

834 

100.00 

771 

100.00 

The  further  analysis  of  the  previous  occupations  of  farmers  can  thus 
be  confined  to  the  smaller  group  of  farmers,  for  whom  all  other  items, 
such  as  quality  of  farming,  etc.,  were  recorded. 

The  general  results  above  show  that  some  two-thirds  of  the  present 
race  of  farmers  have  never  had  any  occupation  other  than  that  of 
residents  or  workers  on  the  parental  farm.  As  most  of  the  farms  are 
small,  less  than  20  per  cent  of  them  being  over  £100  in  rental  value, 
the  great  majority  have  been  manual  workers  on  the  parental  farm. 
Over  20  per  cent  have  been  hired  farm  workers,  but  one-third  of  these 
are  actually  sons  of  occupiers  of  farms  that  are  too  small  to  provide 
employment  for  all  the  members  of  the  family.  Thus  about  88  per  cent 
of  the  present  class  of  farmers  have  been  in  a  farming  occupation  dur- 
ing the  whole,  or  practically  the  whole,  of  their  working  lives;  and  only 
about  12  per  cent  have  had  other  occupations.  Of  the  latter,  one-half 
have  been  laborers  or  unskilled  workers  in  other  industries  and  trades. 
But  the  most  surprising  result  is  that  so  few  farmers  in  Wales  are  re- 
cruited from  the  "trades  and  professions,"  especially  from  those  in 
which  capital  is  required. 

Tables  I  and  II  show  a  complete  analysis  of  the  previous  occupa- 
tions of  the  771  farmers  by  rental  groups.  The  first  table  indicates  quite 
clearly  that  the  proportion  of  "farmers'  sons"  to  the  total  of  each  group 
rises  with  the  size  of  farm  until  the  last  group  is  reached.  But  the  pro- 
portion of  those  who  have  been  hired  farm  workers  (including  some 
descendants  of  farmers)  falls  as  the  rental  value  rises.  The  same  is  true 
of  other  manual  workers  and  artisan's.  Thus  the  farmers  recruited 
from  manual  occupations  tend  to  start  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder  and 
many  of  them  tend  to  remain  there.  Those  recruited  from  "other  oc- 
cupations" tend  to  miss  the  bottom  rung  of  the  ladder,  but  not  to  go 


SUMMARY  TABLE  I 
SHOWING  THE  PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMERS  OF  DIFFERENT  PREVIOUS  OCCUPATIONS  IN  EACH  RENT  GROUP 


FARM  OTHER  MANUAL    ,  OTHER  OCCUPATIONS 

ARTISANS    

n  D  OONS        WORKERS      WORKERS  pnmfa| 

*.    PERCENTAGE  BASE  FOR t UF' 

KENT  GROUP      VT       OF      PROPOR-  ppr          ppr          ppr          ppr  ppr         p« 

Na    TOTAL      TIOV     Total    P  r   Total  Per"  Total  Per"  Total   Per   Total    Per"  Total  Per' 
itm       m      VT     centage  VT    ceotage  VT    centage  XT    centage  XT     centage  M 
No,    fT;,  No,   rrb,  No,   (T  ,  No,   (  ',  No,    ,T6,  No, 
ofToa       oTota       oTota       oToa       oTota 


Id  under  111  1195  177=1  72  40,b7  71  til  20  11  JO  12  ol  2  IB 

Hi  18,67  14^1  82  571  J5  22,91  15  M  5  3.47  5  147  4  2,77 

n  39,29  1=100  231  76,23  47  15,51  14  4.62  5  1,65  2  0,66  4  1.32 

£100-149      95  12,32  95=100  82  86,31  9  9,47  .     ,  1  1,05  2  2,10  1  1.05 


"   Total      TT  100,00  771=100  510  66,14  165  21,40  49    6,35  24   3,11  13    1,68 


SUMMARY  TABLE  II 
SHOWING  PERCENTAGE  IN  EACH  GROUP  OF  EACH  CLASS  OF  PREVIOUS  OCCUPATION 


terr  GROUP 

FARMERS' 

SONS 

\ 

FARM 

faERS 

OTHER  MANUAL        , 
„,               ARTISANS 
WORKERS 

OTHER  OCCUPATIONS 

Capital 

No  Capital 

Total 
No, 

Percentage 
ofTotal 

Total 
No, 

Percentage 
ofTotal 

Total 
No, 

Percentage 
ofTotal 

Total 
No, 

Percentage 
ofTotal 

Total 
No, 

Percentage 
ofTotal 

Total  Percentage 
No,  ofTotal 

130  and  under 
£31-49 
£5W9 
£100-149 
£150  and  over 

Total 

72 

82 
231 
82 
43 

14,12 
45.29 

8,43 

71 
33 

47 
9 

5 

43.03 
20,00 

28,48 
5,45 
3,04 

20 

15 
14 

40,8 

30,6 
28.6 

12 
5 
5 
1 
1 

20,83 
20,83 
4,12 
4,12 

2 
5 

2 
2 
2 

15,38 

38,48 
15,38 
15,38 
15.38 

is 

510 

1,00 

165 

100,00 

49 

n,o 

24 

100,00 

13 

100,00 

10    100,00 

532  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  near  the  top,  as  fifteen  of  the  twenty-three  are  found  on  farms  of 
rental  value  between  £31  and  £100. 

OCCUPATION  OF  FARMER'S  FATHER 

As  regards  the  occupation  of  the  fathers  of  the  present  farmers  again 
there  is  little  appreciable  difference  between  the  results  for  the  larger 
and  those  of  the  smaller  group,  although  the  results  do  not  agree  as 
closely  as  previously. 

OCCUPATIONS  OF  FATHERS  OF  FARMERS 


OCCUPATION  OF  FATHER 
OF  PRESENT  FARMER 

LARGER  GROUP 
(834  FARMERS) 

SMALLER  GROUP 
(771  FARMERS) 

No. 

Per  Cent 

No. 

Per  Cent 

Farmer    

624 

74.82 

592 

76.78 

Farm  worker 

90 

10.80 

82 

10.63 

Other  manual  worker  .  .   . 

62 

7.43 

45 

5.83 

Artisan 

47 

5.63 

44 

5.70 

Other  occupations 
Requiring  capital  .    . 
Not  requiring  capital. 

Total         

8 
3 

0.96 
0.36 

5 
3 

0.64 
0.38 

834 

100.00 

771 

100.00 

With  this  table  of  the  results  of  the  analysis  of  two  groups  the  com- 
parisons end,  and  analysis  is  limited  to  the  smaller  group  only.  The 
following  table  shows  the  occupations  of  fathers  of  farmers,  classify- 
ing the  present  farmers  by  rental  groups. 

The  results  show  that  about  75  per  cent  of  the  present  class  of  farm- 
ers have  descended  from  farmers  and  that  10  per  cent  have  descended 
from  farm  workers.  Thus  some  85  per  cent  of  the  farming  class  have 
a  social,  though  not  a  physical,  inheritance  of  farming  knowledge  and 
experience.  They  are  brought  up  in  a  farming  environment  and  they 
imbibe  farming  traditions.  The  remainder  are  recruited  chiefly  from 
manual  working  classes,  their  fathers  being  chiefly  "other  manual 
workers"  and  "artisans." 

The  predominance  of  descent  from  families  of  farmers  is  shown  in 
every  rental  group  but  is  most  marked  in  the  groups  of  £100  and  up- 
wards. This  shows  the  importance  of  the  inheritance  of  capital  for  the 
purpose  of  starting  farms,  whether  the  amount  of  capital  be  large  or 
small.  The  proportions  o£  numbers  of  fathers  who  were  farm  workers, 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION 


533 


TABLE  III 
OCCUPATION  OF  FATHERS  OF  PRESENT  FARMERS 


RENTAL  GROUP 

FARMER        FARM 
WORKER 

OTHER 

MANUAL 
WORKER 

OTHER  OCCUPATIONS 

ARTISAN                   N°c  Re- 
Capital    quiring 
Capital 

Per  Per  Per  Per  Per  Per 

No.  Cent    No.  Cent    No.  Cent    No.    Cent  No.  Cent  No.  Cent 


£30  and  under  99 

55.93 

39  22.03 

16   9.06 

21  11.86 

1 

0.56 

1 

0.56 

100 

£31-49            107 

74.30 

14 

9.72 

11   7.63 

10 

6.94 

1 

0.69 

1 

0.69 

100 

£50-99            253 

83.49 

22 

7.26 

16   531 

10 

3.30 

2 

0.66 

100 

£100-149          87 

91.57 

5 

5.26 

1    1.05 

2 

2.10 

100 

£150  and  over   46 

88.46 

2 

3.84 

1    1.92 

1 

1.92 

1 

1.92 

1 

1.92 

100 

Total         ~m 

82~ 

45 

44 

3 

T 

Percentage 

of  total       76.78 

10,63 

5.83 

5.7 

38 

.64 

other  manual  workers,  and  artisans  decrease  as  the  rental  value  of 
farms  occupied  by  sons  increases. 

But  the  most  interesting  result  is  obtained  by  comparing  the  previous 
occupations  of  the  present  farmers  with  the  occupations  of  their  fa- 
thers. By  this  means  an  indication  of  the  proportion  of  hired  farm 
workers  (in  previous  occupation)  who  are  actually  descended  from 
farmers  is  obtainable. 

Thus  if  the  two  agricultural  groups  are  taken  together,  they  are 
almost  exactly  identical:  675  being  found  in  the  first  and  674  in  the 
third  column.  It  should  be  clearly  understood  that  this  result  is  purely 
accidental,  and  that  no  reliance  can  be  placed  on  the  expected  occur- 


OCCUPATION 


PREVIOUS  OCCUPATION 
PRESENT  FARMER 


No. 


Percentage 


OCCUPATION  OF  FATHER 
OF  PRESENT  FARMER 

No.          Percentage 


Farmer's  son  or  farmer 

510 

66.14 

592 

76,78 

Farm  worker 

.     165 

2L40 

82 

10.63 

Other  manual  worker.  .    .  . 

,  ,      49 

635 

45 

5.83 

Artisan 

24 

3.11 

44 

5.70 

Other  occupations 
Recjuiring  capital     ,    ,    , 

13 

1.68 

3 

038 

Not  requiring  capital 

10 

1.29 

5 

0.64 

Total   

.  ,     771 

100.00 

771 

100.00 

534  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rence  o£  this  numerical  correspondence.  In  fact,  of  165  "farm  workers" 
by  previous  occupation,  55  were  sons  of  farmers,  71  were  sons  of  farm 
workers,  and  39  were  sons  of  men  in  other  occupations. 

No  such  complete  correspondence  is  found  in  other  occupational 
groups.  Only  24  of  the  present  farmers  had  been  previously  occupied  as 
artisans,  but  44  were  sons  of  artisans.  While  the  totals  in  all  the  other 
occupational  groups  in  each  of  the  columns  will  necessarily  nearly  cor- 
respond with  each  other,  there  is  considerable  transposition  of  occupa- 
tion from  father  to  son,  as  shown  by  differences  in  numbers  between 
groups.  Some  of  this  certainly  occurs  between  the  agricultural  and  the 
nonagricultural  groups. 

OCCUPATION  OF  FARMER'S  GRANDFATHER 

The  fluidity  of  the  farming  class  may  best  be  shown  by  the  fact  that 
of  771  farmers  now  in  control  of  land  only  592  had  farmers  for  fathers 
and  only  522  had  grandfathers  who  were  farmers;  or  that  76  per  cent 
of  the  present  farmers  had  farmers  for  fathers  and  67  per  cent  had 
farmers  for  grandfathers.  A  further  analysis  is  required  to  discover 
how  many  of  the  present  farmers  had  both  fathers  and  grandfathers 
who  were  farmers.  This  is  not  shown  in  the  following  table,  for  an 
individual  farmer  of  the  present  may  have  descended  from  a  farming 
grandfather  through  a  father  who  had  another  occupation.  But  the  fol- 
lowing table  shows  the  occupation  of  the  grandfathers  of  present 
farmers. 

TABLE  IV 

OCCUPATION  OF  FARMER'S  GRANDFATHER 


RENTAL  GROUP 

FARMER         FARM 
WORKER 

OTHER 
MANUAL 
WORKER 

OTHER  OCCUPATION 

ARTISAN 
Capital 

Not  Re- 
quiring 
Capital 

Per  Per  Per  Per  Per  Per 

No.    Cent    No,     Cent  No.  Cent  No.  Cent  No.  Cent  No.  Cent 

£30  and  under  84  47.45  54  30.50  20  11.30  16  9.06   1   0.56  2   1.13  100 

£31-49  85  59.02  31   21.52  1611.11  12   8.33  ..  100 

£50-99  229  75.57  27     8.91  25    8.25  16  5.31   4   1.32  2     .66  100 

£100-149         81   85.26  10   10.52    2    2.10    2   2.10    ...  100 

£150andoverjW   84.61__£    7.65  JL^  1.92  _2.  3.84  _    .     J^  1.92  100 

Total         523  126  64  48  5  5  771 

Percentage 

of  total     67.83         16.34  8.3         6.22         .64         .64  100 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  535 

This  classification  by  rental  groups  shows  an  increasing  proportion 
o£  grandfathers  who  were  farmers  as  the  rental  value  rises,  and,  with 
one  deviation,  that  the  proportion  of  farmers  who  had  grandfathers 
who  were  farm  workers  falls  as  the  rental  value  rises. 

But  the  most  striking  fact  illustrated  by  the  analysis  of  the  occupa- 
tions of  fathers  and  grandfathers  of  the  present  farmers  is  that  only 
some  75  or  76  per  cent  have  descended,  even  through  one  generation, 
from  previous  farmers.  Even  allowing  for  the  fact  that  an  increase  in 
the  total  number  of  farmers  has  occurred  in  the  last  decade,  general 
fluidity  exists.  Moreover,  there  is  evidence  not  only  that  persons  re- 
cruited from  other  occupations  "climb  the  farming  ladder,"  but  that 
farming  families  descend  the  farming  ladder.  Such  increases  in  num- 
ber of  farms  as  have  occurred  are  mainly  in  the  number  of  small  farms. 
The  process  of  increasing  farms  must  itself  tend  to  diminish  the  aver- 
age size,  even  to  diminish  the  number  of  medium-sized  or  large  farms, 
while  the  total  area  of  farming  land  is  diminishing.  And  while  the 
number  of  farms  increased  between  1911  and  1921,  the  area  of  culti- 
vated land  (arable  and  pasture)  under  all  farms  decreased  by  over 
6  per  cent.  While  men  who  had  fathers  or  grandfathers  who  were 
farm  workers,  or  "other  manual  workers,"  were  "climbing  the  ladder," 
sons  and  grandsons  of  farmers  were  going  out  of  the  industry.  Not 
all  of  these  went  out  by  a  descent  to  manual  occupations,  for  some 
pass  to  the  trades  and  professions,  mostly  to  the  professions,  from  the 
top  of  the  ladder  itself.  They  may  of  course  pass  out  of  the  industry  at 
any  stage  by  taking  to  another  occupation  in  youth  without  even  be- 
coming farmers.  But  there  is  indication  of  a  downward  drift  of  farm- 
ers in  the  analysis  of  quality  of  farming  in  relation  to  family  descent. 

65.  A.  W.  ASHBY  AND  J.  LLEFELYS  DAVIES:  THE  AGRICULTURAL 
LADDER  AND  THE  AGE  OF  FARMERS* 

The  degree  of  specialization  of  labor  in  agriculture  varies  between 
different  areas  of  England  and  Wales.  Where  the  larger  farms  exist 
the  farmers  have  only  or  mainly  managerial  functions.  On  the  smaller 
farms  the  farmer  becomes  in  varying  degrees  both  manager  and  work- 
man. Over  the  country  in  general  the  proportion  of  employes  exercis- 
ing supervisory  or  managerial  functions  is  very  low. 

It  has  become  almost  customary  to  deprecate  the  idea  of  specializa- 
tion of  function  in  agriculture  and  to  suggest  that  it  is  undesirable, 
if  not  impossible,  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  been  developed  in  other 
industries.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  frequently  suggested  that  there  is, 

*From  the  Welsh  Journal  of  Agriculture,  Vol.  VI,  1930.  Reprinted  with  the  permis- 
sion o£  the  authors, 


536  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

or  there  should  be,  "an  agricultural  ladder"  by  which  the  one-time 
workman  may  become  a  small  holder,  "a  worker  on  his  own  account" 
as  the  census  so  well  defines  this  status,  and,  possibly,  eventually  the 
occupier  of  a  farm  with  sufficient  business  to  need  and  use  employes. 
The  suggestion  was  made  a  century  and  a  half  ago  that  such  a  "ladder" 
existed,  and  the  statement  is  often  made  at  the  present  time  that  a 
"practicable  agricultural  ladder"  is  an  urgent  social  necessity. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  confusion  in  these  ideas  and  suggestions; 
but,  most  important  in  Great  Britain,  there  is  no  clear  realization  that 
all  the  suggestions  of  "an  agricultural  ladder,"  whether  it  exists  or 
whether  it  should  be  made,  imply  an  age  ladder.  In  effect,  the  young 
man  will  start  as  an  employe,  for  no  one  apparently  suggests  that  a 
class  of  temporary  employes,  at  least,  is  unnecessary  or  undesirable.  At 
a  later  stage  he  will  become  a  small  farmer  of  the  status  of  tenant,  and 
then  he  may  change  his  property  status  and  become  an  owner,  or 
change  his  industrial  status  and  become  an  employer  on  a  larger  farm. 
Then  if  he  is  particularly  fortunate  or  peculiarly  efficient,  he  may 
change  his  property  status  and  become  the  owner  of  a  large  farm. 
But  all  these  changes  will  tend  to  occur  at  different  stages  in  the  life 
of  the  individual.  He  will  be  older  as  he  makes  each  change.  Individual 
climbers  will  make  different  rates  of  progress  and  arrive  at  the  various 
stages  at  different  ages  according  to  their  personal  capacities  and  the 
economic  advantages  or  handicaps  with  which  they  start.  Eventually, 
individuals  will  arrive  and  stop  at  different  steps  in  the  ladder.  While 
one  may  climb  with  difficulty  on  to  the  first  step,  another  will  proceed 
apace  to  the  highest  rung.  But  with  a  broad  ladder  and  full  activity 
the  process  of  climbing  would  segregate  people  and  determine  their 
functions  and  tasks  in  the  industry,  not  only  according  to  ability  but 
also  according  to  age.1  With  a  narrower  ladder,  a  partial  working  of 
the  process,  some  amount  of  this  kind  of  segregation  must  and  does 
take  place. 

Hitherto  there  has  been  no  direct  evidence  of  this  phenomenon  in 
England  and  Wales,  but  in  the  United  States  where  something  like  the 
"ladder"  exists,  and  is  appreciated,  the  phenomenon  may  be  seen  quite 
clearly.  "It  has  been  found  convenient  to  regard  working  as  a  wage- 
earner,  as  a  tenant,  and  as  an  owner-farmer  as  successive  rungs  on  a 
ladder  of  individual  progress  in  agriculture.  The  comparison  is  use- 
ful in  some  regards,  for  it  suggests  a  movement  from  stage  to  stage 
that  constitutes  an  important  fact  in  the  economic  life  of  the  farming 
classes.  We  may  recognize  the  following  important  steps,  arranged  in 
the  usual  order  of  progress:  (1)  farm  wage  laborers;  (2)  croppers, 

'See  below,  pp.  537,  541-547. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  537 

especially  in  the  south;  (3)  tenants  other  than  croppers;  (4)  part  own- 
ers, mortgaged;  (5)  part  owners,  free  of  mortgage;  (6)  owner-farmers, 
mortgaged;  (7)  owner-farmers,  free  of  mortgage.2  But  in  applying  the 
analogy  of  the  ladder  to  such  an  artificial  scheme  there  must  be  a  num- 
ber of  reservations."  "Various  successive  stages  may  not  always  repre- 
sent progress."  "Progress  in  independence  does  not  always  represent 
progress  in  well  being."  3 

The  ages  of  farmers  at  several  of  the  stages  mentioned  above  are 
given  below. 

PERCENTAGE  OF  FARMERS  IN  EACH  GROUP  (U.  S.  A.,  1920) 


«<*. 

CASH  AND 
SHARE 

TENANTS 

FIED  SHARE 

TENANTS 

op™ 

MORTGAGED 

FULL 

GAGED 

TOTAL, 
EXCLUDING 
MANAGERS 

Under  25 

63.4* 

12.4 

5.0 

7.6 

10.2 

98.6 

25-34 

42.7 

13.8 

8.9 

17.1 

16.2 

98.7 

35-44 

28.7 

11.1 

10.5 

22.0 

26.6 

98.9 

45-54 

21.1 

9.0 

9.8 

21.6 

37.6 

99.1 

55-64 

14.2 

6.5 

7.7 

19.7 

51.2 

99,3 

65  and  over 

10.8 

5.7 

4.7 

14.1 

64.1 

99.4 

The  suggestion  that  there  is,  or  should  be,  an  agricultural  ladder  has 
many  implications  that  deserve  statement  in  the  clearest  possible  form. 

L  Unless  the  industry  is  expanding  or  the  number  of  independent 
businesses  increasing,  the  rise  of  any  number  of  people  from  the  posi- 
tion of  employe  to  that  of  working  for  themselves  or  becoming  em- 
ployers implies  that  an  equal  number  of  persons  must  suffer  a  decline 
in  status  or  leave  the  industry. 

The  statement  contains  the  implication  that  the  sons  of  small  holders 
and  farmers  have  the  same  potential  status  as  their  fathers,  or  nearly 
so;  and  this  is  true  in  a  general  sense.  They  frequently  inherit  or  receive 
by  gift  or  marriage  some  capital,  and  they  have  considerable  advantages 
in  "climbing  the  ladder"  even  if  they  do  not  set  foot  at  the  start  on 
the  rungs  held  by  their  fathers,4 

3  With  a  well-established,  organized,  and  legally  protected  system  of  tenancy  it  is 
arguable  whether  or  not  ownership  is  the  most  desirable  goal. 

3  "Farm  Ownership  and  Tenancy,"  U.  S.  0.  A.  Yearbook  1923,  pp.  507-600. 

*  Figures  in  italics  represent  the  age  group  in  each  tenure  class  which  shows  the 
highest  percentage. 

*  In  Wales  some  77  per  cent  of  present  farmers  were  sons  of  farmers.  ("Social  Origin 
of  Welsh  Farmers,"  Welsh  Journal,  Vol.  II.)  In  England  the  proportion  may  be  70  per 
cent  or  higher.  (Lennard,  Economic  Notes  on  English  Agricultural  Wages,  p.  59.) 


538  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

2.  The  people  now  enjoying  the  industrial  and  economic  status  of 
small  holder  and  farmer  (approximately  the  status  of  "working  on 
own  account"  and  "employer")  produce  sufficient  and  more  than  suf- 
ficient sons  to  supply  the  future  requirements  of  these  classes  as  indi- 
cated by  the  present  economic  trends. 

Not  by  any  means  all  of  these  sons  follow  in  their  father's  footsteps. 
The  number  of  small  holders  and  farmers  who  die  or  who  become  eco- 
nomic casualities  is  greater  than  the  number  of  oncoming  sons.  By  the 
efflux  of  sons  and  relatives  openings  are  made  for  persons  of  lower  eco- 
nomic status  within  the  industry,  or  for  persons  from  outside. 

3.  The  efflux  of  sons  of  small  holders  and  farmers,  mainly  sons  of 
farmers,  carries  with  it  an  efflux  of  capital  which  has  previously  been 
used  in  the  industry. 

Unless  the  total  supply  of  capital  is  to  be  diminished  an  equal 
amount  of  capital  must  be  saved  or  at  least  brought  on  to  the  farms. 
Any  "ladder"  implies  that  it  will  be  saved.  There  may  be  temporary 
borrowing  but  unless  the  borrowers  are  going  "to  work  for  the  banks" 
they  must  save  eventually. 

Unless  there  is  an  adequate  system  of  credit  in  existence  this  saving 
must  mean  one  of  two  things:  either  the  farms  used  for  climbing  are 
relatively  short  of  capital  for  considerable  periods,  or  the  families  are 
kept  relatively  short  of  income  for  consumption  purposes.  The  exist- 
ence of  the  best  credit  system  changes  the  probability  of  the  occurrence 
of  one  of  these  conditions  only  in  degree  and  does  not  remove  it.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  no  other  productive  industry  now  saves  capital  under 
such  hard  conditions  as  those  prevailing  in  agriculture.  It  is  practically 
certain  that  the  existence  of  the  agricultural  ladder,  especially  in  the 
small-farm  pastoral  regions,  is  responsible  for  a  good  deal  of  under- 
capitalization. 

4.  The  existence  of  a  wide  "ladder"  means  that  climbing  is  chiefly 
a  process  of  hard  saving  of  farming  capital  in  order  to  take  it  out  of 
the  industry.  The  man  who  starts  as  employe  and  becomes  employer 
and  capitalist  whose  children  do  not  return  to  farming  merely  supplies 
capital  for  other  industries  and  professions. 

It  may  be  good  for  the  industry,  even  for  the  farming  class,  that  it 
should  take  in  "new  blood,"  and  it  is  almost  certainly  good  for  society 
at  large  that  there  is  an  efflux  from  the  farming  class  to  other  occupa- 
tions. Doubt  may  be  expressed  as  to  whether  it  is  good  for  agriculture 
that  on  the  passing  of  each  generation  capital  should  pass  out  of  its 
organization  and  that  every  rising  generation  should  be  obliged  to  save 
capital  other  than  that  required  for  replenishment  and  increase  of  total 
supply. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  539 

5.  As  regards  the  general  possibility  of  climbing,  and  the  rate  at 
which  it  may  be  accomplished,  it  is  necessary  to  remember  that  as  a 
large  proportion  of  agricultural  capital  is  obtained  by  inheritance  and 
marriage,  certain  people  who  have  to  save  or  accumulate  all  the  capital 
that  they  use  must  climb  with  heavy  handicaps.  Only  relatively  high 
personal  capacity  can  enable  them  to  climb  at  all.  There  cannot  be  com- 
plete freedom  of  competition  in  climbing  an  agricultural  ladder. 

6.  The  existence  of  a  ladder  also  implies  a  good  deal  of  mobility 
in  the  farming  class.  There  cannot  be  economic  climbing  without  a 
considerable  amount  of  physical  moving.  There  are  occasions  when  the 
tenant  changes  his  status  without  changing  his  farm.  On  rare  occasions 
the  employe  may  become  the  tenant  of  the  farm  on  which  he  has  been 
employed.  If,  however,  climbing  is  from  small  farm  to  larger,  the 
physical  moving  must  occur  with  the  economic  climbing. 

Mobility  of  the  agricultural  class  is  to  be  desired.  Rigid  immobility 
is  bad  for  the  class  of  farmers,  and  on  the  whole  bad  for  society.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  present  class  of  farmers  are  quite  as  settled 
in  the  matter  of  residence  and  place  of  business  as  is  desirable,  and  it  is 
probable  that  a  little  more  moving  and  broadening  of  experience  would 
have  good  effects.  On  the  other  hand,  too  much  movement  has  its  own 
disadvantages.  These  are  social  rather  than  economic  in  character.  The 
moving  family  breaks  relationships  with  school  and  church,  with  peo- 
ple and  societies,  and  if  movement  is  frequent  the  family  may  never 
have  any  settled  or  satisfactory  social  relationships.  It  is  significant  that 
in  the  United  States  of  America  the  average  period  of  farm  occupancy 
by  free  owners  is  only  about  14  years,  of  mortgaged  owner  only  9.2 
years,  while  the  average  period  of  occupancy  by  cash  tenants  is  only  3.8 
years,5  and  o£  "share  renters"  2.6  years.  The  average  period  of  occu- 
pancy by  tenants  in  England  and  Wales  has  been  about  four  times 
longer  than  in  the  United  States  and  a  little  longer  than  that  of  owners 
of  American  farms.  Enquiries  made  in  1919  indicated  an  average 
period  of  occupancy  by  tenants  o£  15-16  years.  Such  stability  would  be 
entirely  impossible  with  a  ladder  of  any  considerable  width. 

The  complete  agricultural  ladder  does  not  exist  even  in  the  United 
States.  Of  the  tenants  recorded  in  the  census  of  1920,  only  42  per  cent 
had  previous  farming  experience  only  as  wage  hands,  while  47  per  cent 
had  no  previous  experience  (except  possibly  working  on  their  parents' 
farms)  either  as  wage  hands  or  as  owners;  some  5  per  cent  had  experi- 
ence as  both  wage  hands  and  owners;  and  another  6  per  cent  had  ex- 
perience as  owners.  The  last  two  figures  are  notable,  for  they  indicate 

6  Period  area  1910,  U.  S.  D.  A,  Yearbook,  1923,  p,  594. 


540  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

that  the  agricultural  ladder,  like  all  others,  leads  in  two  directions  from 
any  point  except  the  extreme  ends. 

As  regards  the  owners  recorded  in  the  United  States  census  of  1920, 
some  42  per  cent  became  owners  without  being  either  wage  hands  or 
tenants,  14  per  cent  became  owners  after  being  wage  hands  only,  24 
per  cent  became  owners  after  experience  only  as  tenants,  while  not 
more  than  20  per  cent  went  through  all  the  stages — wage  hand,  tenant, 
owner.  Probably  the  great  majority  of  the  42  per  cent  had  worked 
without  wages  on  parents'  farms.6 

The  processes  as  regards  the  stages  passed  through  by  both  tenants 
and  owners  varied  from  state  to  state  to  some  extent,  but  the  above 
extracts  represent  the  general  processes. 

The  existence  of  an  agricultural  ladder  in  England  and  Wales  de- 
pends upon  one  or  more  of  these  four  conditions;  (a)  expanding  area 
in  use,  (£)  reduction  in  size  of  farms,  (c)  rapid  change  of  status  of 
persons  within  the  industry,  (d)  efflux  of  farmers  to  other  occupations; 
and  in  the  case  of  (c)  it  should  be  noted  that  the  "ladder"  is  one  of 
ascension  and  descension.  The  industry  is  not  expanding,  and  shows 
tendency  rather  to  decline.  The  area  in  farms  is  diminishing.  But  the 
size  of  the  industry  as  regards  numbers  of  persons  engaged,  or  engaged 
in  any  particular  capacity,  even  as  farmers,  is  not  entirely  dependent 
upon  the  area  used.  Increase  in  production,  or  increase  in  numbers  of 
persons  engaged,  either  in  total  or  in  a  given  class,  may  be  quite  con- 
sistent with  a  decline  in  total  area  used  as  shown  by  the  figures.  From 
1881  to  the  present  time  the  numbers  of  farmers  have  been  as  follows: 

MALES  FEMALES  TOTAL* 


1881 

203,329 

20,614 

223,943 

1891 

201,918 

21,692 

223,610 

1901 

202,751f 

21,548 

223,299 

1911 

208,761f 

20,027 

228,788 

1921 

244,653f 

19,440 

264,093 

The  figures  for  census  years  prior  to  1871  are  not  strictly  comparable 
with  those  given  above.  But  from  1881  to  1901  the  number  of  farmers 
was  practically  constant,  there  was  an  increase  from  1901  to  1911,  and 
a  greater  increase  in  the  following  decade. 

6U.  S.  D.  A.  Yearbook  1923,  pp.  553-556. 

*  For  a  convenient  summary  of  population  figures  see  Agricultural  Output  of  England 
and  Wales,  1925,  chap.  viii. 

t  Figures  used  in  Table  I  below  differ  from  these  by  omitting  males  under  15  years. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  541 

At  these  periods  the  total  area  in  use  ("total  cultivated  land")  and 
the  average  "per  farmer"  and  "per  holding"  have  been  as  follows: 


TOTAL 
CULTIVATED 

AREA  IN 
ACRES 

AVERAGE 
SIZE  OF 
FARM*  IN 
ACRES 

TOTAL 
NUMBER 

OF 

HOLDINGS 

AVERAGE 
SIZE  OF 
HOLDING* 

1881 
1891 
1901 
1911 
1921 

27,448,900 
28,002,134 
27,562,314 
27,248,823 
26,144,071 

122.6 
125.2 
123.4 
119.1 
99.0 

(1885) 
(1895) 
(1903) 
(1913) 

452,000f 
440,467 
433,002 
435,677 
420,133 

60.7 
63.6 
63.6 
62.5 
62.2 

These  figures  can  be  used  only  for  comparative  purposes,  for  the 
average  size  of  farms  farmed  for  a  full  livelihood  is  not  known.  So  far 
as  the  figures  for  "average  size  of  farm"  go,  they  indicate  that  an  in- 
creasing number  of  farmers  working  on  their  own  account  or  as  em- 
ployers is  quite  consistent  with  a  decline  in  acreage  and  reduction  in 
size  of  the  average  farm.  But  the  latter  condition  means  a  shortening 
of  the  ladder,  broader  steps  but  fewer  steps  to  climb. 

Evidence  available  for  Wales  indicates  that  there  is  little  recruitment 
of  farmers  from  outside  the  agricultural  classes,  but  that  there  is  con- 
siderable recruitment  of  farmers  from  the  farm  worker  class.  Nearly 
11  per  cent  of  the  present  farmers  had  farm  workers  for  fathers;  and 
10-11  per  cent  of  the  present  farmers  had  been  both  farm  employes  and 
sons  of  farm  employes.  But  as  many  as  22  per  cent  of  the  present  farm- 
ers had  worked  as  employes  on  farms.  There  may  also  be  some  other 
characteristics  of  the  "ladder"  movement  in  agricultural  status  by  move- 
ment from  one  farm  to  a  bigger  or  better  one,  and  by  change  from  the 
status  of  tenant  to  that  of  owner. 

From  what  has  already  been  stated  it  might  be  expected  that  in  the 
case  of  the  existence  of  a  broad  agricultural  ladder,  the  farmers  of  the 
higher  economic  status  would  tend  to  be  those  of  the  higher  age  levels. 
There  is  no  general  evidence  on  this  point,  but  an  analysis  of  the  age 
of  farmer  and  size  and  rent  of  farm  in  a  group  of  Cardiganshire  farms 
gave  a  negative  result.  No  general  and  direct  relationship  was  found 
between  the  age  of  the  farmer  and  the  size  or  rental  of  his  farm. 
This  is  in  accordance  with  expectations  arising  from  the  investigation 

*  The  average  size  of  farm  and  the  average  size  of  holding  arc  obtained  by  dividing 
the  total  number  of  acres  under  cultivation  by  the  number  of  farmers  and  the  number 
of  holdings,  respectively, 

t  Figures  for  1885  have  been  adjusted  as  nearly  as  possible.  The  figures  in  this 
column  are  of  little  value,  but  are  the  only  ones  available.  For  a  full  discussion  see 
Agricultural  Output  oj  England  and  Wales,  1925,  chap,  vii  and  pp.  143-144. 


542  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  origin  of  Welsh  farmers.  But  the  further  analysis  of  this  group 
of  Cardiganshire  farmers  indicated  that  the  subgroup  of  older  farm- 
ers over  55  years  of  age  consisted  of  four  distinct  classes:  (a)  the  class 
of  occupiers  of  small  farms  who  had  always  been  occupiers  of  such 
farms  and  had  not  changed  their  status,  (b}  a  class  of  occupiers  of 
small  farms  to  which  they  had  retired  or  "retreated"  from  larger 
farms,7  (c)  a  class  of  occupiers  of  medium  and  larger  farms  who  had 
been  in  occupation  of  those  farms  throughout  their  business  career, 
and  (d)  a  class  of  farmers  who  had  "climbed"  to  farms  of  this  size. 
It  is  only  for  the  last  class  that  a  direct  positive  correlation  between  age 
of  farmer  and  size  of  farm  would  be  expected;  and  it  should  be  noticed 
that  in  the  whole  group  the  tendency  towards  negative  correlation  in 
class  (£)  would  tend  to  balance  the  tendency  towards  positive  corre- 
lation in  class  (d)? 

The  general  position  is  that  farmers  may  be  recruited  at  any  age; 
they  may  then  continue  in  farming  throughout  their  business  or  occu- 
pational life,  or  became  economic  casualities,  e.g.,  become  bankrupts 
or  fail  in  similar  ways;  then  they  may  die  at  any  age  or  they  may  leave 
the  industry  by  retiring.  While  remaining  as  farmers  they  may  main- 
tain a  constant  status  in  the  class,  ascend  or  descend  the  ladder  within 
the  class.  There  is  some  retirement  of  farmers  in  addition  to  loss  by 
death  and  economic  casualty.  Very  few  cases  of  retirement  before  the 
age  of  55  years  occur,  though  farmers  occasionally  leave  the  industry 
to  enter  other  business  at  all  age  levels  up  to  55  or  60  years.  In  the  case 
of  actual  retirement  the  process  may  be  gradual  and  not  immediate. 
A  farmer  who  is  satisfied  with  his  economic  success,  who  does  not  wish 
the  responsibility  of  carrying  on  a  large  farm  may  "retreat"  to  a  small 
farm  where  he  has  occupational  interest  without  hard  work  or  heavy 
responsibility.  There  are  also  some  cases  of  "economic  retreat":  the 
cases  of  men  whose  capacity  has  not  proved  equal  to  the  farms  to 
which  they  attained,  or  who  have  suffered  unforeseen  or  unavoidable 
loss.  The  group  of  older  farmers  on  the  small  farms  does  not  entirely 
represent  relative  failures,  but  contains  some  cases  of  relatively  high 
success. 

T There  are  two  kinds  of  "retreat":  the  retreat  of  success  and  the  seeking  of  an  easier 
Hfe  with  some  occupational  interest;  and  the  retreat  from  partial  failure. 

8  In  the  course  of  a  survey  of  a  Carmarthenshire  parish  by  W.  H.  Jones  the  ages  of 
farmers  were  ascertained  from  them  and  checked  by  reference  to  documents,  and  the 
sizes  of  farms  were  checked.  In  this  small  area  in  which  holdings  are  well  graded  by 
size  the  coefficient  of  correlation  (r)  between  the  age  of  farmer  and  size  of  farm  was 
found  to  be  r  — —  .25.  The  probable  error  of  the  coefficient  of  correlation  =  ±  .06, 
The  chances  therefore  are  that  the  true  r  falls  between  — .19  and  — .31.  "The  study 
fails  to  show  the  existence  of  a  social  ladder  in  the  parish.  Allowance,  however,  must 
be  made  for  the  fact  that  many  farmers  as  they  become  advanced  in  years  retire  to 
smaller  holdings." 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  543 

By  an  examination  of  the  census  data  it  is  possible  to  obtain  some 
information  about  the  recruitment  of  farmers,  and  by  the  application 
of  the  known  death  rates  at  different  ages  to  the  census  records  it  is 
possible  to  obtain  some  idea  as  to  how  the  class  of  farmers  is  consti- 
tuted. If  it  were  also  possible  to  distribute  the  numbers  of  economic 
casualties  according  to  the  age  at  which  they  occur,  it  would  be  pos- 
sible to  obtain  information  about  the  changes  in  the  farming  class  with 
a  fairly  high  degree  of  accuracy. 

As  regards  economic  casualties,  bankruptcies,  and  other  financial 
failures,  it  has  to  be  remembered  that  these  are  not  always  complete 
and  final.  In  many  cases  there  is  a  windmg-up  of  current  affairs  and 
a  re-start  at  a  later  date.  The  numbers  of  recorded  bankruptcies  and 
deeds  of  arrangement  are  not  important,  for  over  long  periods  they  oc- 
cur only  at  the  rate  of  about  twelve  in  10,000  per  annum,  or  twelve 
in  1,000  per  decade.  There  are  other  financial  failures,  but  these  tend 
to  take  the  character  of  the  economic  retreat  of  farmers  to  smaller 
farms. 

The  average  age  of  recruitment  of  farmers  is  33-34  years  and  it  has 
scarcely  changed  in  the  last  half  century.  The  average  age  of  all  farm- 
ers in  any  recent  year  is  48-49  years.  This  has  fallen  by  about  one  year 
since  1911  or  a  little  later,  but  had  previously  shown  a  tendency  to 
decline. 

FARMERS  AND  GRAZIERS  (GROUP  AS  IN  CENSUS  YEAR) 

1901  1911  1921 


Average  age  of  recruitment 

(net  group)*  

33.6 

33.4 

33.9 

Average  age  of  recruitment 

(gross   recruitment  )f  .  .  . 

33.4 

33.3 

33.8 

Average  age  of  farmers  .  .    . 

49.7 

49.3 

48.2 

The  economic  importance  of  the  age  of  farmers  largely  depends  up- 
on the  size  of  farms  they  control  and  the  type  of  capacity  and  efficiency 
that  is  required  of  them.  On  the  smaller  farms  where  muscular  capac- 
ity with  skill  and  efficiency  in  manual  work  may  be  a  big  factor  in 
success,  the  highest  efficiency  may  be  reached  at  the  age  of  35,  or  if 
experience  is  joined  with  skill  and  efficiency,  at  45  years.  But  where 
the  efficiency  required  is  of  the  "executive"  order,  the  higher  levels 

*  Net  recruitment  is  the  net  number  deducting  the  deaths  estimated  by  the  death 
rates  from  the  total  number  of  males  taken  into  the  group. 

t  Gross  recruitment  is  the  total  number  taken  in  the  group  without  deducting  deaths. 


544  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

may  not  be  touched  until  the  age  of  45  is  reached,  and  the  highest  levels 
may  well  be  reached  after  attaining  the  age  of  50. 

The  length  of  occupational  or  business  "life"  of  farmers,  as  such, 
varies  between  one  year  and  60  or  more  years,  and  as  many  as  3  per 
cent  have  a  business  life  of  50  years  or  more.  Recruitment  begins  at 
an  early  age,  largely  because  of  inheritance,  and  as  many  as  13  per 
cent  become  farmers  before  they  reach  the  age  of  25  years;  and  a  great 
number,  nearly  50  per  cent  of  the  total,  become  farmers  when  between 
25  and  35  years.  A  number  of  the  males  who  are  "farmers  or  graziers" 
at  ages  below  21  years  are  not  in  control  of  farms,  for  the  farms  which 
are  coming  to  them  are  controlled  by  guardians  or  executors.  Of  the 
total  recruited  at  the  age  of  15-24  more  than  80  per  cent  have  been  re- 
cruited between  the  ages  of  20  and  24  years. 

ESTIMATED  NET  RECRUITMENT  OF  FARMERS 


ESTIMATED  AGE 
OF  RECRUITMENT 

PERCENTAGE  OF  TOTAL 

1901 

1911 

1921 

65  and  over 

1.1 

55-64 

0.5 

0.4 

0.2 

45-54 

8.55 

8.7 

11.0 

35-44 

27.2 

28.5 

29,3 

25-34 

49.1 

49.4 

46.6 

15-24 

13.55 

13.0 

12.9 

It  appears  that  in  the  decade  1892-1901  there  was  appreciable  recruit- 
ment of  farmers  of  quite  high  ages,  but  since  then  practically  all  the 
members  of  the  class  join  it  before  they  reach  55  years  of  age,  and 
nearly  90  per  cent  join  it  before  they  reach  the  age  of  45  years.  But  the 
full  statements  are  interesting  (Table  I).  In  the  years  just  before  1891 
and  again  just  before  1921  there  was  a  large  recruitment  of  very  young 
men  as  farmers.  And  in  the  decade  1912-1921  there  was  heavy  recruit- 
ment of  men  between  45-54  years  of  age,  as  well  as  a  number  over  55 
years.  The  only  decade  in  which  there  appears  to  have  been  recruit- 
ment of  men  over  65  was  that  of  1892-1901. 

So  far  as  can  be  ascertained  from  the  figures,  there  have  been  rela- 
tively few  farmers  who  have  completely  retired.  The  losses  by  death  are 
nearly  sufficient  to  account  for  all  the  losses  sustained  from  the  gross 
number  recruited.  Of  the  total  number  of  farmers  recruited  for  the 
group  of  1921,  it  is  estimated  that  less  than  1,000  retired,  and  that  about 
one-third  of  these  retired  in  the  decade  1902-1911  at  between  55  and 
64  years  of  age,  and  the  remaining  two-thirds  in  the  decade  1912-1921 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION 


TABLE  I 


545 


CONSTITUTION  AND  ESTIMATED  RECRUITMENT  OF  GROUPS  OF  MALE  FARMERS 
AND  GRAZIERS  AS  AT  RECENT  CENSUSES* 


A.  1921 

15-24 

25-34 

35-44 

65  and 
45-54     55-64    over 

Total 
(Actual) 

Percent- 
age 

65  and  over 
55-64 
45-54 
35-44 
25-34 
15-24 

3,025 
4,587 
6,059 
4,524 
4,332 
8,953 

14,139 
20,883 
21,579 
24,224 
33,164 

9,660 
14,258 
19,196 

28,454 

4,941 
7,213     600      . 
14,674 

31,765 
47,541 
61,508 
57,202 
37,496 
8,953 

13.0 
19.5 
25.2 
23.4 
15.3 
3.6 

Total 

31,480 

113,989 

71,568 

26,828     600 

244,465 

100.00 

B.  1911 

65  and  over 
55-64 
45-54 
35-44 
25-34 
15-24 

2,910 
3,915 
4,937 
6,339 
4;673 
4,392 

14,071 
18,344 
22,989 
22,685 
25,005 

11,264 
12,532 
15,634 
20,087 

3,836       . 
6,408 
7,908 

32,902 
41,199 
51,468 
49,111 
29,678 
4,392 

15.8 
19.7 
24.7 
23.5 
14.2 
2.1 

Total 

27,166 

103,094 

59,517 

18,152 

208,750 

100.00 

C.  1901 

65  and  over 
55-64 
45-54 
35-44 

2,627 
3,691 
4,392 
5,333 

13,145 
17,818 
20,586 
24,267 

10,260 
14,273 
14,066 
16,573 

5,279  1,040  2,287 
4,860 
7,194       

33,598 
41,682 
46,238 
46,173 

16.6 
20.6 
22.8 
22.8 

25-34 

6,599 

23,625 

30,224 

14,9 

15-24 

4,830 

4,830 

2.3 

Total 

27,472 

99,441 

55,172 

17,333  1,040  2,287 

202,745 

100.00 

at  over  65  years.  Of  the  total  number  recruited  for  the  group  of  1911 
it  is  estimated  that  less  than  400  retired  in  the  decade  1902-1911  at  over 
65  years  of  age.  While  from  the  total  recruited  for  the  group  of  1901 
it  appears  that  about  800  retired  in  the  decade  18824891  at  55-65  years 
of  age.  It  is  notable  that  there  is  no  direct  trace  of  retirement  in  the 
periods  of  economic  depression,  1892-1901;  while  there  was  recruit- 
ment at  fairly  high  ages,  this  recruitment  itself  would  hide  retirements. 
Similarly,  recruitment  of  older  men  between  1912  and  1921  would  also 

*These  figures  show  net  recruitment,  allowing  for  deaths  but  not  for  final  casualties 
from  financial  causes. 


546  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tend  to  hide  retirements  of  others.  If  there  are  any  considerable  num- 
bers of  final  casualties  from  economic  causes  these  estimated  numbers 
of  retirements  must  be  decreased.  In  any  case,  it  is  clear  that  the  num- 
ber of  complete  retirements  of  farmers  from  business  in  recent  dec- 
ades is  very  small.  Most  farmers  "die  in  harness." 

Alongside  the  group  of  farmers,  the  census  records  the  numbers 
of  male  relatives  of  farmers  engaged  in  agriculture.  These  are  mostly 
males  below  35  years  of  age;  more  than  half  the  number  recorded  in 
recent  censuses  were  below  25  years  of  age.  It  is  from  this  group  of 
males  that  farmers  are  mainly  recruited.  But  many  of  these  male  rela- 
tives pass  out  of  the  "farmer-relative  class"  into  the  ranks  of  employes 
or  out  of  the  industry  altogether. 

When  the  recruitment  of  the  farmers  and  the  diminution  of  the  class 
of  male  relatives,  as  for  the  respective  groups  of  1921,  are  analyzed  in 
detail  it  appears  that  some  48,000  farmers  were  recruited  who  could 
not  possibly  have  been  derived  directly  from  the  class  of  male  rela- 
tives. This  represents  20  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  farmers.  But 
most  of  these,  over  40,000,  are  recruited  at  ages  over  35  years,  and  some 
25,000  are  recruited  between  35-44  years.  At  the  age  level  of  25-34  years 
the  class  of  male  relatives  is  losing  greater  numbers  than  the  group  of 
farmers  is  taking  in,  but  at  higher  age  levels  the  farmer  group  takes  in 
greater  numbers  than  the  class  of  relatives  loses.  The  number  of  men 
taken  into  the  farmer  group  other  than  from  the  class  of  relatives  has 
been  growing,  for  in  the  recruitment  of  the  group  of  farmers  of  1911 
it  represented  only  about  39,000,  or  18  per  cent  of  the  total.  For  the 
group  of  farmers  of  1901,  the  numbers  recruited  that  could  not  have 
been  supplied  by  the  group  of  relatives  amounted  only  to  about  31,000, 
or  about  15  per  cent  of  the  total.  A  part  of  the  recent  increase  is  doubt- 
less due  to  the  operation  of  the  Small  Holdings  Act,  but  how  much 
cannot  be  ascertained.  There  is,  of  course,  no  evidence  of  recruitment 
from  any  particular  outside  source  and  other  investigations  would  be 
necessary  to  discover  the  source  of  recruits.  All  that  is  in  evidence  is 
that  the  farmer  group  fails  to  maintain  itself  by  direct  recruitment  from 
the  class  of  male  relatives  who  remain  on  farms  and  engage  in  the 
industry. 

There  may  be,  of  course,  other  changes  and  movements  of  which 
no  indication  is  given  by  the  census  and  analogous  records.  But,  on 
the  whole,  the  indications  are  that  the  farming  group  is  maintained  as 
to  at  least  75  per  cent  by  recruitment  from  the  class  of  relatives.  Ac- 
cess to  the  control  of  land  and  capital  cannot  be  obtained  by  many 
farm  workers  at  ages  less  than  35  years.  The  greater  number  of  farm 
workers  who  become  small  holders  or  small  farmers  to  the  extent  of 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  547 

"working  on  own  account"  or  of  becoming  employers  do  so  at  ages 
higher  than  35  years.  One  important  factor  in  the  determination  of 
the  age  at  change  of  status  is  the  time  at  which  the  older  children  be- 
come fit  for  farm  work,  and  the  age  at  which  the  strain  of  maintaining 
younger  children  begins  to  pass. 

If  the  whole  of  the  50,000  farmers  recruited  from  outside  sources 
were  taken  from  the  groups  of  farm  employes,  then  in  the  period  prior 
to  1921  about  9  per  cent  of  the  total  of  employes  would  have  an  oppor- 
tunity of  becoming  farmers.  But  the  farm  employes  group  consists  of 
men  of  all  ages,  and,  as  shown,  the  recruitment  of  farmers  tends  to 
occur  more  at  certain  ages  than  at  others.  If  the  whole  of  these  outside 
recruits  were  taken  from  the  class  of  farm  workers  at  the  ages  of  re- 
cruitment, then,  between  the  ages  of  25  and  55,  20  per  cent  of  the  class 
of  farm  workers  would  have  the  opportunity  of  becoming  farmers. 
But  the  great  movement  of  farm  workers  from  the  industry  occurs  at 
the  ages  20-24,  and  25-30.  The  movement  from  the  class  of  employes 
at  higher  ages  is  relatively  small,  but  is  sufficient  to  fill  the  open  places 
in  the  ranks  of  farmers  if  men  could  command  the  necessary  capital. 
It  is  a  very  striking  fact  that  when  there  was  abnormal  recruitment  of 
farmers  at  the  ages  of  45-54  in  the  decade  1912-1921  there  was  no  ab- 
normal loss  in  the  group  of  farm  employes  of  the  same  ages.  The  loss 
from  this  age  group  of  employes  in  this  decade  was  not  sufficient  to 
make  the  number  of  recruits  to  the  farmer  group. 

It  is  evident  that  while  the  group  of  farmers  is  mainly  recruited  from 
farming  families,  it  takes  in  recruits  from  other  sources  and  even  from 
outside  families  immediately  connected  with  the  industry.  There  is  no 
direct  evidence  from  general  records  of  the  amount  of  actual  recruit- 
ment from  the  class  of  farm  employes.  Openings  exist  for  them  if  they 
can  obtain  the  control  of  capital  necessary  for  the  equipment  and  culti- 
vation of  farms.  But  while  a  great  many  relatives  of  farmers  who  stay 
working  on  farms  until  they  reach  the  age  of  25  and  over  are  then 
obliged  to  seek  other  occupations,  there  must  be  strenuous  competition 
for  farm  workers  to  face. 

On  the  whole,  it  is  good  for  society,  and  probably  good  for  the  eco- 
nomic organization  of  agriculture,  that  there  should  be  recruitment  of 
farmers  from  outside  the  families  of  farmers,  and  even  from  outside 
families  connected  with  the  industry.  The  chief  need  is  that  they 
should  be  equipped  with  the  necessary  technical  knowledge  and  should 
have  possession  or  command  of  capital.  But  the  probability  is  that 
many  of  the  outside  recruits  have  less  difficulty  about  capital  than  is 
encountered  by  some  persons  recruited  within  the  industry  itself.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  economic  adaptability  it  is  probable  that  insuffi- 


548  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

cient  recruitment  from  outside  sources  occurs.  As  regards  farm  work- 
ers, there  is  no  doubt  that  greater  recruitment  from  this  class  depends 
very  largely  on  command  of  capital,  and,  in  some  districts,  of  suitable 
"rungs"  in  the  ladder.  While  specialization  of  function  and  spread  of 
responsibility  among  employes  are  so  much  restricted,  there  is  need  of 
a  "ladder"  which  will  enable  men  to  change  their  status  and  functions 
according  to  their  abilities.  But  such  a  ladder  can  only  exist  as  a  modi- 
fication of  the  present  system.  The  logical  result  of  continuing  to  create 
small  holdings  must  be  the  shortening,  and,  eventually,  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  ladder  itself. 

66.  V.  KAVRAISKI  AND  I.  NUSINOFF:  DYNAMIC  CHANGES  WITHIN 
PEASANT  ENTERPRISES* 

Within  peasant  enterprises  the  dynamic  processes  of  socio-economic 
regrouping  or  of  socio-economic  ups  and  downs  go  on  incessantly. 
The  extent  of  the  importance  of  these  dynamic  processes  of  the  re- 
grouping of  peasant  enterprises  may  be  seen  from  the  following  data: 

The  table  shows  that  the  more  prosperous  farm  enterprises  are  more 
stable,  since  there  is  a  smaller  percentage  of  migration  to  or  from 
such  enterprises.  These  figures  concerning  households  migrating  from 
1927  to  1928  show  a  quite  regular  descending  progression  of  social 
groups,  from  the  proletarian  groups  to  the  peasant  capitalistic  group. 
(The  peasant  owners  of  industrial  enterprises  are  not  included  be- 
cause there  were  only  four  households  of  the  entire  group  that  mi- 
grated at  all,  and  these  migrated  only  temporarily.) 

One-eighth  of  all  the  proletarian  households  were  found  in  continu- 
ous migration,  incessantly  searching  for  better  conditions  of  existence, 
while  only  2.7  per  cent  of  the  more  well-to-do  peasant  households 
(%ulal(i)  left  their  old  situation. 

The  new  socialistic  tendencies  in  the  development  of  our  villages 
are  clearly  noticeable  in  this  table  of  migration.  We  see  that  17.6  per 
cent  of  the  total  number  of  peasant  households  migrating  from  1927 
to  1928  went  to  agricultural  communes  and  collective  agricultural  enter- 
prises (\olhoz).  As  compared  with  the  total  number  of  peasants'  house- 
holds investigated  (9,384),  the  number  that  entered  communes  or 
collective  enterprises  was  slightly  greater  than  one  per  cent.  The  num- 
ber of  peasant  households  that  migrated  to  the  cities  during  the  same 
year  is  somewhat  similar.  Further,  the  results  obtained  were  very  dif- 
ferent from  what  is  customarily  believed  as  to  the  specific  social  groups 

*  From  V.  Kavraiski  and  I.  Nusinoff ,  Classes  and  Class  Relationships  in  Contemporary 
Soviet  Villages  (Russ.),  Sibkraiizdat,  1929,  pp.  28-37.  Both  authors  are  Russian  Com- 
munists. 


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550 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


that  yield  a  greater  percentage  of  people  entering  agricultural  communes 
and  collective  agricultural  enterprises.  The  table  shows  that  more  than 
one-half  of  the  total  number  of  migrating  well-to-do  households  went 
to  collective  agricultural  enterprises  and  communes.  Only  one-third  of 
all  the  migrating  middle  peasantry  went  to  collective  enterprises.  And, 
finally,  only  one-eighth  of  the  poor  peasantry  entered  communes  and 
collective  enterprises.  Thus,  not  the  poor  peasantry,  as  is  usually 
thought,  but  the  well-to-do  peasants,  go  to  the  collective  enterprises. 
This  can  be  seen  also  if  we  compare  the  social  composition  of  the 
whole  village  with  the  social  composition  of  the  collective  agricultural 
enterprises  that  have  collective  ownership  of  the  production  inventory. 


SOCIAL  GROUPS  IN  1927 

NUMBER  OF 
ENTERPRISES 

PER 

CENT 

OF 

TOTAL 

No.  OF 
ENTERPRISES 
HAVING       PERCENTAGE 
SOCIALIZED             OF 
IMPLEMENTS  "SOCIALIZED" 
OF           ENTERPRISES 
PRODUCTION 

Poor  peasants                                  3,746 
Middle  class  peasants                    4,972 
Agricultural  enterprisers  (  tyda\i  )      666 

35.9 
53.0 

7.1 

32             0.85 
54             1.08 
9             1.35 

Total 

9,384 

100.0 

95             1.01 

This  picture  is  sad  from  the  communistic  standpoint.  In  spite  of 
Soviet  conditions,  the  tempo  of  collectivization  among  the  tydafy's 
enterprises  is  going  on  much  faster  than  the  tempo  of  the  identical 
process  among  the  middle  peasantry,  and,  what  is  especially  regretful, 
much  faster  than  the  tempo  of  collectivization  among  the  proletarian 
and  semi-proletarian  groups  of  the  village.  The  explanation  of  this 
paradox  is  as  follows.  The  wealthy  and  well-to-do  peasants,  not  favored 
by  the  Soviet  government,  sell  and  turn  their  property  into  cash  and  in 
this  way  secure  some  capital  for  "emergency"  use  and  for  the  future. 
After  that,  having  become  "propertyless  proletarians,"  they  enter  the 
collective  enterprises.  As  members  of  these  enterprises  and  as  "proleta- 
rians" they  avoid  the  oppression  of  the  government  and  get  its  finan- 
cial support.  In  addition  they  still  have  their  capital,  which  they  do  not 
spend  and  keep  for  better  days. 

Let  us  return  to  an  analysis  of  the  process  of  migration  from  the  vil- 
lages in  1927-1928.  The  figures  of  the  migration  of  the  various  social 
groups  of  the  peasantry  to  the  cities  and  to  industrial  settlements  are 
of  the  greatest  interest. 

In  the  first  place,  out  of  666  small  capitalistic  enterprises  investigated, 
not  a  single  household  left  for  the  city  during  the  year  studied.  The 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION 


551 


falal(  is  held  in  the  village  by  the  comparatively  stable  economic  con- 
ditions of  his  agricultural  enterprise  and  by  the  very  limited  possibili- 
ties for  the  development  of  privately  owned  industrial  enterprises  in 
the  city.  Exactly  opposite  causes  call  forth  the  opposite  results  for  the 
proletarian  groups  of  the  village.  From  20  to  40  per  cent  of  the  total 
number  of  households  migrating  from  these  social  groups  have  mi- 
grated to  the  cities  or  to  industrial  settlements. 

If  we  compute  for  each  of  the  above  strata  of  peasants  the  percentage 
that  households  migrating  to  the  city  constitute  of  the  total  number  of 
households  of  each  class,  the  following  results  are  secured.  About  1.5 
per  cent  of  all  peasant  laborers  sold  their  enterprises,  went  to  the  city, 
and  became  city  proletarians;  about  5  per  cent  of  other  peasant  labor- 
ers ceased  to  be  peasants,  losing  all  connection  with  the  land  and  with 
their  farms;  about  1.7  per  cent  of  the  poor  peasants  also  ceased  to  be 
peasants.  For  these  three  social  strata,  migration  to  the  city  completes 
the  process  of  their  proletarianization;  from  now  on  they  are  urban 
proletarians. 

The  situation  with  the  middle  peasant  class  is  somewhat  different. 
Their  migration  to  the  city  does  not  necessarily  mean  their  irreversible 
proletarianization.  They  continue  to  keep  their  farms,  though  some  of 
them  also  may  become  urban  proletarians. 


SOCIAL  GROUPS  IN  1927 


B 
0 


TOTAL  NUMBE 
EACH  STRATUM 


NUMBER  OF  NEW  ENTERPRISERS  THAT 

ORIGINATED  IN  1928  FROM  THOSE 

CLASSIFIED  IN  1927 


NUMBER  c 

PERCENTA 
ENTERPRI 

Agricuitu 
Laborers 

Other 
Laborers 

8 
1 

?2  | 

1 

y     a  ^      "IS 
2    B'B     £ 

Agricultural  peasant 
laborers 
Other  peasant  laborers 
Poor  peasants 
Middle  peasants 
Peasant  agricultural 
enterprisers  (kulaty) 
Peasant  merchants 

15 

7 
37 
275 

65 

2.0 
2.1 
1.4 
5.5 

10.7 

10 
2 
4 
10 

2 
3 
3 
3 

13 
8 
55 
181 

10 

3 

4 
294 

101 

13 

24 

...        28 
.       .        13 
....      66 
.      1    502 

.  .     .  .     135 

Peasant  owners  o£ 
industrial  enterprises 

Total 

2 
401 

6.7 
4.3 

~26 

71 

267 

3 
405 

1 

38 

....        4 
..      1    748 

552  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  next  point  to  be  studied  concerns  the  phenomena  of  the  splitting 
or  parcellation  of  peasant  farms  into  two  or  more  independent  farms. 
Let  us  glance  now  at  the  manner  of  occurrence  of  this  process.  The 
table  on  page  551  depicts  the  situation. 

The  process  of  the  division  of  enterprises  takes  place  in  all  social 
strata  of  the  peasantry.  Even  the  poor  and  pygmean  holdings  of  the 
hired  laborers  are  divided,  despite  the  fact  that  there  is  very  little  to 
divide.  The  struggle  for  existence  is  so  intense  that  the  owner  of  work- 
ing hands  has  to  get  rid  of  his  family  members  whom  he  has  to  sup- 
port and  whose  presence  hinders  the  economic  development  of  his 
poor  enterprise.  The  strength  of  this  economic  urge  drives  out  of  exist- 
ence or  eliminates  the  influence  of  the  traditions  of  the  patriarchal  fam- 
ily concerning  the  care  of  the  old  and  incapable  members  of  the 
family.  At  this  cost  and  with  the  support  of  the  Soviet  government, 
a  certain  number  of  the  poorest  peasants  obtain  the  possibility  of  the 
economic  development  of  their  holdings.  Under  such  conditions,  seven 
middle-class  peasant  enterprises  were  formed  as  a  result  of  the  division 
of  fifty-nine  proletarian  and  semi-proletarian  holdings.  This  is,  how- 
ever, only  one  side  of  the  problem.  Such  a  rise  of  the  divided  pygmean 
holdings  on  the  ladder  of  peasant  farms  is  exceptionally  rare.  As  a 
rule,  such  divisions  lead  to  a  further  "atomization"  of  the  means  of 
production,  to  decay  of  the  standards  of  productiveness,  and  to  poverty. 

The  socio-economic  motives  for  the  division  of  the  powerful  agricul- 
tural enterprises  (of  the  fytlafy)  are  entirely  different.  Aside  from 
division  due  to  inner  causes,  such  as  the  natural  division  of  a  large, 
grown-up  family,  the  rural  policy  of  the  Communist  party  under 
Soviet  conditions  plays  an  important  role  in  increasing  the  tendency 
toward  division  among  the  enterprises  of  the  \ulakj.* 

The  dynamic  regroupings  within  the  peasant  enterprises  are  not  re- 
stricted to  the  above  divisions  and  migrations.  Previous  migrants  from 
the  village  and  newcomers  from  other  villages  are  entering  the  village 
and  becoming  peasants.  This  counter-current  also  exerts  a  notable  in- 
fluence on  development  of  the  processes  of  social  differentiation  in  the 
village.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that,  as  a  rule,  the  region  investigated 
is  closed  for  immigration,  some  individual  families  return  and  settle 
there.  This  is  shown  by  the  following  table: 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — As  soon  as  a  peasant  family  begins  to  have  a  little  better  farm — 
two  or  three  horses,  two  or  more  cows,  better  implements — such  a  family  is  registered 
as  a  kitlak.  peasant  family.  As  such,  its  members  are  deprived  of  their  civil  rights  (right 
of  voting,  etc.);  their  governmental  taxes  are  several  times  higher;  in  brief,  they  begin 
to  be  persecuted  and  oppressed  by  the  government  in  many  ways.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, the  relatively  well-to-do  peasants  prefer  to  split  their  farms  into  several  inde- 
pendent parts  for  the  various  members.  As  a  result,  each  new  holding  has  only  one 
horse,  one  cow,  etc.;  it  is  poorer.  Hence  it  is  not  qualified  to  be  ranked  as  a  \ula\ 
holding  and  its  owner  is  less  liable  to  be  oppressed  by  the  government. 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  553 


PERCENTAGE  OF  VALUE  IN  RUBLES  OF 
HOUSEHOLDS  RETURNED  AND  SETTLED 


INO,  OF 

HOUSE- 

Without 

SOCIAL  GROUPS 

HOLDS 

Imple- 

From 

From 

IN  1928 

RETURNED 

AND 

ments; 
with  Cash 

100 

301 

More 
Than 

SETTLED 

Value  of 
100  and 

to 

300 

to 

1,000 

1,000 

Less 

Agricultural  peasant  laborers    28 

67.9 

32.1 

Other  peasant  laborers 

26 

80.8 

19.2 

Poor  peasants 

35 

48.1 

51.9 

Middle  peasants 

41 

2.4 

87.8 

9.8 

Peasant  agricultural 

enterprisers  (\ula\i) 

1 

100.0 

Peasant  merchants 

Peasant  owners  of 

industrial  enterprises 

1 

100.0 

Total 

232 

45.3 

36.6 

16.4 

1.7 

Households  returned  and  settled  compose  about  2.5  per  cent  of  the 
total  existing  households.  In  other  words,  to  this  extent  they  "renew" 
the  composition  of  the  village  enterprises.  This  renewing  goes  on, 
however,  in  different  proportions  according  to  the  various  strata  of 
peasants.  As  shown  above,  the  emigrants  from  the  villages  belong  pre- 
dominantly to  the  poor  proletarian  groups  of  the  peasantry.  Similarly, 
the  people  who  return  to,  come  from,  and  enter  villages  are  from  the 
same  social  groups  in  the  main.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  there  is 
a  considerable  density  of  population,  the  presence  of  some  free  land 
makes  possible  such  re-immigration  and  increases  the  processes  of  the 
socio-economic  regrouping  of  the  peasantry.  This  migration  is  a  sign 
of  the  very  poor  socio-economic  stability  of  the  migrating  enterprises. 
An  important  role  in  this  re-immigration  is  also  played  by  the  people 
who  migrated  to  the  cities  but  could  not  accommodate  themselves  to 
city  and  factory  life.  The  data  indicate  that  the  percentage  of  re- 
immigrated  households  which  enter  the  stratum  of  peasant  laborers  is 
much  higher  than  the  percentage  the  re-immigrated  households  con- 
stitute of  the  total  number  of  existing  enterprises.  While  these  re- 
immigrated  households  constitute  2.5  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of 
households  in  all  strata,  they  constitute  8  per  cent  of  the  number  of 
households  of  the  peasant  laborer,  5  per  cent  of  the  "poor  peasants," 
about  4  per  cent  of  the  hired  laborers,  about  0.2  per  cent  of  the  group 
of  the  \ula\i,  and  only  about  0.1  per  cent  of  the  middle-class  peasants. 
Thus  the  poorer  strata  are  renewed  more  intensively  by  the  returning 


554  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

migrants  and  the  newcomers  than  are  the  rich  ones.  And  the  middle 
and  rich  households  are  less  migratory  and  more  stable  than  the  poor 
ones. 

In  other  words,  the  returning  households  are  poor  and  have  very 
modest  inventory  o£  production.  About  82  per  cent  of  the  households 
which  migrated  away  and  returned  to  the  village  had  practically  no 
inventory  or  its  equivalent  in  cash.  A  small  part  did  not  have  more 
than  three  hundred  rubles.  The  re-immigration  of  wealthy  peasant 
families  is  a  very  rare  case  (only  about  1.7  per  cent  of  the  total  re- 
immigrated  families). 

In  order  to  have  a  complete  picture  of  the  dynamic  processes  of  socio- 
economic  regroupings  among  the  peasant  economies,  we  must  now 
glance  at  the  changes  which  occurred  in  those  farms  that  remained  the 
same,  that  is,  which  were  neither  split  nor  merged  together.  This  is 
shown  by  the  following  figures: 


ENTERPRISES             STRATA  IN  WHICH  ENTERPRISES  OF  EACH 
UNCHANGED                CLASS  OF  1927  WERE  FOUND  IN  1928 

"3                                    6          fc 

SOCIAL  GROUPS                fc!          £                  *                            a  ^         {' 

'Nl927            .1      -   •=       1     i    s      ~-t      f 

1 

I  1|   I     g   l|   -||   |    ||  i 

$      <  H-l       O         a.       Sp£       •<  a,      S       OWH 


Agricultural 
peasant 
laborers        .      627      7.6  51.4     6.0  31.6   11.0      -         ..  100.0 

Other  peasant 

laborers  ...  274  33  14.6  42.7  31.4  11.3  .  ...  100.0 
Poor  peasants  . .  2,327  28.1  4.3  3.1  72.5  19,9  .  .  0.2  100.0 
Middle-class 

peasants  ...  4,477  54.1  0.3  0.1  4.4  88.0  6.8  0.1  0.3  100.0 
Peasant 

agricultural 

enterprises 

(\ulalv)  .  514  6,2  ..  ..  0.2  41.8  57.6  ..  0.4  100.0 
Peasant  merchants  31  0.4  . .  . .  25.8  45.2  . .  29.0  . .  100.0 
Peasant  owners 

of  industrial 

enterprises      22      0.3    ___.   JU   31.8     9.1     _.    50.0   100.0 

Total    8,272  100.0     5.7     2.8  26.4   57.3     7.3     0.1     0.4   100.0 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  555 

The  table  shows  that  the  mass  of  peasant  households  is  in  continuous 
motion.  Every  social  stratum  becomes  dispersed  throughout  various 
strata,  renews  the  composition  of  other  strata,  and  at  the  same  time  is 
itself  renewed  by  an  infiltration  from  other  social  strata.  The  poor 
peasant  who  has  enlarged  his  means  of  production  becomes  a  middle- 
class  peasant.  If  the  peasant  of  the  middle  class  reaches  the  limits  where 
the  size  of  his  enterprise  begins  to  require  hired  labor  he  becomes  an 
enterpriser  or  \ula^  Quantity  takes  the  place  of  quality. 

When  some  economic  reasons  cause  a  rich  peasant  to  lose  part  of  his 
production  inventory,  to  become  a  middle-class  peasant,  he  ceases  to 
hire  laborers,  and  his  production  inventory  begins  to  correspond  to  the 
size  and  composition  of  his  family.  When  a  poor  peasant  laborer,  hav- 
ing failed  to  improve  his  small  enterprise,  finally  becomes  discouraged 
and  leaves  for  the  city,  he  increases  in  this  way  the  number  of  the  in- 
dustrial proletariat. 

The  most  stable  of  the  different  groups  of  the  peasantry  is  the  mid- 
dle class,  as  would  ordinarily  be  expected.  About  6.8  per  cent  of  this 
group  climbed  up  and  became  tytlafy.  They  began  to  hire  labor  and  to 
lease  agricultural  machinery.  Part  of  the  middle-class  peasantry,  about 
4.8  per  cent,  sank  down  and  became  poor  peasants  or  even  hired  la- 
borers. However,  88  per  cent  of  the  middle-class  peasants  retained  their 
previous  position.  Some  of  the  poor  peasants  climbed  up;  some  of  the 
rich  peasants  went  down. 

Under  Soviet  conditions  the  most  unstable  group  happens  to  be  that 
of  the  well-to-do  peasants  (J^ula^t)*  Almost  half  of  the  households  of 
this  group  sank  to  the  middle-class  level.  The  loss,  however,  was  com- 
pensated for  by  an  infiltration  of  climbers  from  the  lower  strata.  As 
a  result  the  group  of  fytlaty  not  only  did  not  decrease,  but  on  the  con- 
trary increased  slightly  (from  6.2  to  73  per  cent). 

The  principal  conclusions  drawn  from  the  analysis  of  the  evolution 
of  peasant  enterprises  when  the  latter  are  arranged  according  to  social 
groups  are  coincident  with  those  drawn  from  an  analysis  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  enterprises  computed  on  the  basis  of  the  value  of  property  or 
the  cost  of  production. 

The  process  of  vertical  mobility  within  the  peasant  class  is  going  on 
in  two  distinct  directions,  as  is  made  evident  by  the  figures  presented 
above.  From  each  stratum  a  part  goes  up,  a  part  goes  down,  and 
a  part  retains  its  position. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Because  of  their  intensive  economic  and  political  oppression  by 
the  Soviet  government.  Sec  editors'  note  above. 


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[556] 


MOBILITY  OF  RURAL  POPULATION  557 

The  table  shows  that  the  group  without  means  of  production  de- 
creased by  30  per  cent.  The  enterprises  with  means  of  production  be- 
low 300  rubles  also  decreased,  but  by  only  10  per  cent.  Similarly  the 
group  of  enterprises  which  had  means  of  production  worth  from  300 
to  500  rubles  decreased  by  2.3  per  cent.  The  composition  of  the  upper 
groups  has  increased  somewhat.  The  group  with  means  of  production 
from  500  to  1,000  rubles  increased  by  13.8  per  cent,  that  from  1,000  to 
1,500  by  11.9  per  cent,  and  finally  that  from  1,500  and  up  by  6.3  per  cent. 

Such  are  the  results  of  an  analysis  of  the  socio-economic  evolution 
of  enterprises  which  did  not  either  split  or  merge  from  1927  to  1928.* 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — See  also  Kubanin's  paper  in  the  chapter  on  the  family. 


CHAPTER  IX 

FUNDAMENTAL   TYPES   OF   RURAL   AGGREGATES. 
EVOLUTION  OF  THE  FORMS  OF  LANDOWNER- 
SHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION 

I.  INDIVIDUAL-PRIVATE    AND    COLLECTIVE-PUBLIC    LAND- 
OWNERSHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION 

In  the  three  preceding  chapters  we  have  outlined  the  main  fea- 
tures of  rural  social  organization  from  the  standpoints  of  social 
differentiation,  stratification,  and  mobility.  Different  combina- 
tions of  these  forms  in  a  given  agricultural  population  create  very 
different  types  of  rural  aggregates.  In  order  to  give  an  approxi- 
mate idea  of  the  great  variety  of  rural  aggregates  from  the  sev- 
eral standpoints  of  differentiation,  stratification,  mobility,  and 
type  of  landownership,  we  shall  outline  the  fundamental  types  of 
these  aggregates  and  give  their  essential  characteristics.  In  addi- 
tion, we  shall  discuss  briefly  the  problem  of  the  evolution  of  these 
types  in  the  course  of  time. 

In  the  three  preceding  chapters  we  have  seen  that  the  agricul- 
tural population  is  differentiated  into  many  cumulative  and  func- 
tional groupings,  each  of  which  is  stratified  into  owners,  tenants, 
and  laborers  of  various  kinds.  We  have  seen  that  the  forms  and 
degree  of  mobility  vary  from  population  to  population.  In  these 
previous  chapters  we  paid  no  attention  to  whether  there  was  indi- 
vidual or  collective  ownership  of  the  land  and  farms;  whether 
the  tenants  utilized  the  land  of  individual  or  public  and  collective 
landowners;  whether  the  laborers  and  employes  were  those  of  pri- 
vate and  individual  or  of  collective  and  public  landowners.  We 
shall  see  that  the  existence  of  individual  or  collective,  private  or 
public  landownership  and  land  possession  exerts  a  strong  influ- 
ence on  the  forms  of  social  relationships  among  the  members  of 
a  given  rural  aggregate  and  give  it  several  specific  characteristics. 

[558] 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  559 

Hence,  in  classifying  the  fundamental  types  of  rural  aggregates 
we  must  consider  the  form  of  landownership  and  land  posses- 
sion as  well  as  the  forms  of  differentiation,  stratification,  and  mo- 
bility. Before  we  outline  the  principal  types  of  rural  aggregates  as 
they  are  constituted  by  different  combinations  of  the  above  four 
morphological  elements,  we  shall  devote  a  few  lines  to  a  consid- 
eration of  the  fundamental  classes  of  cultivators  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  kind  of  land  proprietorship. » The  following  table 
serves  this  purpose. 

CULTIVATORS 

1.  Owners 

A.  Individual  (including  family). 

B.  Collective:  village  community;  any  corporation  of  culti- 
vators. 

2.  Non-owners 

A.  Tenants  of: 

a.  private  (individual)  landlords.1 

b.  collective  (private  and  public)  landlords;  the  state,  the 
religious  organization,  the  city,  the  village  community, 
any  corporation. 

B.  Laborers  and  employes  of: 

a.  private  (individual)  landlords. 

b.  collective  (private  and  public)  landlords:  the  state,  the 
church,  the  city,  the  village  community,  or  any  corpora- 
tion or  group. 

These  forms  embrace  practically  all  the  important  forms  of 
social  differentiation  and  stratification  of  the  cultivators  from  the 
standpoint  of  landownership  and  possession. 

II.  TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  FROM  THE  STANDPOINTS 
OF  SOCIAL  DIFFERENTIATION,  STRATIFICATION,  MOBILI- 
TY, AND  LANDOWNERSHIP 

Various  combinations  of  these  classes  of  cultivators  give  various 
types  of  the  social  organization  of  a  rural  aggregate.  If  we  have  a 

1  Among  the  collective  landowners  are  also  the  state,  the  church,  and  corporations  of 
various  absentee  owners;  but  as  these  collective  owners  seldom  participate  (if  at  all,  only 
iudirectly)  in  cultivation  and  since  their  members  and  representatives  are  engaged  in 
other  than  agricultural  pursuits,  they  do  not  belong  in  the  main  to  the  class  of  culti- 
vators. 


560  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rural  aggregate  composed  predominantly  of  small  farmer-owners, 
who  cultivate  their  lands  with  the  help  of  their  families,  we  secure 
one  type  of  rural  aggregate;  if  we  have  one  great  landowner,  who 
cultivates  his  land  with  many  tenants  and  laborers,  we  secure  an- 
other type  of  rural  aggregate,  the  latif undian  or  manorial,  which  is 
quite  different  from  the  preceding  one.  If  a  given  rural  aggregate 
is  composed  predominantly  of  tenants,  the  social  organization  of 
such  a  community  will  be  different  from  both  the  preceding  ones. 
We  may  have,  further,  a  rural  aggregate  composed  of  the  tenants 
of  either  the  private  or  the  public  and  collective  landowner  (such 
as  the  fiscus,  the  church,  the  city,  etc.).  Furthermore,  we  may 
have  a  rural  aggregate  composed  of  individual  farmer-owners  or 
of  the  members  of  a  village  community  of  landowners.  These 
types  again  will  be  marked  by  several  differences  in  their  organi- 
zation, as  well  as  in  the  status  and  behavior  of  their  members.  In 
various  countries  and  at  different  periods  many  different  com- 
binations of  these  classes,  and  consequently  very  widely  differing 
types  of  rural  aggregates,  have  existed.  Of  these  forms  the  most 
common  seem  to  have  been  the  following:  (1)  the  rural  aggre- 
gate composed  of  peasant  joint  owners;  (2)  the  rural  aggregate 
composed  of  peasant  joint  tenants;  (3)  the  rural  aggregate  com- 
posed of  farmers  who  are  individual  owners,  but  including  some 
tenants  and  laborers;  (4)  the  same  composed  of  individual  farmer 
tenants;  (5)  the  manorial  or  latif  undian  type  of  rural  aggregate 
composed  of  the  laborers,  employes,  and  tenants  of  a  great  private 
landowner;  (6)  the  latif  undian  type  of  rural  aggregate  composed 
of  laborers  and  employes  of  the  state,  church,  city,  or  other  public 
landowner.  Each  of  these  fundamental  types  of  rural  aggregate  is 
marked  by  various  specific  traits,  not  only  in  the  field  of  socio- 
economic  organization,  social  differences,  stratification,  and  insti- 
tutions, but  also  in  such  things  as  the  types  of  people,  their  be- 
havior and  psychology,  as  well  as  their  political,  moral,  economic, 
and  social  relationships.  If,  in  a  rough  schematical  way,  we  try 
to  depict  some  of  these  typical  traits,  they  appear  tentatively  as 
follows: 

1.  A  village  community  of  peasant  joint  owners  (Russian  mir, 
village  community  in  China,  India,  early  Germany,  England, 
and  other  places).— Ecologically:  The  habitats  are  nearly  always 
grouped  into  villages.  Morphologically:  The  aggregate  is  a  cumu- 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  561 

lative  community  whose  members  are  bound  together  by  a  series 
of  social  ties.  Social  differentiation  and  stratification  among  the 
members  are  relatively  slight:  almost  all  are  co-owners;  the  land 
is  distributed  evenly,  according  to  the  size  of  the  family,  and  is 
periodically  redistributed  among  the  members.  Members  are 
highly  homogeneous  (locally  and  racially).  The  social  mobility 
of  the  members  is  slight.  The  bulk  of  them  live  and  die  in  the 
community;  families  remain  there  for  generations.  A  portion  of 
the  members  may  migrate  somewhere  else  temporarily,  but  they 
usually  return,  and  they  send  a  part  of  their  money  back  to  their 
families  in  the  community.  The  spirit  of  equality  is  developed. 
The  community  is  self-governing  in  matters  that  concern  it.  Often 
the  community  bears  a  collective  responsibility  for  the  fulfillment 
of  the  duties  of  its  members,  imposed  on  the  community  by  the 
state  and  other  supercommunity  social  bodies,  specific  examples 
of  such  duties  being  toward  maintenance  of  social  order,  roads, 
schools,  church,  and  other  agencies.  Mutual  aid  and  cooperation 
are  developed  among  the  members.  Traditions  are  strong;  and  the 
leading  men  of  the  community  are  usually  the  elder  people. 
Hence  there  is  a  comparatively  strong  conservatism  of  the  com- 
munity, there  is  a  stable  and  strong  patriarchal  -family  with  only 
a  slight  development  of  individualism  and  modernism,  and  rather 
wea\  individual  initiative  and  individual  responsibility,  which 
development  is  checked  somewhat  by  the  spirit  of  traditionalism, 
familism,  and  community  responsibility.  Beliefs,  mores,  and  pat- 
terns of  conduct  are  relatively  rigid  and  dogmatic.  Collective  ac- 
tivities in  work,  recreation,  ceremonies,  religious  rites  and  proces- 
sions, and  in  other  fields  are  developed.  There  is  an  acute  feeling 
of  "oneness"  among  the  members  of  the  community  and  of  sepa- 
rateness  from  other  communities  and  people. 

2.  A  village  community  of  joint  tenants  of  the  state,  cities,  and 
other  public  and  private  owners. — When  free  joint  tenancy  has 
existed  for  a  long  period  of  time  and  has  been  hereditary,  when 
the  duties  of  tenants  towards  public  or  private  owners  have  been 
limited  by  the  payment  of  certain  taxes  and  some  corvee,  and 
when,  moreover,  the  interference  of  these  owners  has  been  limited 
by  the  above  requirements,  the  village  community  of  joint  tenants 
is  similar  to  the  village  community  of  peasant  joint  owners  in  all 
the  respects  mentioned  above.  Economically,  however,  the  tenant 


562  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

community  is  somewhat  poorer  perhaps  than  the  peasant-owner 
village  community. 

3.  A  rural  aggregate  of  individual  farmer-owners. — The  struc- 
ture of  such  an  aggregate  differs  conspicuously  from  that  of  the 
village  community  of  peasant  co-owners  and  co-tenants.  Ecologi- 
cally: The  habitats  are  often  dispersed.  Morphologically:  The  to- 
tality of  the  neighboring  farmers  represents  an  aggregate  with 
differentiated  groupings  around  various  interests.  Each  family  is 
the  owner  of  its  land,  and  hence  no  redistribution  of  land  exists. 
From  the  standpoint  of  social  differentiation  and  stratification  the 
aggregate  is  more  differentiated  and  stratified  than  the  above  vil- 
lage communities.  Some  of  the  farmers  are  relatively  rich  and  have 
much  larger  pieces  of  land  than  the  others  and  these  richer  farm- 
ers have  a  number  of  tenants  and  laborers.  The  social  mobility  of 
the  farmers  and  their  families  is  somewhat  greater  than  that  of 
the  peasants  in  the  above  village  communities.  The  spirit  of  equal- 
ity, mutual  aid,  and  cooperation  among  the  neighboring  farmers 
is  less  developed  than  in  the  above  communities.  Collective  re- 
sponsibility of  the  neighboring  farmers  is  rare  and  undeveloped. 
Its  place  is  taken  by  the  individual  responsibility  of  each  family. 
The  majority  of  the  social  unions  and  organizations  created  by 
the  farmers  have  a  contractual  character.  The  family  is  not  so 
large  and  is  less  patriarchal  than  in  the  above  village  communi- 
ties. It  is  nearer  to  what  the  Le  Play  school  styled  "the  particular- 
ist  family."  Individualism  and  individual  initiative  are  more 
developed.  Traditionalism  and  conservatism  are  weaker  while  the 
spirit  of  rationalism  and  modernism  is  stronger  than  in  the 
above  village  communities.  The  behavior,  the  beliefs,  and  the 
mores  are  more  plastic.  The  collective  activities  of  neighboring 
farmers  are  less  developed.  The  feelings  of  oneness  among  the 
neighbors  and  their  separateness  from  the  rest  of  the  world  are 
also  weaker.  In  the  satisfaction  of  the  necessities  of  the  farmers, 
the  aggregate  is  less  self-sufficient,  and  is  more  dependent  upon 
the  outside  world.  Therefore,  the  aggregate  is  in  more  intensive 
contact  with  the  outside  world  than  is  the  village  community. 

4.  A  rural  aggregate  of  individual  tenants  of  private  or  public 
landowners. — When  tenants  are  free  men,  and  the  tenancy  is 
purely  contractual,  the  rural  aggregate  of  individual  tenants  is 
similar  to  that  of  the  individual  farmer-owners.  The  principal  dif- 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  563 

f erence  is  that  the  tenants  do  not  own  the  land,  and  for  this  reason 
are  somewhat  more  mobile  than  the  individual  owners.  They 
have  to  pay  some  tax  or  money  to  the  owners,  and  partly  for  this 
reason  their  standard  of  living  is  generally  somewhat  lower,  the 
social  services  of  their  communities  is  poorer,  and  their  education 
is  more  limited.  Their  independence  in  the  management  of  their 
enterprises  is  more  curtailed  than  that  of  the  owners.  If  the  aggre- 
gate consists  of  tenants  and  owners,  its  social  stratification  is  more 
conspicuous.  In  some  forms  of  tenancy  these  differences  are  con- 
spicuous, in  others  they  are  insignificant.  Often  tenancy  of  this 
type  is  merely  a  stage  in  climbing  to  the  position  of  farmer- 
owners  (in  cases  where  the  tenure  is  from  private  landowners). 

5.  A  latijundian,  manorial,  or  large-estate  type  of  rural  aggre- 
gate {privately  owned}. — The  population  of  such  a  rural  aggre- 
gate consists  of  the  owner  or  his  substitute  and  a  large  number  of 
free  or  unf ree  laborers  and  "employes  of  various  ranks  with  special 
duties  and  with  a  division  of  labor.  Sometimes  a  few  tenants  are 
found  in  such  an  aggregate.  Its  typical  characteristics  are  as  fol- 
lows: 

Ecological:  The  aggregate  most  often  represents  grouped  set- 
tlements centered  around  the  manor,  castle,  or  central  office  of  the 
estate.  Morphological:  The  aggregate  is  a  cumulative  community 
bound  by  ties  of  territorial  proximity,  work  and  labor  for  the 
same  owner,  contractual  or  servile  subjection  to  the  owner  or 
his  substitute,  obedience  to  his  management  and  control,  and 
many  other  interests  resulting  from  employment  by  the  same  em- 
ployer, such  as  common  houses,  common  meals  served  in  the 
manor,  castle,  or  the  estate's  dining  place  for  workers,  etc.  Social 
stratification  and  differentiation:  The  laborers  and  employes  are 
only  the  executors  of  orders  given  by  the  landlord  or  his  agents. 
They  may  be  free  or  unfree.  When  they  are  unfree  they  receive 
shelter,  board,  and  other  necessities  from  the  owner-master, 
whether  these  be  good  or  bad.  When  they  are  free  they  receive 
such  wages  as  are  stipulated  in  the  contract.  Generally  from  the 
standpoint  of  social  differentiation  and  stratification  the  com- 
munity is  much  more  stratified  and  differentiated  than  the  pre- 
vious types  of  rural  aggregates:  various  laborers  are  given  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  work;  various  managerial  employes  and  agents 
are  also  differentiated  in  regard  to  the  kind  of  work  they  have 


564  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  do.  The  community  is  conspicuously  stratified;  and  there  is 
usually  a  long  series  of  ranks,  beginning  with  the  landlord  and 
highest  employes  and  ending  with  the  laborers.  There  are  great 
contrasts  in  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  population  of  these 
different  strata,  in  their  standards  of  living,  and  in  the  division 
of  managerial  and  organizational  work  from  manual  labor. 

The  social  mobility  in  an  aggregate  of  this  type,  composed  of 
free  laborers  and  employes,  is  notably  high,  for  a  considerable  pro- 
portion of  these  are  only  seasonal  members  of  the  aggregate.  If 
the  laborers  and  employes  are  serfs  or  slaves,  then  their  mobility 
may  be  insignificant,  for  they  will  probably  be  chained  to  the 
lord  and  his  estate.  The  spirit  of  inequality — domination  on  the 
part  of  the  landlord  and  his  representatives  and  subjection  on  the 
part  of  the  laborers — is  the  outstanding  spirit  of  the  community. 
The  organizational  and  controlling  functions  are  reserved  for 
the  owner  and  his  representatives,  while  purely  manual  execu- 
tions of  their  plans  and  orders  are  prescribed  for  the  laborers.  For 
this  reason  a  display  of  initiative  and  command  is  developed  only 
in  the  lord  and  his  representatives,  while  such  characteristics  are 
checked  in  the  laborers.  Whether  the  organization  of  the  life 
of  the  community  is  modern  and  progressive  or  conservative  de- 
pends primarily  on  the  lord  and  his  inclinations;  the  laborers  are 
obliged  to  follow  his  orders. 

Sometimes  they  are  made  collectively  responsible  to  the  lord 
or  owner  for  the  satisfactory  performance  of  the  duties  imposed 
upon  them.  If,  under  such  conditions,  the  landlord's  control  is 
oppressive  and  stupid,  there  appears  a  sharp  antagonism  between 
him  and  his  substitutes  and  the  mass  of  laborers.  If  the  landlord's 
control  is  wise  and  careful  the  landlord-laborers  relationship  often 
becomes  of  the  familistic-patriarchal  type,  with  the  landlord  pat- 
riarch, on  the  one  hand,  and  with  laborers  who  are  subordinated 
and  cared  for,  on  the  other  hand.  In  both  cases  the  situation  is 
very  unfavorable  for  any  marked  development  of  self-control,  self- 
responsibility,  and  self-reliance  among  the  laborers.  Hence  the 
history  of  such  communities  is  marked  by  the  occurrence  of  oc- 
casional disorders  and  riots,  especially  when  the  laborers  are  un- 
free.  For  this  reason  there  is  often  a  class  of  armed  superintend- 
ents on  such  an  estate,  their  duty  being  to  supervise  the  work  of 
the  laborers. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  565 

The  character  of  the  social  institutions  of  the  latifundia  de- 
pends again  primarily  on  the  decision  of  the  owner.  Careful  lords 
sometimes  organize  good  religious,  school,  hospital,  recreational, 
and  other  social  institutions.  Bad  landlords  often  do  not  do  any- 
thing in  this  respect  for  their  laborers.  Consequently  the  be- 
havior, mores,  and  psychology  of  these  laborers  differ  from  case 
to  case.  If  they  are  free  and  shift  from  estate  to  estate,  their  be- 
havior and  mores  are  marked  by  a  lack  of  either  stability  or  moral 
and  social  integrity.  If  they  are  unfree,  sullenness,  apathy,  dull- 
ness, and  other  servile  traits  are  conspicuous.  The  institution  of 
the  family  is  often  developed  very  little  among  the  laborers; 
among  the  unfree  laborers,  its  forms,  even  including  the  choice  of 
the  mate,  are  prescribed  by  the  lord. 

6.  A  latifundian  type  of  rural  aggregate  owned  by  the  state  (fis- 
cus),  religious  organization,  city,  or  other  public  body. — In  its 
essential  traits  this  type  of  rural  aggregate  is  very  similar  to  the 
preceding  one.  It  represents  a  large  estate  run  by  the  state  or 
church,  the  city,  or  other  public  body.  The  only  difference  is  that 
there  is  substituted  for  a  private  owner  the  person  of  an  agent 
of  the  state,  church,  or  other  public  owner.  In  other  respects  the 
organization  of  the  community  is  similar  to  the  preceding  type. 
We  may  use  a  large  estate  owned  by  the  state  and  managed  by 
governmental  agents  as  an  illustration  of  this  type.  In  this  case 
a  few  preliminary  remarks  may  be  appropriate  in  order  to  keep 
the  reader  from  confusing  the  state's  sovereignty  rights  with  the 
state's  rights  of  ownership  over  a  territory. 

Juridically,  it  is  possible  to  distinguish  two  parts  in  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  state.  Over  one  the  state  exercises  only  its  rights  as 
sovereign  but  not  as  owner;  as  private  property  such  territory 
does  not  belong  to  the  state  but  to  an  individual  or  a  corpora- 
tion separate  from  the  state.  The  other  part  of  the  state  terri- 
tory is  that  over  which  the  state  exercises  the  rights  both  of  sov- 
ereign and  of  owner;  it  composes  the  private  property  of  the 
state,  or,  as  the  jurists  used  to  say,  it  is  fiscus.  In  many  monarch- 
ies it  consists  of  the  land  owned  by  the  monarch  as  his  private 
property;  it  comprises  only  a  part  of  the  territory  of  the  state. 
Over  this  part  the  monarch  exercises  not  only  the  rights  of  a 
sovereign  but  those  of  a  private  owner  and  possessor.  He  can 
manage  it  as  he  pleases;  he  may  either  lease  it  or  manage  it 


566  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

through  his  agents  and  with  the  labor  of  hired  free  laborers  or 
unfree  slaves  and  serfs  who  belong  to  him,  etc. 

In  republics  the  situation  is  similar  except  that  the  role  played 
by  the  monarch  is  played  there  by  the  government.  However, 
like  the  monarch,  the  republican  government  exercises  its  rights 
of  owner  and  possessor  only  on  the  land  that  composes  the  private 
property  of  the  state.  On  the  land  that  is  not  owned  by  the  state 
as  a  fiscus,  the  republican  government  exercises  only  the  rights 
of  the  sovereign,  the  rights  of  ownership  being  exercised  by  the 
individuals  and  corporations  who  own  the  land  in  question. 

This  difference  between  the  two  parts  of  state  territory  is  clear 
in  the  majority  of  states.  Only  in  some  of  the  ancient  monarchies 
and  in  the  socialist  states  does  the  boundary  line  between  them 
become  either  unclear  or  obliterated.  In  the  socialist  state,  where 
land  is  "nationalized,"  private  property  in  land  generally  abol- 
ished, and  the  whole  territory  declared  the  property  of  the  state, 
the  rights  of  sovereignty  and  landownership  belong  only  to  the 
state  and  are  to  be  exercised  only  by  the  government.  Soviet  Rus- 
sia may  be  taken  as  an  example.  On  the  other  hand,  in  many 
ancient  countries,  such  as  ancient  Egypt,  ancient  China,  Byzan- 
tium, or  ancient  Peru  at  some  periods  of  its  history,  the  mon- 
arch was  not  only  the  sovereign  but  also  the  sole  owner  of  the 
entire  territory  of  the  state.  Just  as  in  the  socialist  state  described 
above,  in  such  autocratic  monarchies  the  state  sovereignty  over  the 
territory  and  the  state  ownership  of  the  territory  coincides.  The 
fiscus  there  is  not  separated  clearly  from  state  sovereignty. 

The  natural  result  of  state  ownership  of  the  land  (whether  in 
the  states  where  the  rights  of  the  fiscus  and  the  rights  of  the 
sovereignty  are  separated,  or  where  they  are  merged  together)  has 
been  that  the  state  itself  has  controlled  the  land  as  its  property. 
The  forms  of  state  management  have  been  different;  in  some 
cases  the  state  has  given  it  as  a  gift  or  reward  to  an  individual 
or  a  group;  in  other  cases  the  state  has  leased  it  to  private  per- 
sons, to  other  landowners,  or  to  the  cultivators  themselves  (the 
state  tenants  described  above  under  Nos.  2  and  4) ;  in  still  other 
cases  it  has  managed  it  directly  through  its  special  agents  and 
laborers,  who  may  have  been  freely  contracted  for  or  may  have 
belonged  to  the  state  as  serfs  and  slaves.  This  last  case  belongs  to 
the  type  of  the  "large  estate  of  a  public  body"  discussed  here. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  567 

In  its  whole  formation  this  type  of  rural  community  is  similar 
to  the  preceding  type  (No.  5). 

Such  are  the  fundamental  types  of  rural  aggregates  from  the 
above-mentioned  fourfold  standpoint,  and  the  several  other  char- 
acteristics that  are  correlated  with  each  of  these  forms.  Each  of 
these  six  types  of  rural  aggregate  has  existed  in  the  past  and  ex- 
ists in  the  present  in  various  countries  and  areas.  Each  of  them 
has  several  varieties  but  the  traits  indicated  above  for  each  type 
are  typical  for  almost  all  of  the  varieties.  Some  of  the  countries 
have  a  preponderance  of  one  of  these  types.  The  United  States 
of  America  is  characterized  by  rural  aggregates  of  individual 
farmer-owners  and  individual  farmer-tenants.  Other  countries, 
such  as  India,  China,  and  the  Slavic  countries,  especially  in  the 
past,  have  been  characterized  by  a  preponderance  of  rural  com- 
munities of  peasant  joint  owners  and  joint  tenants.  Countries 
like  some  of  the  South  American  states  still  have  the  latifundian 
type  of  rural  aggregates  widely  spread.  Countries  like  ancient 
Egypt,  ancient  Peru,  Rome  (third  to  fifth  centuries  A.  D.),  an- 
cient China,  or  Byzantium  had,  and  Soviet  Russia  has,  a  highly 
developed  latifundian  type  of  rural  aggregate  composed  of  labor- 
ers and  employes  of  the  state,  church,  city,  and  other  public  and 
private  landowners. 

Subsequent  readings  give  illustrations  of  each  of  these  princi- 
pal types.  The  first  reading,  a  fragment  taken  from  A.  A.  Tschu- 
prow's  monograph  on  land  communities,  introduces  the  concept 
of  the  land  community  and  gives  its  principal  characteristics. 
Subsequent  fragments  give  a  concise  characterization  of  land- 
community  ownership  and  tenancy  as  it  has  existed  in  Russia  and 
in  the  South  Slavic  countries,  among  the  ancient  Germans,  Scots, 
and  Celts,  in  India,  and  in  Japan  and  China.  As  an  example 
of  the  Medieval  private  manorial  type  of  rural  aggregate,  we  pre- 
sent a  brief  picture  of  the  castle-manorial  estate  of  the  fifteenth 
and  the  sixteenth  centuries  in  central  Europe.  In  addition,  the 
papers  of  H.  See,  Poljakow,  and  W.  Schiflf  given  in  chapter  vii 
offer  a  very  concise  characterization  of  the  land  systems  in  China 
and  in  Europe  of  the  eighteenth  and  the  nineteenth  centuries.  As 
illustrations  of  the  rural  aggregate  composed  of  free  or  unfree 
laborers  and  employes  of  the  large  state-owned  estate,  the  char- 
acteristics of  such  a  type  of  rural  organization  are  given  for  an- 


568  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

cient  Egypt,  Rome  and  Byzantium,  ancient  Peru,  and  Soviet 
Russia.  As  a  sample  of  individual  farmer-ownership  and  tenancy, 
we  present  a  characterization  of  the  present  situation  in  Den- 
mark.2 Finally,  Siegfried's  paper  given  in  chapter  vii  outlines 
several  political  traits  correlated  with  various  types  of  rural  ag- 
gregates. Readings  of  the  preceding  chapter  will  supplement 
those  given  in  the  present  one. 

III.  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  FORMS  OF  LANDOWNERSHIP  AND 
LAND  POSSESSION 

A  consideration  of  rural  social  organization  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  forms  of  landownership  and  land  possession  leads 
to  the  question  of  their  evolution.  Which  of  these  forms  are 
older  and  which  are  later?  Is  there  a  definite  sequence  or  a  cer- 
tain historical  tendency  in  the  changes  of  these  forms  in  the 
course  of  time  ?  If  so,  what  is  it  ? 

A  short  time  ago,  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  these 
problems  were  given  much  attention  by  investigators  and  were 
discussed  very  intensively.  The  discussion  centered  principally 
around  the  problem  as  to  whether  or  not  the  form  characterized 
by  community  landownership  by  peasants  and  tenants  was  older 
than  various  forms  of  individual  landownership  by  farmers  and 
peasants.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  at  that  period  the  social 
scientists  were  much  inclined  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  uni- 
form and  perpetual  historical  tendencies  and  a  linear  sequence 
of  the  stages  of  social  evolution  in  various  fields  of  social  phe- 
nomena. This  general  idea  naturally  manifested  itself  in  the  field 
under  discussion  here.  Two  opposite  theories  were  formulated. 

The  first  school,  possibly  more  popular  and  shared  by  a  greater 
number  of  investigators,  claimed  that  community  landownership 
in  its  various  forms  was  the  primary  form  of  land  possession.  As 
soon  as  a  tribe  settled  on  the  land,  the  existing  tribal  organization 
assumed  the  forms  of  community  land  possession.  Since  tribal  or- 
ganization was  viewed  by  many  as  essentially  collectivistic  and 
even  communistic,  community  landownership  was  interpreted 
also  as  an  essentially  collectivistic  and  communistic  rural  social 

3  In  view  of  the  familiarity  of  the  American  specialists  with  the  predominant  American 
system  of  individual  landownership  and  tenancy  and  in  view  of  the  accessibility  of  the 
studies  dealing  with  it,  we  do  not  give  selections  from  such  studies  in  the  readings. 
They  are  referred  to  in  the  subsequent  bibliographical  footnotes. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  569 

organization.  "The  collective  ownership  of  the  soil  by  groups  of 
men  either  in  fact  united  by  blood  relationship,  or  believing  or 
assuming  that  they  are  so  united,  is  now  entitled  to  take  rank  as 
an  ascertained  primitive  phenomenon."  3  The  investigators  of  this 
school  claimed  that  no  individual  landownership  by  the  peasants 
or  cultivators  existed  at  this  primitive  stage.  Only  later,  under  the 
influence  of  various  factors,  the  collectivistic  and  the  communistic 
institution  of  community  landownership  began  to  disintegrate, 
losing  one  after  another  of  its  important  traits  and  finally  lead- 
ing to  the  institution  of  family  property,  and  from  that  to  private 
property  in  land  and  to  individual  peasant-farmer  ownership  of 
land. 

It  is  only  after  a  series  of  progressive  evolutions  and  at  a  compara- 
tively recent  period  that  individual  ownership,  as  applied  to  land,  is 
constituted.  So  long  as  primitive  man  lived  by  the  chase,  by  fishing  he 
never  thought  of  appropriating  the  soil . . .  Gradually,  a  portion  of  the 
soil  was  put  temporarily  under  cultivation,  and  the  agricultural  sys- 
tem was  established,  but  the  territory,  which  the  clan  or  tribe  occupies, 
remains  as  undivided  property.  The  arable,  the  pasturage,  and  the  for- 
est are  farmed  in  common.  ...  By  a  new  step  of  individualization,  the 
parcels  remain  in  the  hands  of  groups  of  patriarchal  families  dwelling 
in  the  same  house  and  working  together  for  the  benefit  of  the  associa- 
tion. .  .  .  Finally,  individual  hereditary  property  appears.  It  is,  how- 
ever, still  tied  down  by  the  thousand  fetters  of  seignorial  rights,  fidei- 
commissa,  hereditary  leases  or  compulsory  system  of  rotation,  etc.  It  is 
not  till  after  a  last  evolution  that  it  becomes  the  absolute,  sovereign, 
personal  right,  which  is  defined  by  the  Civil  Code,  and  which  alone 
is  familiar  to  us  in  the  present  day.4 

Such  is  the  essence  of  this  theory  in  its  classical  formulation.  In 
its  details  it  has  been  interpreted  somewhat  differently  by  various 
of  its  partisans.  Some  of  them,  socialistically  inclined,  such  as 
£mile  de  Laveleye,  colored  community  landownership  very  con- 
spicuously with  socialistic  and  communistic  tinges  and  depicted 
its  initial  stages  as  a  perfect  realization  of  socialistic  justice  and 
equality.  Others,  who  were  not  imbued  with  socialism  and  com- 
munism, such  as  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  G.  von  Maurer,  G. 
Hanssen,  M.  Viollet,  H.  von  Sybel,  K*  Biicher,  Brunner,  and  M. 

8H,  S.  Maine,  Lectures  on  the  "Early  History  of  Institutions,  London,  1875,  p.  1. 
*6,  de  Laveleye,  Primitive  Property,  London,  1878,  pp.  3-4. 


570  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Kovalcvsky,  did  not  stress  these  "colors"  much  but  maintained 
nevertheless  the  essential  claims  of  the  school.5  In  their  investiga- 
tions, notably  those  of  community  landownership  and  tenancy 
in  India  by  Maine,  of  the  German  mark  by  Hanssen  and  von 
Maurer,  and  of  the  Russan  mir  and  the  Caucasian  forms  of  land- 
ownership  by  M.  Kovalevsky,  they  viewed  the  village  community 
and  community  landownership  as  a  form  older  than  individual 
property  in  land.  In  view  of  its  affinity  with  socialism,  this  theory 
has  been  widely  accepted  by  socialists,  communists,  and  many 
others. 

The  claims  of  the  second  school  were  rather  opposite.  It  was 
summarized  many  years  ago  as  follows  6  : 

During  the  last  forty  years  a  theory  has  made  its  way  into  historical 
literature,  according  to  which  private  ownership  in  land  was  preceded 
by  a  system  of  cultivation  in  common.  The  authors  of  this  theory  do 
not  confine  themselves  to  saying  there  was  no  such  thing  as  private 
property  in  land  among  mankind  when  in  a  primitive  or  savage  state. 
It  is  obvious  that  when  men  were  still  in  the  hunting  or  pastoral  stage, 
and  had  not  yet  arrived  at  the  ideas  of  agriculture,  it  did  not  occur  to 
them  to  take  each  for  himself  a  share  of  the  land.  The  theory  of  which 
I  speak  applies  to  settled  and  agricultural  societies.  It  asserts  that 
among  peoples  that  had  got  so  far  as  to  till  the  soil  in  an  orderly  fash- 
ion, common  ownership  of  land  was  still  maintained;  that  for  a  long 
time  it  never  occurred  to  these  men  who  plowed,  sowed,  reaped,  and 
planted,  to  appropriate  to  themselves  the  ground  upon  which  they 
labored.  They  only  looked  upon  it  as  belonging  to  the  community, 
It  was  the  people  that  at  first  was  the  sole  owner  of  the  entire  terri- 
tory, either  cultivating  it  in  common,  or  making  a  fresh  division  of 
it  every  year.  It  was  only  later  that  the  right  of  property,  which  was  at 
first  attached  to  the  whole  people,  came  to  be  associated  with  the  vil- 
lage, the  family  and  the  individual  (pp.  1-2) . 

Are  we  to  conclude  from  all  that  has  gone  before  that  nowhere  and 
at  no  time  was  land  held  in  common?  By  no  means.  To  commit  our- 
selves to  so  absolute  a  negative  would  be  to  go  beyond  the  purpose  of 
this  work.  The  only  conclusion  to  which  we  are  brought  by  this  pro- 
longed examination  of  authorities  is  that  community  in  land  has  not 
yet  been  historically  proved.  .  .  .  We  do  not  maintain  that  it  is  inad- 

BH.  S.  Maine,  Village  Communities  in  tne  East  and  West,  1872;  Lectures  on  the 
Early  History  of  Institutions,  1875;  G.  von  Maurcr,  Einlcitung  zur  Geschichte  der 
Mar\-,  Hof-,  Dorf-,  und  Stadtvcrjassung,  1854;  G.  Hanssen,  Agrarhistorischen  Ab- 
handlungcn,  1880-1884,  2  vols.;  M.  Kovalevsky,  Modern  Custom  and  Ancient  Law,  1891. 

*  Fustel  dc  Coulanges,  The  Origin  of  Property  in  Land,  trans,  by  M.  Ashley,  London, 
1892. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  571 

missible  to  believe  in  primitive  communism.  What  we  do  maintain  is 
that  the  attempt  to  base  this  theory  on  an  historical  foundation  has 
been  an  unfortunate  one;  and  we  refuse  to  accept  its  garb  of  false 
learning  (pp.  149450). 

Leaders  of  this  current  regarded  individual  peasant  landowner- 
ship  either  as  the  primary  type  or  as  a  form  that  appeared  simul- 
taneously with  the  collectivistic  ownership  of  land ;  in  some  places 
the  former  form  was  earlier,  in  other  places  the  latter.  In  their 
criticism  of  the  "collectivistic  school"  some  of  these  investigators 
made  the  following  contentions:  First,  the  school  was  generally 
wrong  in  its  characterization  of  tribal  economic  organization  as 
"communistic"  and  free  from  the  institution  of  individual  prop- 
erty. Second,  the  people  of  the  earliest  agricultural  stage  either  did 
not  know  any  property  in  land  in  the  narrow  sense  of  this  word 
(including  the  right  of  its  disposal),  or  such  property  was  essen- 
tially individualistic.  Third,  joint  land  possession  and  ownership 
by  the  peasants  were  later  products  of  history,  either  imposed  on 
the  peasants  by  conquerors  or  by  state  governments  and  rulers 
for  the  sake  of  easier  collection  of  taxes  and  duties,  or  appearing 
as  a  result  of  the  increasing  scarcity  of  land,  due  to  increasing 
density  of  population  or  some  other  factors.  Hence,  various  equali- 
tarian  traits  of  community  land  possession,  such  as  periodical  re- 
distribution of  the  land  among  the  members  of  the  community, 
division  of  the  land  into  numerous  strips  according  to  the  fertility 
of  the  soil,  collective  responsibility  of  the  community,  common 
cultivation,  and  still  other  characteristics  of  community  landown- 
ership,  were  not  regarded  by  them  as  remnants  of  a  primitive  tribal 
organization  but  cither  as  a  much  later  phenomenon  typical  for 
later  stages  of  the  evolution  of  agricultural  regimes  or,  in  some 
few  cases,  as  a  relatively  early  form.  Among  the  representatives 
of  this  school  are  to  be  mentioned:  B.  N,  Tschitscherin,  R.  Pohl- 
mann,  J.  Keussler,  F.  Rorig,  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  G.  Schmoller, 
D.  W.  Ross,  G.  von  Below,  S.  Jirecek,  A.  Tschuprow,  Max  Weber, 
Peisker,  and  especially  a  group  of  younger  investigators  of  the 
Russian  mir,  including  A.  A.  Kaufman,  M.  BolshakofT,  A.  S. 
Litschkoff,  M.  N.  Dubenski,  S.  P.  Shvetzoff,  Stcherbina,  Sjero- 
shevski,  K.  Kacharovski,  Grodekoff,  N.  Oganovski,  and  many 
others.  The  studies  of  these  and  other  scholars,  and  especially  the 
investigations  by  the  group  of  Russian  historians  of  the  forms  of 


572  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

land  possession  and  landownership,  have  thrown  quite  a  new  light 
on  the  problem.7 

Such  are  the  essential  points  of  this  controversy.  In  the  light  of 
our  contemporary  knowledge  several  points  are  not  yet  settled 
definitely.  But  the  essential  claims  of  the  first  school  seem  to  be 
untenable.  The  principal  weaknesses  of  this  school's  theory  are  as 
follows:  First,  its  premise  that  all  peoples  pass  through  the  same 
stages  of  social  and  economic  evolution  and  that  the  sequence  of 
these  stages  is  uniform  and  definite  is  untenable 8  ;  second,  its 
premise  that  primitive  peoples  have  known  only  the  common  or 
communistic  institution  of  property  and  do  not  know  individual 
forms  of  possession  and  ownership  is  untenable  also.9 

Third,  the  forms  of  community  landownership  and  possession 
have  been  interpreted  by  the  school  in  too  socialistic  and  com- 
munistic colors,  and  in  its  interpretation  of  primitive  agrarian 
communism  the  collectivistic  aspect  of  these  forms  has  been  over- 
emphasized, while  the  individualistic  aspect  of  the  same  forms 
has  been  unduly  neglected.  This  has  led  to  a  misinterpretation  of 
these  forms  by  the  partisans  of  the  school.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
collectivistic  aspect  of  these  forms  has  been  but  a  variety  of  fam- 
ilism  and  family  possession,  or  a  type  of  association  of  joint 
owners  and  partners  not  much  different  from  family  ownership 
or  joint  ownership  and  possession  as  they  exist  in  contemporary 
society.  This  collectivism  has  little  in  common  with  either  com- 
munism or  socialism. 

Fourth,  the  claim  that  collectivistic  forms  of  landownership 
generally  preceded  the  forms  characterized  by  individual  property 

7  See  the  literature  and  the  details  in  G.  von  Below,  "Das  kurze  Leben  einer  viel 
gennanten  Theorie,"  in  Problems  der  Wirtschajtsgcschichte,  Tubingen,   1926,  chap,  i; 
Max  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  chap,  i;  Jan  St,  Lewmski,  The  Origin  of  Prop- 
erty, London,  1913  (a  good  account  and  bibliography  of  recent  Russian  investigations  in 
the  field);  N.  S.  B,  Gras,  History  of  Agriculture,   1926.  See   esp,   A.  A.  Kaufman, 
Russian   Obschina  in  the  Process  of  Its  Origin  and  Development  (Russ.),   1908.  Other 
Russian  works,  including  A.  Tschuprow's  German  monograph,  will  be  mentioned  further. 

8  R.    Thurnwald's    "Tortschritt"    and    "Primitive    Kultur"    in    the    ReallexiJ^on    der 
Vorgeschichte,  ed.  by  M.  Ebert;   A.  Goldenweiser*s  "Cultural  Anthropology,"   in  The 
History  and  Prospects  of  the  Social  Sciences,  New  York,  1925,  sums  up  ably  the  situa- 
tion in  this  field.  See  there  the  literature. 

*  See  F.  Somlo,  Der  Guterverkehr  in  der  Urgesettschaft,  Inst.  Solvay,' 1909;  R.  Thurn- 
wald's "Wirtschaft"  in  Reallcxikon  der  Vorgeschichte;  see  there  an  exhaustive  bibliogra- 
phy; B.  Mahnowski,  Argonauts  in  the  Western  Pacific,  London,  1922;  E.  Schwiedland, 
Anfange  tmd  Wesen  der  Wirtschajt,  Stuttgart,  1923;  R.  H.  Lowie,  Primitive  Society, 
1920;  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  G.  C.  Wheeler,  and  M.  Ginsberg,  The  Material  Culture  and 
Social  Institutions  oj  the  Simpler  Peoples,  London,  1915,  pp.  255  ff.;  H.  Cunow,  Allge- 
meine  Wirtschaftsgeschichte>  Berlin,  1926-1927,  2  vols.;  L.  Wodon,  Sur  quelqes  erreurs 
de  methode  dans  i'etude  de  I'homrne  primitif,  1906;  G.  von  Below,  op.  cit,f  chap.  iv. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  573 

in  land  is  also  questionable.  It  is  rather  certain  that  at  the  most 
joint  ownership  and  possession  preceded  individual  property  in 
land  only  among  some  people.  Among  other  peoples  the  sequence 
was  rather  reversed,  while  among  still  other  peoples  there  was 
a  complex  fluctuation  or  coexistence  of  these  forms. 

While  the  socialistic  authors  view  property  as  a  fall  from  grace  into 
sin,  the  liberals  carry  it  back  wherever  possible  to  the  time  of  the  puta- 
tive ancestors  of  the  population.  In  reality,  nothing  definite  can  be  said 
in  general  terms  about  the  economic  life  of  primitive  man.  We  find 
no  uniformity  but  ever  the  sharpest  contrasts.10  ...  In  some  cases 
the  community  landownership  developed,  through  limitations  of  the 
private  family  ownership  of  land;  in  other  cases  it  developed  spon- 
taneously without  any  coercion.11 

Fifth,  it  is  certain  that  some  of  the  forms  of  joint  ownership 
and  possession  of  land  appeared  late  and  could  not  possibly  have 
preceded  forms  of  individual  land  appropriation.  For  instance. 
Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  based  his  theory  principally  on  the 
Indian  village  community,  thinking  that  this  type  was  earlier  in 
Raiyatwari  system— see  further).  However,  later  and  more  care- 
ful studies  have  shown  that  such  an  hypothesis  is  contradicted  by 
the  facts. 

We  have  no  actual  evidence  of  the  first  stage — evidence,  I  mean, 
showing  that  universally  at  one  time,  there  was  no  such  thing  as  indi- 
vidual or  even  a  family  right,  but  that  the  whole  tribe  or  clan  regarded 
the  land  as  really  "common"  in  a  communistic  or  socialistic  sense,  .  .  . 
If  we  look  to  the  earliest  villages  found  under  the  Aryans,  or  before 
that,  we  have  no  evidence  of  a  tribal  stage;  and  even  among  the  later 
Panjab  tribes,  where  tribal  occupation  and  allotment  are  clearly  dis- 
cernible, any  previous  stage  of  the  joint  holding  by  the  tribe  collectively, 
hardly  seems  deducible  from  the  known  facts.  But  we  certainly  must 
recognize  that,  as  regards  most  villages,  property  is  still  in  the  "family" 
stage.  We  are  introduced  at  a  very  early  stage  to  the  existence  of  an 
idea  of  an  individual  (or  rather  family)  right  to  the  land  in  fat/or  of 
the  person  who  cleared  and  reclaimed  it  from  the  jungle.  .  .  .  The 
oldest  form  of  village  (in  India)  is  where  the  cultivators — practically 
owners  of  their  several  family  holdings — live  under  a  common  head- 
man; and  there  is  no  landlord  over  the  whole.  .  .  .  The  object  of 
these  remarks  is  to  disabuse  the  reader's  mind  of  the  idea  that  in 
some  way  a  "joint"  village  is  necessarily  the  earliest  or  original  type. 

10  M.  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  p.  '24. 

"A.  Tschuprow,  Die  Feldgemeinschaft,  Strassburg,  1902,  p.  243. 


574 


SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


Such  are  the  conclusions  of  possibly  the  best  investigator  of  the 
Hindu  land  system.12 

Similar  criticism  has  been  made  in  regard  to  the  interpretation 
of  the  Russian,  German,  Scotch,  and  other  early  land  systems  as 
an  "original  system  of  agrarian  communism."  More  careful  study 
of  historical  evidences  on  the  one  hand  13  and  of  existing  forms 
of  landownership  and  land  possession  among  contemporary  pre- 
literate  tribes  on  the  other  hand  has  shown  that  the  theories  of 
Maine,  De  Laveleye,  von  Maurer,  Viollet,  and  others  were  inade- 
quate, based  on  speculation  and  analogy  rather  than  on  an  ade- 
quate interpretation  of  the  factual  situations.  For  instance,  the 
largest  sample  of  298  preliterate  peoples  studied  shows  at  the  most 
primitive  and  more  advanced  stages  the  following  forms  of  prop- 
erty and  land  property.14 

PERCENTAGE  OF  PEOPLES  IN  A  SPECIFIED  CLASS  HAVING  A  SPECIFIED  FORM 

OF  PROPERTY 


STAGES  OR  CLASSES 
OF  PEOPLES 

COM- 
MUNAL 

INTER- 
MIXED 

PRIVATE 

CHIEF'S 
PROPERTY 

NOBLES' 
PROPERTY 

TOTAL  « 

Lower  hunters 

69 

15 

15 

0 

0 

100 

Higher  hunters 

80 

6 

5 

3 

5 

100 

Lowest  agricultural 

64 

18 

18 

0 

0 

100 

Lower  pastoral 

57 

0 

35 

0 

9 

100 

Higher  agricultural 

54 

21 

13 

8 

4 

100 

Higher  pastoral 

62 

0 

5 

33 

0 

100 

Highest  agricultural 

29 

24 

10 

27 

10 

100 

The  table  shows  that  even  among  the  most  primitive  hunters 
there  exist  all  the  principal  forms  of  property,  including  private 
property,  and  that  there  is  a  very  irregular  trend)  if  any,  toward 
a  decrease  of  communal  property  (or  of  an  increase  of  other  forms 
of  property,  with  the  exception  of  chiefs'  and  nobles'  property) 
as  we  pass  from  the  lower  hunters  to  the  highest  agricultural 
peoples. 
The  final  result  of  this  controversy  seems  to  be  as  follows:  First, 

13  B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Land-Systems  of  British  India,  Oxford,  1892,  I,  110-115; 
see  there  the  details  and  substantiation  of  these  conclusions. 

13  See,  for  instance,  Fustel  De  Coulangcs,  Histoire  etc  lf  institutions  polittqucs  de 
I'ancienne  France;  V alien  et  le  domaine  rural,  1889,  pp.  155  ff. 

WL.  T.  Hobhouse,  G.  C.  Wheeler,  and  M.  Ginsberg,  op.  cit,,  p,  251. 

*  These  are  approximate  figures. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  575 

in  the  earliest  stages  of  agricultural  tribes  there  are  different  land 
systems,  either  individual,  family,  or  tribe  ownership  or  possession 
of  the  land.  In  some  tribes  all  these  systems  have  existed  side  by 
side;  in  other  tribes  one  of  them  has  predominated.  Second, 
among  these  forms  the  system  of  family  ownership  or  possession 
has  predominated.  Third,  the  so-called  collective  land  system  in 
almost  all  early  stages  has  been  merely  a  family  system,  no  more 
collective  or  socialistic  than  family  undivided  property  at  the 
present.  Fourth,  the  forms  of  so-called  collective  landownership 
or  possession  and  the  phenomena  of  a  periodical  distribution  of 
land,  land  equalization,  limitation  of  the  rights  of  individual 
property  in  land,  and  collective  responsibility  appeared  in  some 
societies  at  a  late  stage,  in  others  at  a  relatively  early  stage.  Fifth, 
no  definite  and  universal  sequence  in  the  change  of  the  forms  of 
land  possession  and  ownership,  either  from  collective  to  the  indi- 
vidual or  vice  versa,  has  existed.  The  evolution  of  such  forms  has 
not  been  uniform  and  linear  but  polymorphic  and  divergent  in 
various  societies.  Such  in  essence  are  the  conclusions  based  on  con- 
temporary knowledge  in  this  field.  In  the  subsequent  readings 
we  give  a  fragment  from  J.  St.  Lewinskies  Origin  of  Property, 
which  summarizes  the  conclusions  reached  in  this  field  by  Rus- 
sian and  other  investigators  of  the  problem.  In  this  selection,  in 
spite  of  its  one-sidedness,  the  above  statements  are  more  devel- 
oped, elaborated,  and  corroborated.  (See  also  the  quoted  works 
of  G.  von  Below  and  Baden-Powell  for  a  general  summary  of  the 
problem.) 

As  to  the  evolution  of  other  forms  of  landownership  and  land 
possession,  namely,  from  small  holdings  to  large  latifundia  or 
vice  versa,  from  ownership  to  tenancy  or  vice  versa,  or  from  pri- 
vate property  in  land  to  nationalized  (state)  ownership  or  vice 
versa,  the  conclusions  are  similar.  A  careful  investigation  of  the 
problems  does  not  permit  us  to  admit  the  existence  of  any  of  these 
tendencies  in  the  evolution  of  land  possession  as  perpetual  and 
universal  for  all  peoples  and  at  all  times.  As  a  matter  of  fact  all 
these  forms — private  ownership;  tenancy;  small  and  large  hold- 
ings; concentration  of  land  in  few  hands  and  its  parcelling  out 
among  small  landholders;  private  and  public  property  in  land; 
state,  city,  or  church  property  in  land;  or  the  processes  of  the  na- 
tionalization or  denationalization  o£  land — may  exist  in  the  ear- 


576  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

liest  stages  among  various  peoples,  and  we  find  all  of  them  exist- 
ing at  the  present  moment.  Here,  again,  the  historical  process  has 
not  been  universally  uniform  and  linear,  but  rather  polymorphic 
and  trendless,  at  one  time  among  some  countries  giving  a  pre- 
ponderance to  one  of  the  systems  and  trends,  and  at  another  time 
among  the  same  or  other  countries  giving  the  upper  hand  to  the 
opposite  system  and  trends.  For  instance,  we  have  in  Soviet 
Russia  at  the  present  time,  and  have  had  recently  in  New  Zealand, 
a  system  of  nationalized  land.  Thousands  of  years  ago  this  same 
system  existed  in  ancient  Egypt,  in  China,  and  in  ancient  Peru, 
to  mention  only  some  of  the  countries.  This  same  thing  can  be 
said  with  still  greater  reason  of  other  systems  and  other  types  of 
rural  aggregates.  Likewise,  the  types  of  peasant  owner,  peasant 
tenant,  and  peasant  hired  laborer  existed  in  the  past  and  exist  in 
the  present.  Eternal,  uniform,  and  universal  tendencies  in  the  evo- 
lution of  these  forms  exist  only  in  the  imagination  of  those  who 
replace  the  real  processes  of  history  by  a  purely  fantastic  tailoring 
of  speculative  schemes  concerning  the  path  of  history. 

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SPICKERMANN,  Der  Tedbau  in  Theorie  und  Praxis  (1902). 

STUBBS,  CHARLES  W.,  The  Land  and  the  Laborers  (1891). 

SUKHANOFF,  N.s  The  Problem  of  Agrarian  Evolution  (Russ.)  (1913). 

TAINE,  H.,  Les  origines  de  la  France  contemporaine,  Vols.  I,  II. 

TOCQUEVILLE,  A.  DE,  L  anclen  regime  et  la  Revolution  (1877). 

TOUTAIN,  L economic  antique  (1927). 

VERNARDSKI,  G.,  Russian  History  (Russ.). 

VEUILLOT,  L.,  Le  droit  du  seigneur  au  moyen  age  (1878). 

VORONTZOFF,  W.  W.,  The  Peasant  Land  Communities  (Russ.)  (1892). 

WESTERMANN,  W.  L.,  "Egyptian  Agricultural  Labor  under  Ptolemy  Phila- 

delphus,"  Agricultural  History  (1927),  Vol.  I. 
YOUNG,  ARTHUR,  Political  Arithmetic  (1774). 

,  Voyages  en  France  (1794),  3  vols. 

The  Farmer  s  Letters  to  the  People  of  England  (London,  1768). 

See  also  the  bibliography  of  chapter  viii,  the  bibliographies  in  the  pre- 
ceding four  chapters,  and  the  bibliographies  following  the  readings  in  this 
chapter. 

67.  A.  A.  TSCHUPROW:  CONCEPT  AND  FORMS  OF  THE  LAND 
COMMUNITY  (Fcldgemeinschaft)* 

All  investigators  take  the  great  Russian  mir  as  a  typical  representa- 
tive of  the  land  community.  The  land  belongs  to  the  community,  the 
individual  members  of  which  possess  only  the  right  to  the  use  of  the 
piece  allotted  to  them.  They  have  no  piece  of  land  that  they  can 
claim  as  their  private,  individual  property,  for  the  piece  of  land  that 
a  member  cultivates  today  may  be  taken  from  him  tomorrow  and 
exchanged  for  the  lot  of  his  neighbor.  Not  even  the  amount  of  the  lot 
cultivated  by  him  is  secure,  as  the  community  may  order  a  redivision 
of  the  land  among  its  members  and  may  take  a  portion  of  the  allot- 
ment from  one  member  and  give  it  to  another.  The  individual  mem- 
ber has  no  right  to  dispose  of  the  portion  of  land  allotted  to  him;  he 
can  neither  sell  it  nor  bequeath  it.  Even  the  freedom  of  its  use  is  con- 
siderably limited  by  the  existence  of  obligatory  regulations.  Such  are 
the  essential  characteristics  of  the  organization  of  the  mir.  Are  all  of 

*  Adapted  from  A,  A.  Tschuprow,  Die  Fddgemeinschaft.  Eine  morphologische 
Untersuchung,  Abhandhmgen  aus  dern  staanwissenschaftlichen  Seminar  ztt  Strassbttrg, 
ed.  by  G.  F.  Knapp,  Strassburg,  1902,  Heft  18,  pp.  1-9. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  579 

these  traits  equally  important  for  the  concept  of  the  land  community? 
Can  land  communities  exist  which  deviate  more  or  less  from  the  mir 
organization?  Let  us  consider  some  special  cases. 

In  Siberia  the  village  community  has  the  same  characteristics  as  are 
outlined  above.  But  through  some  specific  procedure  a  member  may 
sometimes  suspend  the  redistribution  of  the  land  and  break  the  re- 
strictions on  the  use  of  the  land.  Does  the  Siberian  community  lose 
the  character  of  the  mir  organization  by  virtue  of  such  a  deviation? 

In  the  Almende  (pasture  land)  of  southern  Germany  and  Switzer- 
land the  periodic  redistribution  of  the  land  often  does  not  take  place, 
and  the  parcels  are  allotted  for  life.  The  amount  of  land  assigned 
to  the  members  is  determined,  however,  by  a  statute;  the  right  of  its 
disposal  is  not  given  to  any  member,  while  the  freedom  of  its  use  is 
also  subjected  to  certain  limitations.  Does  this  mean  that  such  a  com- 
munity is  no  longer  a  land  community? 

In  the  German  colonies  in  South  Russia  the  village  community  does 
not  have  the  right  to  alter  the  amount  of  the  land  allotted  to  its  mem- 
bers. A  member's  share  of  the  land  is  determined  not  by  the  decision 
of  the  community  but  by  inheritance  and  purchase.  However,  each 
member  has  a  right  only  to  a  definite  share  of  the  community  land, 
not  to  a  definite  piece  of  it.  The  community  may  at  any  moment  order 
an  exchange  of  the  lots  given  to  its  members.  Is  every  trace  of  the 
land  community  lost  in  this  type  of  organization? 

Most  limitations  on  the  right  of  land  disposal  are  absent  in  the  Bul- 
garian colonies  of  southern  Russia  and  the  Odnodworzy  of  central 
Russia,  as  well  as  among  the  farmers  of  Trier  and  the  village  mem- 
bers of  Siegerlande.  In  other  respects  the  organization  is  similar  to  that 
of  the  German  communities  in  southern  Russia.  Was  it  just  at  this 
point  that  they  lost  their  character  as  land  communities? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  zadruga  of  the  Balkan  Slavonic  peoples  rep- 
resents a  large  community  composed  of  families  related  through  kin- 
ship. They  live  together  under  one  roof,  have  undivided  property  in 
common,  and  compose  one  economic  unit  and  one  household.  No  indi- 
vidual member  has  any  right  whatsoever  to  a  separate  piece  of  land; 
neither  has  he  any  individual  right  to  its  disposal  or  use.  All  rights 
belong  only  to  the  community  as  a  whole  or  to  its  representative,  the 
senior  member.  Is  such  a  community  a  land  community?  No,  it  is 
a  house  community  (H ausgemeinschajf) . 

At  an  earlier  period  there  were  many  cases  in  which  several  eco- 
nomic subjects  had  some  rights  simultaneously  on  the  same  piece  of 
land.  For  instance,  one  was  an  owner  of  a  woodland,  another  had  the 
right  to  feed  his  pigs  in  it,  pasture  his  cows  in  it,  gather  brushwood, 


580  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

etc.  Is  this  a  land  community?  No,  it  is  a  combination  of  servitude  and 
condominium. 

The  preceding  analysis  indicates  that  there  are  a  multiform  variety 
o£  systems  of  land  relationships  which  are  in  some  respects  similar 
to  one  another.  Which  of  these  systems  are  to  be  styled  land  com- 
munities and  which  are  not  is  a  difficult  question  to  determine  offhand. 
For  the  sake  of  clarity  it  is  necessary  to  define  what  we  mean  by  a 
land  community.  By  it  I  mean  a  totality  of  land-possessing  households 
(grundbesitzenden  Wirtschaften)  which  stand  in  such  a  juridical  re- 
lationship to  one  another  that  the  community  as  a  whole  is  author- 
ized to  inter jere  in  the  land  rights  of  each  member  within  certain  defi- 
nitely determined  limits.  It  therefore  differs  from  a  house  community 
in  that  the  house  community  is  a  community  of  only  one  household 
rather  than  a  totality  of  households  (Wirtschaften).  The  land  com- 
munity differs  from  the  servitude  relationship  in  which  several  land- 
owners are  bound  together  through  mutual  servitude  duties  in  that  no 
one  of  its  members  has  any  direct  right  to  the  possessions  of  another 
member.  The  claims  of  any  member  may  be  realized  only  through 
his  right  as  a  shareholder  in  the  community.  He  has  rights  and  duties 
only  in  regard  to  the  community  as  a  whole  and  not  m  regard  to  its 
individual  members,  to  whom  he  stands  in  a  relationship  similar  to 
that  of  an  outsider.  Further,  the  land  community  is  also  different  from 
the  joint  ownership  (condominium)  of  the  Roman  law,  for  in  this 
latter  type  of  organization  only  unanimous  decisions  are  binding  on  a 
member,  while  in  the  land  community  decisions  by  majority  vote  are 
admitted. 

Manifestations  of  the  land-community  principles.* — Two  traits  give 
the  relationships  of  individual  landowners  the  character  of  a  land 
community;  first,  the  presence  of  certain  limitations  on  the  right  of 
ownership  of  each  individual  member  in  favor  of  the  other  members 
of  the  community  and,  second,  the  form  and  the  manner  in  which 
these  limitations  originate.  They  must  spring  from  the  will  of  the  whole 
community.  This  means  that  the  manifestations  of  land-community 
principles  consist  in  the  interference  of  the  community  in  the  rights  of 
landownership  of  its  members.  .  .  . 

Limitations  of  the  right  of  possession*— Tht  interference  of  a  land 
community  in  the  right  of  possession  of  its  members  may  consist  of 
a  limitation  of  either  the  amount  of  land  that  may  be  possessed  by 
them,  or  the  nature  of  the  relationship  of  the  individual  holder  to  the 
object  of  his  rights.  The  land  community  can  fix  the  size  of  the  hold- 
ings of  its  members,  can  alter  the  amount  of  land  held  by  a  member 

*  Adapted  from  the  same  work,  pp.  9-80. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  581 

even  against  the  will  of  the  interested  parties.  Limitations  as  to  both 
the  amount  of  the  holding  and  the  time  of  the  allotment  lead  to  a  re- 
distribution of  land. 

Limitations  of  the  right  to  dispose  of  land.* — The  limitations  of 
the  land  community  to  the  right  of  disposal  of  land  by  its  members 
are  numerous  and  varied  in  character.  They  manifest  themselves  prin- 
cipally in  the  limitation  of  the  right  to  transmit  the  land  by  bequeath- 
ing it  or  in  the  restriction  of  the  right  to  sell,  rent,  present,  or  dispose 
of  it  m  any  way.  These  limitations  go  so  far  in  some  of  the  land  com- 
munities that  their  members  have  no  right  to  sell,  rent,  or  bequeath 
the  land  under  any  conditions,  though  in  some  other  communities  the 
limitations  are  not  so  great.  Nevertheless,  they  are  always  present  to 
some  degree,  and  a  member  of  a  land  community  usually  has  much 
less  right  of  disposal  of  his  lot  than  an  individual  landowner. 

Limitations  of  the  right  to  use  of  the  land. — These  limitations  are 
numerous:  They  may  concern  any  or  all  of  the  following:  the  use  of 
the  common  pasture,  water,  wood,  and  any  other  lands  that  are  used 
by  the  community  as  a  whole  without  division  into  individual  lots; 
the  kind  of  grain  that  is  to  be  cultivated  on  a  certain  part  of  the  land 
in  each  season  under  the  three-field  system;  the  time  o£  sowing, 
ploughing,  mowing;  compulsory  cultivation  (Flurzwang),  etc. 

68.  MAX  WEBER:  THE  GERMAN,  SCOTCH,  AND  CELTIC  VILLAGE 
COMMUNITY  OF  THE  PAST! 

The  land  settlement  in  the  original  German  region  had  the  vil- 
lage form,  not  that  of  the  isolated  farmstead.  Connecting  roads  between 
the  villages  were  originally  quite  absent,  as  each  village  was  economi- 
cally independent  and  had  no  need  of  connection  with  its  neighbors. 
(The  land  of  the  village  community  was  divided  into  several  concen- 
tric zones  around  the  village.)  The  first  or  innermost  zone  contained 
the  dwelling  lots,  placed  quite  irregularly.  Next,  zone  two  contained 
the  fenced  garden  land  (Wurt),  in  as  many  parts  as  there  were 
originally  dwelling  lots  in  the  village.  Zone  three  is  the  arable,  and 
zone  four,  pasture  (Almende).  Each  household  had  the  right  to  herd 
an  equal  number  of  livestock  on  the  pasture  area,  which,  however,  was 
not  communal  but  appropriated  in  fixed  shares.  The  same  was  true 
of  the  wood  (zone  five),  which  incidentally  did  not  belong  to  the 
village;  here  also  the  rights  to  wood  cutting,  to  bedding,  mast,  etc., 
were  divided  equally  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  village.  House, 

*  Summary,  pp.  63-80. 

fFrom  Max  Weber,  General  Economic  History,  trans,  by  F.  H.  Knight,  New  York, 
Greenbcrg,  1927,  pp.  4-17.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  publisher. 


582  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

dwelling  lot,  and  the  share  o£  the  individual  garden  land,  arable  (see 
below),  pasture,  and  forest,  together  constituted  the  hide  (German 
Hufe,  cognate  with  "have"). 

The  arable  was  divided  into  a  number  of  parts  called  fields  (Gc- 
tuanne) ;  these  again  were  laid  off  in  strips  which  were  not  always 
uniform  in  breadth  and  were  often  extremely  narrow.  Each  peasant 
of  the  village  possessed  one  strip  in  each  field,  so  that  the  shares  in  the 
arable  were  originally  equal  in  extent.  The  basis  of  this  division  into 
fields  is  found  in  the  effort  to  have  the  members  of  the  community 
share  equally  in  the  various  qualities  of  the  land  in  different  locations. 
The  intermixed  holdings  which  thus  arose  brought  the  further  ad- 
vantage that  all  the  villagers  were  equally  affected  by  catastrophes  such 
as  hailstorms,  and  the  risks  of  the  individual  were  reduced. 

As  there  were  no  roads  between  the  single  allotments,  tillage  opera- 
tions could  only  be  carried  on  according  to  a  common  plan  and  at  the 
same  time  for  all.  This  was  normally  done  according  to  the  three-field 
system,  which  is  the  most  general  though  by  no  means  the  oldest  type 
of  husbandry  in  Germany.  Three-field  husbandry  means  that  in  the 
first  place  the  whole  arable  area  is  divided  into  three  tracts,  of  which 
at  any  one  time  the  first  is  sown  to  a  winter  grain  and  the  second  to 
a  summer  gram,  while  the  third  is  left  fallow  and  is  manured.  Each 
year  the  fields  are  changed  in  rotation,  so  that  the  one  sown  with  win- 
ter grain  is  the  next  year  put  to  summer  grain  and  in  the  year  follow- 
ing left  fallow,  and  the  others  correspondingly.  Under  such  a  system 
of  husbandry  it  was  impossible  for  any  individual  to  use  methods  dif- 
ferent in  any  way  from  those  of  the  rest  of  the  community;  he  was 
bound  to  the  group  in  all  his  acts.  .  .  . 

The  hide  belonged  to  the  individual  and  was  hereditary.  The  part 
of  the  holding  consisting  of  dwelling  lot  and  garden  land  was  subject 
to  free  individual  use.  The  house  sheltered  a  family,  often  including 
grown  sons.  The  share  in  the  arable  was  also  individually  appropriated, 
while  the  rest  of  the  cleared  land  belonged  to  the  community  of  hide- 
men  or  peasant  holders  (Hufner),  that  is,  of  the  members  in  full  stand- 
ing or  freemen  of  the  village.  These  included  only  those  who  held  title 
to  some  share  in  each  of  the  three  fields  of  the  arable.  One  who  had 
no  land  or  did  not  have  a  share  in  every  field  did  not  count  as  a  hide- 
man. 

To  a  still  larger  group  than  the  village  belonged  the  common  "mark," 
which  included  wood  and  waste  land  and  is  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  Almend  or  pasture.  This  larger  group  was  made  up  of  sev- 
eral villages.  The  beginnings  and  original  form  of  the  mark  associa- 
tion (Mar\genossenschajt)  are  lost  in  obscurity.  Within  the  common 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  583 

mark  there  existed  a  head  official  o£  the  mark  (Obermdrfyerami),  and 
in  addition  a  "wood  court"  and  an  assembly  of  deputies  of  the  hide- 
men  of  the  villages  belonging  to  the  mark. 

Originally  there  was  in  theory  strict  equality  among  the  members 
in  this  economic  organization.  But  such  an  equality  broke  down  in 
consequence  of  differences  in  the  number  of  children  among  whom 
the  inheritance  was  divided,  and  there  arose  alongside  the  hidemen  half 
and  quarter  hidemen.  Moreover,  the  hidemen  were  not  the  only  in- 
habitants of  the  village.  First,  there  were  younger  sons  who  did  not 
succeed  to  holdings.  .  .  .  From  the  outside  came  hand  workers  and 
other  neighbors,  who  stood  without  the  organization  of  associated 
hidemen.  Thus  there  arose  a  division  between  the  peasants  and  another 
class  of  village  dwellers,  called  hirelings  or  cottagers.  (Besides  these 
two  strata  of  the  village  population)  there  was  also  formed  above  the 
hidemen  a  special  economic  stratum  who  with  their  landholdings  also 
stood  outside  the  main  village  organization.  In  the  beginning  of  the 
German  agricultural  system,  as  long  as  there  was  unclaimed  land 
available,  an  individual  could  clear  land  and  fence  it;  as  long  as  he 
tilled  it,  this  so-called  Bifang  was  reserved  to  him;  otherwise  it  re- 
verted to  the  common  mark.  Acquisition  of  such  Bifangs  presupposed 
considerable  possessions  in  cattle  and  slaves  and  was  ordinarily  pos- 
sible only  for  the  king,  princes,  and  overlords.  In  addition  to  this  pro- 
cedure, the  king  would  grant  land  out  of  the  possessions  of  marks,  the 
supreme  authority  over  which  he  had  assumed  for  himself, 

Scotland. — Many  students  have  seen  in  the  German  rural  organiza- 
tion the  echo  of  an  original  agrarian  communism  and  have  sought 
elsewhere  for  (similar)  examples.  ...  In  this  effort  they  have  thought 
to  find  in  the  Scotch  agricultural  system — "the  runridge  system" — a  re- 
semblance to  the  German  system.  It  is  true  that  in  Scotland  the  arable 
was  divided  into  strips,  and  holdings  intermingled;  there  was  also  the 
common  pasture;  thus  far  there  is  real  resemblance  to  Germany.  But 
these  strips  were  redistributed  by  lot  annually  or  at  definite  times,  so 
that  a  diluted  village  community  arose.  All  this  was  excluded  in  the 
German  Lagcmorgcn.  Along  with  this  arrangement  there  arose  in  the 
Gaelic  and  Scotch  regions  the  cyvar,  the  custom  of  communal  plowing. 
Land  which  had  been  in  grass  for  a  considerable  time  was  broken  up 
with  a  heavy  plow  drawn  by  eight  oxen.  For  this  purpose  the  owner 
of  the  oxen  and  the  owner  of  a  heavy  plow,  generally  the  village 
smith,  came  together  and  plowed  as  a  unit.  The  division  of  the  crop 
took  place  either  before  the  harvest  or  after  a  joint  harvest.  The  Scotch 
system  of  husbandry  was  distinguished  from  the  German  by  the  fur- 
ther fact  that  the  zone  of  arable  was  divided  into  two  subzones.  Of 


584  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

these  the  inner  was  manured  and  tilled  according  to  a  three-field  rota- 
tion, while  the  outer  was  divided  into  from  five  to  seven  parts,  only 
one  of  which  was  put  under  the  plow  in  any  one  year,  while  the  re- 
maining ones  were  in  grass  and  served  as  pasture. 

Ireland. — The  Scotch  agricultural  system  is  very  recent;  for  the  origi- 
nal Celtic  system  we  must  go  to  Ireland.  Here  agriculture  was  origi- 
nally based  entirely  on  cattle-raising.  The  pasture  land  is  allotted  to  the 
house  community  (tate),  the  head  of  which  ordinarily  owns  from  300 
upward  head  of  stock.  About  the  year  600,  agriculture  declined  in  Ire- 
land and  the  economic  organization  underwent  a  change.  As  before, 
however,  the  land  was  not  permanently  assigned,  but  for  a  lifetime  at 
the  longest.  Redistributions  were  made  by  the  chieftain  (tanaist)  down 
as  late  as  the  eleventh  century 

69.  B.  H.  BADEN-POWELL:  VILLAGE  LAND  SYSTEMS  IN  INDIA! 

Two  types  of  village  distinguished. — There  is  not  one  type  of  vil- 
lage community,  but  there  are  two  very  distinct  types,  one  of  which, 
again,  has  marked  and  curious  forms  or  varieties.  .  . .  These  two  types 
are  distinct  in  origin.  In  the  one  type  the  aggregates  of  cultivators  have 
no  claim  as  a  joint-body  to  the  whole  estate,  dividing  it  among  them- 
selves on  their  own  principles;  nor  will  they  acknowledge  themselves 
in  any  degree  jointly  liable  for  burdens  imposed  by  the  state.  Each  man 
owns  his  own  holding,  which  he  has  inherited,  or  bought,  or  cleared 
from  the  original  jungle.  The  waste  surrounding  the  village  is  used  for 
grazing  and  wood-cutting,  but  no  one  in  the  village  claims  it  as  his, 
to  appropriate  and  cultivate  without  leave;  still  less  do  the  whole 
group  claim  it  jointly,  to  partition  when  they  please. 

In  the  other  type — owing  to  conquest — a  strong  joint-body,  probably 
descended  (in  many  cases)  from  a  single  head,  or  single  family,  has 
pretentions  to  be  of  higher  caste  and  superior  title  to  the  "tenants"  who 
live  on  the  estate.  The  site  on  which  the  village  habitations,  the  tank, 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Besides  the  works  already  cited  and  those  cited  further  see:  G.  von 
Below,  Probleme  der  Wirtschajtsgeschichte,  1926;  A.  Dopsch,  Die  Wirtschaftsentwicklung 
der  Karolingenzeit,  1912-1913,  2  vols.;  A.  Meitzen,  Siedelung  und  Agrcnwesen  der  West- 
und  Qstgermanen,  der  Kelten,  Romer,  Finnen  und  Slaven,  1896,  4  vols;  G.  F.  Knapp, 
Grundherrschaft  und  Rittergut,  1897;  F,  Seebohm,  The  Ancient  Village  Community,  4th 
ed.}  London,  1896;  R.  E.  B.  Ernie,  English  Fatming,  Past  and  Present,  New  York,  1927; 
Oppenheimer,  Die  Siedlungsgenossenschajt,  Jena,  1922;  J.  Fuchs,  Die  Epochen  der 
detttschen  Agrargeschichte  und  Agrarpoliti^,  Jena,  1898;  W.  Fleischmann,  "tJber  die 
landwirtschaftlichen  Verhaltnisse  Germaniens  zu  Begin  unserer  Zeitrechnung,"  Journal 
fur  Land  wirtsc  hap,  Band  LIU,  1905;  K.  Grunberg,  Studien  zur  Q&erreichischen  Agrar- 
geschichte,  1901;  K.  Lamprecht,  Deutsche  Wirtschajtsleben  im  Uittelalter,  1886;  G.  von 
Maurer,  Geschichte  der  Marfaerfassung  in  Deutschland,  1856. 

fB.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Land-Systems  of  British  India,  1892,  I,  106-108,  113, 
129-130,  145-146,  149-153,  155-156,  157-159,  161-163,  168-169. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  585 

the  graveyard,  and  the  cattle-stand  are,  is  claimed  by  them;  and  the 
others  live  in  and  use  it  only  by  permission — perhaps  on  payment  of 
small  dues  to  the  proprietary  body.  The  same  body  claims  jointly 
(whether  or  not  they  have  separate  enjoyment  of  portions)  the  entire 
area  of  the  village,  both  the  cultivated  land  and  the  waste.  If  this  waste 
is  kept  as  such,  they  alone  will  receive  and  distribute  any  profits  from 
grazing,  sale  of  grass  or  jungle  fruits,  or  fisheries;  if  it  is  rented  to  ten- 
ants, they  will  divide  the  rents;  if  it  is  partitioned  and  broken  up  for 
tillage,  each  sharer  will  get  his  due  portion.  There  are  other  differences, 
but  these  suffice  for  our  immediate  purpose.  (This  is  joint  or  landlord- 
village  type.) 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  first  type  of  village  is  the  one  most  closely 
connected  with  Hindu  government  and  Hindu  ideas.  And  the  second 
type  is  found  strongly  developed  among  the  Panjab  frontier  tribes  who 
were  converted  to  Muhammadanism:  it  is  also  universal  among  }at, 
Gujar,  and  other  tribes  in  the  Central  Panjab,  as  well  as  among  con- 
quering Aryan  tribes  and  descendants  of  chiefs  and  nobles  in  other 
parts. 

Meaning  of  the  term  "community" — Though  we  talk  about  "vil- 
lage communities,"  we  ought  not  to  give  that  term  any  meaning  of 
such  a  kind  as  to  indicate  anything  like  a  communistic  or  socialistic 
right  or  interest.  As  regards  a  large  proportion  of  villages  there  is  no 
evidence  whatever  of  their  being  held  actually  in  common  in  that  sense. 
Villages  held  for  a  time  in  common  are  always  so  held  by  the  joint 
descendants  of  a  conqueror  or  chief  who  in  some  way  acquired  the 
estate.  The  descendants  are  jealously  disposed  to  insist  on  equal  privi- 
leges and  position,  and  so  remain  joint  as  long  as  circumstances  render 
it  possible.  I  have  come  across  a  few  instances  where  a  tribe  (in  the 
Panjab)  has  from  the  first  held  a  part  of  the  land  in  common,  but  there 
it  is  due  to  local  circumstances,  and  the  produce  is  always  divided  out 
according  to  certain  shares.  The  term  "community"  might,  if  not  ex- 
plained, be  apt  to  mislead.  It  can  be  correctly  used  only  with  reference 
to  the  fact  that  in  many  villages  families  live  together  under  a  system 
which  makes  them  joint  owners;  while  in  others  the  people  merely 
live  under  similar  conditions  and  under  a  sense  of  tribal  or  caste  con- 
nection, and  with  a  common  system  of  local  government.  It  cannot 
be  used  as  suggesting  any  idea  of  having  the  land  or  anything  else 
"in  common."  ,  .  . 

Conclusion  as  to  the  oldest  form  of  village. — The  first  (and,  as  far 
as  we  know,  the  oldest)  form  of  village  is  where  the  cultivators— prac- 
tically owners  of  their  several  family  holdings — live  under  a  common 
headman,  with  certain  common  officers  and  artisans  who  serve  them, 


586  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  which  presently;  and  there  is  no  landlord  (class  or  individual)  over 
the  whole.  .  .  .  For  this  reason  I  have  called  the  first  of  the  two  types 
of  village  above  spoken  of  the  Ralyatwari  or  non-landlord  village. 

Modes  in  which  the  second  type  arises.— Let  us  now  enquire  how  the 
second  class  of  village  which  I  have  stated  to  exist,  comes  to  light  or 
has  grown  up.  It  is  distinguished  by  the  fact,  which  the  reader  will 
have  already  surmised,  that  there  is  a  landlord,  or  body  of  landlords, 
claiming  right  over  an  entire  village,  intermediate  between  the  Raja 
or  chief,  and  the  humbler  body  of  resident  cultivators  and  dependents. 
It  will  be  found  to  be  (a)  a  growth  among  and  over  the  villages  of  the 
first  type;  and  (b)  to  be  the  form  resulting  from  the  original  conquest 
and  occupation  of  land — as  far  as  we  know — previously  unoccupied, 
by  certain  tribes  and  leaders  of  colonists  who  settled  in  the  Panjab 
and  elsewhere.  I  shall  first  enumerate  the  different  origins  of  which 
we  have  distinct  evidence,  and  then  I  shall  offer  explanatory  remarks 
on  each  head  seriatim. 

Every  one  of  these  heads  is  derived  from  an  observation  of  the  re- 
corded facts  in  Oudh,  the  Northwest  Provinces,  Madras,  Bombay,  and 
the  Panjab. 

The  village  of  the  second  type  arises: 

(1)  Out  of  the  dismemberment  of  the  old  Raja's  or  chiefs  estate, 
and  the  division  or  partition  of  larger  estates. 

(2)  Out  of  grants  made  by  the  Raja  to  courtiers,  favorites,  minor 
members  of  the  royal  family,  etc. 

(3)  By  the  later  growth  and  usurpation  of  government  revenue 
officials. 

(4)  In  quite  recent  times  by  the  growth  of  revenue  farmers  and 
purchasers,  when  the  village  has  been  sold  under  the  first  laws  for 
the  recovery  of  arrears  of  revenue. 

(5)  From  the  original  establishment  of  special  clans  and  families 
by  conquest  or  occupation,  and  by  the  settlement  of  associated  bands 
of  village  families  and  colonists  in  comparatively  late  times.  (This 
applies  especially  to  the  Panjab.) 

Importance  of  the  distinction  as  regards  the  revenue  system. — The 
existence  of  two  types  of  village  is  a  fact  of  primary  importance  to  the 
revenue  student,  apart  from  its  interest  as  a  matter  of  history  and  of 
the  development  of  land  tenures.  Wherever  the  villages  consist  of  the 
loose  aggregates  of  separate  cultivators,  it  has  been  found  advisable 
to  adopt  what  we  shall  presently  describe  as  the  Raiyattvari  method  of 
revenue  management,  under  which  each  field  or  holding  is  separately 
assessed,  and  no  holder  is  responsible  for  anything  else  but  his  own 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  587 

revenue,  nor  has  he  any  common  right  in  an  allotted  area  of  waste. 
He  is,  of  course,  provided  with  certain  privileges  of  grazing  and  wood- 
cutting, but  the  waste  or  unoccupied  lands  are  at  the  disposal  of  Gov- 
ernment, and  given  to  whoever  first  applies  offering  to  pay  the  assess- 
ment, when  they  are  not  reserved  for  any  other  special  purpose.  Where 
there  are  landlord  villages,  the  "North- Western"  or  "village"  system 
of  settlement  is  followed;  the  waste  is  given  over  to  the  villages;  the 
entire  estate  so  made  up  (waste  and  arable  together)  is  assessed  to  one 
sum  of  revenue,  for  which  the  landlord,  or  landlord  body,  are  jointly 
and  severally  liable,  and  which  (in  case  of  several  co-sharers)  they  ap- 
portion among  themselves  to  pay  according  to  their  customary  method 
of  sharing,  i.e.,  according  to  the  constitution  of  the  body. 

Differences  and  common  features  of  the  two  types  of  village:  the 
village  artisans. — Let  us  now  glance  at  the  characteristic  differences  be- 
tween the  Raiyatwari  and  the  "landlord"  village. 

Certain  features,  however,  both  have  in  common.  In  both  there  is 
an  area  of  cultivated  land  and  an  area  (very  often)  for  grazing  and 
wood-cutting,  though  the  title,  and  the  method  of  using  that,  are  of 
course  markedly  different.  In  both  there  will  probably  (but  not  al- 
ways) be  a  central  residence  site,  and  surrounding  it,  an  open  space 
for  a  pond,  grove,  cattle-stand,  etc.  In  both  there  will  be  the  arable 
fields  with  their  boundary  marks,  and  their  little  subdivisions  of  earth 
ridges  made  for  retaining  the  rain  or  other  irrigation  water.  Under 
both  forms,  the  people  require  the  aid  of  certain  functionaries,  artisans, 
and  traders.  They  need  a  village  messenger  and  night-watch,  as  well  as 
some  one  to  guard  the  crops;  if  it  is  an  irrigated  village,  probably  some 
one  will  be  required  to  distribute  the  water,  to  stop  this  channel  and 
open  that,  when,  according  to  the  village  custom  of  sharing  the  water, 
the  different  parties  have  had  their  due  share.  A  potter  will  be  required 
to  furnish  the  simple  household  utensils  or  to  make  waterpots  where 
the  Persian  wheel  is  used  in  wells.  A  seller  of  brass  or  copper  pots  will 
also  be  found  in  larger  villages.  A  cobbler  will  make  the  village  shoes 
and  the  plough  harness  or  gear.  A  carpenter  will  fashion  the  agricul- 
tural implements  and  help  in  the  housebuilding.  A  money  broker 
will  be  needed,  and  some  one  to  sell  tobacco,  drugs,  salt,  flour,  spices, 
oil,  and  other  necessaries  of  life.  Sometimes  a  dancing  girl  is  attached 
to  the  village;  always  a  barber,  who  is  the  agent  for  carrying  marriage 
proposals,  besides  his  function  as  barber  and  also  surgeon.  Sometimes 
there  is  an  astrologer  and  even  a  "witch-finder."  The  staff  varies  in 
different  places  according  to  locality.  In  Central  India  we  find  this 
staff  theoretically  twelve  in  number.  .  .  . 

In  England  such  artisans  in  a  village  would  casually  settle  where  the 


588  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

prospects  of  trade  invited  and  would  indifferently  accept  work  from 
any  comer,  being  paid  by  the  job.  But  in  India,  and  this  applies  equal- 
ly to  both  forms  of  village,  the  village  community  invites  or  attracts 
to  itself  the  requisite  bands  of  artisans,  finds  them  almost  exclusive 
employment,  and  does  not  pay  by  the  job  for  services  rendered,  but 
establishes  a  regular  income  or  customary  mode  of  annual  payment, 
on  receipt  of  which  every  village  resident  is  entitled  to  have  his 
work  done  without  further  (individual)  payment.  In  Central  India, 
where  the  system  of  remuneration  by  watan,  or  official  holdings  of 
land,  found  most  favor,  we  find  not  only  the  headman  or  patel  and 
the  accountant  (fat  for  ni)  with  their  official  holdings  of  land,  but  also 
petty  holdings,  rent-free,  for  the  potter,  the  sweeper,  the  water-carrier, 
etc.  In  other  places  the  more  common  method  was  to  allow  the  arti- 
sans certain  definite  shares  when  the  grain  was  divided  at  the  har- 
vest; besides  which  they  received  periodically  certain  perquisites,  in 
the  shape  of  blankets,  shoes,  tobacco,  or  sugar-cane  juice.  .  .  . 

The  headman. — Having  noticed  what  the  villages  have  in  common, 
we  may  proceed  to  describe  the  points  in  which  they  differ.  If  I  had  to 
select  a  characteristic  difference  between  the  two  types  of  village, 
I  should  find  it  in  the  "headman."  When  the  village  consists  of  a  num- 
ber of  loosely  aggregated  cultivating  occupants,  it  is  very  natural  that 
they  should  choose  or  recognize  some  one  of  their  number  to  be  their 
headman.  Possibly  this  man  is,  or  represents,  the  leader  of  the  original 
settlers,  or  is  in  some  other  way  marked  out  as  a  trusty  and  privileged 
person.  He  is  referred  to  to  decide  local  disputes,  to  allot  lands  when 
cultivation  extends,  and  so  forth.  And  when  the  village  comes  under 
a  definite  state  organization  and  pays  a  revenue  to  the  ruler,  most 
naturally  that  ruler  looks  to  the  headman  for  the  punctual  realization 
of  his  rights.  His  importance  and  dignity  are  then  enhanced  because 
he  becomes  vested  with  a  certain  measure  of  state  authority,  and  is 
probably  remunerated  by  the  state.  His  office  is  hereditary,  or  becomes 
so,  and  the  state  does  not  interfere,  except  in  some  cases  of  manifest 
personal  incompetence,  and  then  probably  another  member  of  the 
family  is  selected,  at  any  rate  to  the  practical  functions  of  the  office, 

Where  the  headman  is  (as  in  Central  India)  allowed  an  official  hold- 
ing of  land — his  watan,  as  it  is  called — the  office  becomes  still  more 
desirable.  In  these  parts  it  will  generally  be  found  that  the  patel  owns 
the  best  land;  he  is  also  the  owner  of  the  central  site  in  the  village,  fre- 
quently an  enclosed  space  of  some  size,  fortified  perhaps  by  mud  walls; 
and  within  this  only  members  of  the  family,  all  of  whom  will  be  ad- 
dressed as  patel,  reside,  when  other  houses  are  situated  around  and  be- 
low. We  shall  afterwards  hear  of  great  princes  being  anxious  to  hold 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  589 

the  "patelship"  of  villages  and  the  watan  land  pertaining  to  it,  because 
of  the  permaneifce  and  stability  of  this  form  of  right. 

Now  in  the  landlord  village,  naturally  the  headman  as  such,  did  not 
exist.  The  proprietary  families  were  too  jealous  of  their  equal  rights 
to  allow  of  any  great  degree  of  authority  residing  in  one  head.  Their 
system  was  to  manage  village  affairs  by  a  council  of  the  heads  of  fam- 
ilies called  panchayat. 

It  is  true  that  in  landlord  villages,  either  one  headman,  or  one  head- 
man for  each  division,  is  now  to  be  found;  but  that  is  an  appointment 
of  the  state,  and  for  administrative  purposes.  In  former  days  such  a 
single  headman,  selected  to  answer  for  the  revenue  and  deal  generally 
on  behalf  of  the  villages  with  the  state  officers,  was  called  muqaddam. 
In  our  own  times,  such  a  headman  has  received  the  name  of  lombardar 
(the  representative  whose  name  bears  a  separate  "number"  in  the 
collector's  register  of  persons  primarily  responsible  for  the  revenue), 
and  this  modern  term  at  once  marks  that,  in  the  landlord  village,  the 
headman  is  no  part  of  the  original  social  system.  .  .  . 

Constitution  of  the  Raiyatwari  or  non-landlord  milage, — Naturally 
there  is  little  to  be  said  about  the  constitution  of  the  non-landlord  vil- 
lage. There  is  no  room  for  any  variety  in  tenure;  for  each  man  is  mas- 
ter and  manager  of  his  own  holding.  Modern  law  defines  his  tenure  as 
"occupant,"  or  leaves  it  undefined  as  the  case  may  be,  and  there  is  no 
question  of  sharing  on  this  principle  or  that.  .  .  . 

There  is  much  more  to  be  said  about  the  landlord  village,  because 
it  is  in  the  nature  of  things  that  there  should  be  changes  in  its  course 
of  existence.  .  .  .  Where  there  was  a  landlord  claim  over  the  village, 
such  as  that  of  a  revenue  farmer  who  had  become  proprietor,  or  of 
some  chief  or  other  high  caste  personage  who  had,  many  generations 
ago,  acquired  the  superior  title,  they  expressed  the  right  by  the  term 
zamindari.  I  suppose  it  was  meant  that  the  landlord  in  his  small  estate 
had  that  sort  of  not  very  definite  "holding  of  land,"  which  is  indicated 
by  the  native  term,  and  which  was  also  applied  to  the  much  larger 
estate-holder  called  zamindar  in  Bengal. 

Meaning  of  zamindari  village. — If  the  landlord  were  a  single  person, 
the  term  indicating  the  tenure  was  zamindari  ^halis  (simple  or  sole 
landlord  tenure).  When  however  the  original  grantee  or  acquirer  of 
the  village  had  died,  and  was  represented  by  a  family  which  as  yet 
remained  joint,  they  called  it  zamindari  mushtar\a,  the  joint  or  co- 
sharing  landlord  tenure.  .  .  .  "Zamindari  village  tenure"  meant  the 
tenure  of  a  still  undivided  joint-body. 

In  joint  tenures,  as  long  as  the  body  could  agree  together,  they  would 
remain  undivided.  In  such  cases  the  land  was  generally  leased  out  to 


590  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tenants;  or  only  certain  fields  cultivated  by  one  or  more  of  the  landlord 
body,  for  which  rent  was  credited  to  the  community.  One  of  the  fam- 
ily would  act  as  "manager,"  and  keep  an  account  of  the  rents  received 
and  any  other  profits,  and  would  charge  against  this  the  government 
revenue  and  cesses,  and  the  charges  debitable  for  the  village  as  a  whole 
—cost  of  alms,  of  entertainment  of  strangers,  etc.— and  finally  would 
distribute  the  surplus  according  to  shares. 

The  pattidari  village.— But  very  often— in  quite  the  majority  of  cases 
indeed — the  family  agreed  to  divide;  so  that  many  joint  villages  are 
found  in  a  state  of  division  or  severalty  as  regards  the  cultivation  and 
enjoyment  of  the  land.  This  may  have  existed  only  for  a  few  years, 
or  it  may  have  been  so  from  "time  immemorial."  Ordinarily,  when  the 
family  is  descended  from  some  single  village  "founder,"  the  shares  will 
be  mainly  those  of  the  ancestral  "tree,"  and  follow  the  law  of  inheri- 
tance. A  sharer  here  and  there  may  be  holding  a  few  (or  many)  acres 
more  or  less  than  his  share;  but  the  general  scheme  is  easily  traced  and 
is  acknowledged  by  the  co-sharers.  When  this  is  the  case  the  village  is 
said  to  be  pattidari,  because  the  primary  division,  representing  the  main 
branches  of  the  family  are  called  patti.  It  will  be  borne  in  mind  that 
pattidari  properly  means  not  only  a  village  held  in  severalty,  but  also 
held  in  shares  which  are  wholly  (or  at  least  in  part)  ancestral,  i.e.,  those 
of  the  law  of  inheritance.  .  .  . 

The  bhaiachara  village,— One  of  the  first  forms  of  joint  village  to  be 
discovered  (in  Benares)  was  a  form  of  village  called  bhaiachara,  i.e., 
held  by  the  custom  (achara)  of  the  brotherhood  (bhai).  There  is  no 
sort  of  question  that  villages  were  of  the  joint  type,  i.e.,  they  were  held 
by  castemen  of  the  higher  orders,  and  that  they  formed  close  communi- 
ties, regarding  themselves  as  landlords  and  superior  to  all  other  peo- 
ple on  the  estate;  but  still  they  did  not  adopt  any  system  of  sharing 
based  on  the  place  in  the  ancestral  tree,  but  started  (when  the  village 
first  was  founded)  with  an  equal  division  of  land.  .  .  . 

The  other  distinguishing  feature  of  this  tenure  was  that  the  holders 
did  not  merely  undertake  the  share  of  the  revenue  burden  which  cor- 
responded to  their  fractional  interest  in  the  estate,  but  they  distributed 
so  that  the  payment  should  always  correspond  to  the  holding;  and  in 
many  of  the  villages  .  .  .  there  was  a  system  of  equalization  known  as 
bhejbarar,  which  consisted  sometimes  in  exchange  of  holdings,  but 
more  especially  in  a  redistribution  of  the  payments,  according  to  the 
actual  holdings;  so  that  if  one  sharer  in  the  course  of  time  found  his 
holding  diminished  or  its  productive  power  fall  off,  he  could— or 
rather,  when  things  were  ripe  for  it,  the  community  could— procure  a 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  591 

readjustment  of  the  burdens  according  to  the  actual  state  of  each  hold- 
ing and  the  relative  value  of  them. 

Present  state  of  the  joint  milages. — In  the  North- West  Provinces  the 
sentiment  of  joint-landlordship  seems  to  be  decaying.  Some  of  the  vil- 
lages were,  as  I  said,  never  really  joint  at  all;  they  became  so  under  our 
system;  hence  a  strong  principle  of  coherence  is  hardly  to  be  looked 
for.  Of  those  that  are  really  joint,  many  are  owned  by  families  de- 
scended from  an  ancestor  who  was  once  ruler,  conqueror,  or  grantee; 
and  a  great  many  from  revenue  farmers  and  auction  purchasers.  None 
of  these  had  any  attachment  to  land  as  land,  since  they  did  not  belong 
to  castes  who  themselves  cultivate  the  soiL  I  believe  I  am  right  in  say- 
ing that  the  indiVidualization  of  land  and  the  loss  of  the  joint  inter- 
est is  proceeding  apace.  .  .  .  The  result  is  the  growth  of  independent 
petty  proprietors,  but  still  more  of  capitalist  landlords,  who  buy  up 
first  one  field  and  then  (availing  themselves  of  the  right  of  preemp- 
tion) another.  They  are  not  men  of  the  agricultural  class,  but  must  em- 
ploy tenants;  these  naturally  are  found  in  the  old  landowning  classes, 
whose  status  is  thus  slowly  changing. 

In  the  Panjab  the  conditions  are  more  favorable  to  the  joint  village; 
there  is  a  total  absence  of  communities  deriving  their  origin  from  the 
revenue  farmer  or  auction  purchaser.  The  villages  are  almost  every- 
where due  to  foundation  by  colonists  or  tribes  of  superior  strength  and 
character,  most  of  whom  are  agriculturists;  and  they  seem  to  have  re- 
tained more  than  elsewhere  the  sense  of  union  and  the  power  of  main- 
taining their  original  status.  Governed  still  by  custom,  they  have  hardly 
emerged — at  least  in  many  districts — from  the  stage  when  the  feeling 
that  land  belongs  as  much  to  the  family  as  to  the  individual  is  pre- 
dominant. The  law  does  not  allow  of  perfect  partition,  i.e.,  dissolving 
the  joint  responsibility,  except  at  Settlement  and  under  special  condi- 
tions. There  is  a  rather  strong  law  of  preemption,  which  generally 
enables  any  one  in  the  village  body  to  prevent  an  outsider  purchasing 
land.  The  customary  law  still  restricts  widows  to  a  life  tenure,  and 
prevents  them  alienating;  while  in  many  tribes  a  childless  male  pro- 
prietor cannot  alienate  to  the  prejudice  of  his  next  heirs  without  their 
consent.  There  is  also  in  many  parts  a  strong  clannish  feeling,  which 
keeps  villages  together.  Nevertheless,  the  power  of  free  sale  and  mort- 
gage is  producing  its  results:  nonagricultural  capitalists  are  buying  up 
land,  and  estates  slowly  undergo  a  change.  Strangers  are  introduced; 
the  village  site  enlarges,  and  the  non-proprietary  classes  successfully 
resist  the  payment  of  dues  to  a  proprietary  body,  and  claim  the  right 
to  sell  their  houses  and  sites;  and  gradually  the  old  landlord  body 
sinks  into  oblivion.  If  large  estates  accumulate  in  the  hands  of  indi- 


592  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

viduals,  they  will  again  become  joint  if  the  heirs  are  numerous,  and 
then,  as  the  property  will  be  not  in  one  village,  the  estate  will  more 
and  more  cease  to  be  synonymous  with  the  village* 

70.  D.  H.  KULP:  LANDOWNERSHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION  IN  A 
CHINESE  VILLAGE  (PHENIX  VILLAGE)! 

There  are  three  kinds  o£  landownership :  public,  the  income  from 
which  is  devoted  to  interests  of  the  village  as  a  whole — schools,  more 
public  land,  charity,  loans  to  poor  at  a  low  rate  of  interest  (!),  build- 
ing or  repair  of  roads,  and  so  on;  village  (sib)  ancestral;  family  ances- 
tral .  .  . 

Theoretically  there  is  private  ownership  but  in  reality  the  head  of  the 
moiety  holds  in  stewardship  for  those  kin  dependent  upon  him  the 
resources  he  possesses.  That  is  why  inheritance  operates  under  the  cus- 
tomary law  of  equal  division  among  surviving  males. 

Public  lands  are  not  communistic.  They  are  not  shared  equally  or 
according  to  need  on  the  basis  of  individuals  but  of  groups.  They  are 
owned  collectively.  They  cannot  be  sold  unless  the  signature  of  every 
male  who  holds  responsibility  for  other  members  of  the  village  kin- 
group  is  set  in  approval. 

So  also  the  ancestral  lands  that  support  the  worship  of  ancestors. 
Between  groups — moieties  or  branch  families — there  is  real  commu- 
nism in  these  lands,  because  each  group  shares  and  shares  alike  in  turn. 
But  the  unit  of  communistic  usufruct  is  not  the  individual  but  the 
group  involved  in  the  arrangement.  The  head  of  the  particular  group, 
the  chia-chang,  possesses  real  privileges  and  prerogatives  but  they  are 
conditioned  and  limited,  as  indicated  above,  by  his  familial  responsi- 
bilities and  by  social  opinion. 

The  nearest  the  people  come  to  communistic  arrangements  is  in  the 
smaller  moiety  and  in  the  natural  family.  Especially  might  this  be  true 
where  the  natural  family  coincides  with  the  moiety,  or  branch  family, 
as  is  sometimes  the  case  where  final  division  of  inheritance  has  been 
made.  In  such  groups  the  blood  members  and  marriage  members  en- 
joy the  use  of  familist  resources  as  need  arises,  according  to  personal 
wishes  or  conventions.  But  even  here  the  authority  rests  in  the  head  of 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — Sec  other  details  in  the  four  volumes  of  Baden-Powell;  D,  R. 
Gadgil,  The  Industrial  Evolution  of  India  in  Recent  Times,  Madras,  Oxford  U.  Press, 
1924,  chaps,  v,  vii,  ix;  the  works  of  Howard,  Altekar,  Venkatasubrahmanyan,  Sarkar 
(cited  in  the  preceding  chapter);  S.  Kasava,  Studies  in  Indian  Rural  Economics,  1927; 
R.  Mukerjce,  Democracies  of  the  East,  1923;  J.  B.  Phcar,  The  Aryan  Village  of  India 
and  Ceylon,  1880;  see  also  works  cited  in  the  preceding  chapters. 

t  Adapted  from  D.  H.  Kulp,  Country  Life  in  South  China:  The  Sociology  of  Fam- 
ilism,  New  York,  1925,  pp.  101-104,  148-150.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the 
author. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  593 

this  group  and  such  usufruct  rests  upon  social  opinion  and  pleasure 
of  the  head.  There  is  no  more  communism  than  is  found  in  an  ordi- 
nary well-organized  family  in  England  or  America. 

In  this  same  type  of  group  one  comes  closest  to  real  private  owner- 
ship of  property,  but  only  of  chattels.  Houses  and  lands  and  some  chat- 
tels are  owned  in  collectivism  or,  better  still,  in  familism.  The  nearest 
one  can  get  to  private  ownership  of  chattels  is  in  the  following  ways: 

Beds,  chairs,  boxes,  toilet  buckets,  together  with  personal  effects  such 
as  clothes,  shoes,  hats,  belong  to  the  husband.  .  .  .  The  wife  owns  her 
own  clothes,  shoes,  earrings,  and  other  things  brought  with  her  when 
married.  Sons  own  their  clothing,  shoes,  and  boxes.  Concubines  enjoy 
the  ownership  privileges  of  a  wife.  Servants  own  the  money  they  re- 
ceive as  wages,  if  any,  and  their  clothes.  Slaves  may  own  clothes  and 
sometimes  even  a  small  portion  of  land.  But  none  except  the  head  of 
the  group  may  sell  or  otheiwise  dispose  of  any  of  these  chattels  con- 
sidered as  belonging  to  them  without  the  consent  of  the  head.  .  .  . 

Practically  whatever  private  ownership  does  exist  seems  to  rest  pri- 
marily in  the  head  of  the  moiety,  or  what  is  called  herein  the  conven- 
tional family.  He  enjoys  the  usufruct  of  all  he  can  earn  from  the  re- 
sources inherited  or  otherwise  gained.  And  yet  there  are  limits  to  his 
freedom  or  his  whims.  He  may  gamble  away  the  wealth  or  resources 
of  his  group  or  lose  it  through  speculation  or  business  venture,  but  his 
community  condemns  him  for  careless  administration  of  his  responsi- 
bilities. His  own  desires  to  pass  on  to  his  descendants  wealth  by  which 
they  may  worship  his  spirit  and  reflect  glory  upon  his  memory  in  the 
village  community  are  strong  deterrents  upon  whims  and  personal 
pleasures  and  potent  incentives  to  achieve  successful  stewardship. 

The  economic  system  of  Phenix  Village  must  therefore  be  thought 
of  as  neither  communistic,  private,  nor  socialistic,  but  jamtlistic. 

71.  N.  A.  PREOBRAJENSKY:  A  CASTLE  MANOR  OF  BOHEMIA  IN 
THE  FIFTEENTH  AND  SIXTEENTH  CENTURIES* 

Every  castle  manor  had  its  own  manager  (gctman)  who,  besides 
managing  the  estate  of  his  lord,  w?js  the  > 

gard  to  subordinates.  The  getm 
him  in  the  management,  for  he 
Certain  branches  of  the  castle  eco 
visors;  for  instance,  the  woods  v 
charge  of  fishmasters,  etc.  TJ 

*  Adapted  from  N.  Preobrajensky,  / 
Sixteenth  Centuries  (Russ.)»  Prague,  1 
author's  permission. 


594  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

yearly  rotation  and  harvesting  of  crops,  required  the  personal  presence 
of  the  getman.  There  was  also  an  assistant  manager,  purfoabit,  who 
helped  the  getman  and  was  the  second  man  in  the  castle,  saving  the 
getman' s  time  in  the  general  supervision  of  the  work  of  the  manor  by 
liberating  him  from  the  daily  accounts  and  personal  supervision  of  the 
laborers.  This  second  man,  supervising  the  execution  of  the  orders  of 
the  getman,  was  closer  to  the  working  people  of  the  castle. 

Early  in  the  morning  the  second  man,  purfyrabii,  used  to  appear  at 
the  castle  gates  where  the  workmen  were  assembled.  Potstein,  a  large 
fortress,  may  be  taken  as  an  example  of  a  castle  manor.  Special  pre- 
cautions were  taken  at  the  beginning  of  every  day.  First  the  "lower 
guardsmen,"  who  spent  the  nights  outside  of  the  castle  wall,  sleeping 
with  the  field  workmen,  were  called  from  the  wall.  Before  entering 
the  castle,  all  these  people  had  to  look  around  very  carefully  before 
they  could  go  up  the  hill  to  the  gates  of  the  castle,  which  were  opened 
for  them.  Every  castle  was  guarded  day  and  night  in  order  that  no  mis- 
chief might  happen.  At  night  the  gates  of  the  castle  were  locked  in 
the  presence  of  the  second  man.  Every  morning  and  evening  all  the 
workmen  were  assembled  at  the  gates  and  inspected.  Those  who  were 
late  could  not  get  into  the  castle  and  were  required  to  account  for 
their  absence  the  next  morning.  All  the  lights  of  the  castle  went  out  at 
a  certain  time,  and  everybody  was  supposed  to  sleep.  The  manager  and 
his  assistant  maintained  general  order.  It  was  a  duty  of  the  second  man 
to  prosecute  drunkenness  and  card  playing,  activities  which  the  castle 
workmen  tried  to  carry  on  with  the  peasants  during  the  day  and 
among  themselves  at  night.  Either  the  manager,  the  second  man,  or 
both  of  them  spent  the  night  in  the  castle.  In  case  they  had  to  be  absent, 
they  gave  the  necessary  orders  to  a  third  person,  the  scribe  or  secretary. 
The  land  property  of  the  castle  consisted  of  many  estates  of  culti- 
vated fields,  the  so-called  "farms  of  the  lord,"  which  were  scattered 
around  in  various  places.  Each  farm  was  in  charge  of  a  foreman,  the 
"eldest"  or  superior,  who  received  a  salary  from  the  lord.  This  fore- 
man, in  addition  to  being  responsible  for  the  farm  inventory,  managed 
the  work  of  the  laborers  and  that  of  the  working  girls  who  cared  for 
.^he  cows  and  poultry.  The  girls  were  also  in  charge  of  a  forewoman, 
ho  was '  '  ^dest"  or  su^~;or. 

"k*  *e  or  four  o'clock  in  the  morning, 

the  fields.  The  plowing  was  sup- 

t  time,  and  good  seed  grain  was 

ge  of  the  field  work,  supervised 

.  Wheat  received  especial  atten- 

beer  made  it  a  very  important 

vegetable  oil  was  made,  was 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  595 

planted  on  the  soil  of  drained  fisheries.  The  home  production  of  oil 
from  hemp  was  an  economy  in  that  it  made  the  purchase  of  oil  un- 
necessary. The  manager  and  the  second  man  went  to  the  fields  dur- 
ing harvest  time  in  order  to  rush  the  laborers  and  to  prevent  any 
stealing  of  the  produce.  During  the  winter  the  laborers  were  utilized 
in  various  tasks,  such  as  woodwork,  the  preparation  of  fuel,  and  so  on. 
The  instructions  given  in  regard  to  the  estates  of  the  lords  who  were 
directly  adjacent  to  the  castle  furnish  an  idea  of  the  general  manner  of 
living  of  the  laborers.  The  servants  and  laborers  of  such  an  estate  lived 
in  a  building  attached  to  the  castle.  The  "superior"  gave  orders  for  the 
work  every  morning,  at  four  o'clock  during  the  winter  and  at  three 
o'clock  during  the  summer.  The  superiors  of  such  near-by  farms  were 
under,  the  direct  supervision  of  either  the  manager  or  the  second  man. 
Of  the  twenty  laborers  of  a  near-by  estate  in  Potstein,  two  were  in 
charge  of  a  "fishmaster,"  and  two  were  watching  the  river  to  prevent 
fishing  by  others  and  to  get  salmon  (trout)  for  their  lord.  Eight  had 
to  remain  in  the  castle  and  could  not  leave  it  without  the  permission 
of  the  manager.  Two  had  to  know  how  to  help  in  the  garden  in  the 
spring  and  how  to  graft  and  prune  trees.  The  laborers  who  lived  in 
or  near  the  castle  were  direct  subordinates  of  the  manager  or  the  sec- 
ond man,  and  hence  differed  in  this  respect  from  the  laborers  of  the 
more  remote  farms  of  the  same  lord. 

In  the  morning  the  assistant  manager,  or  second  man,  had  to  give 
orders  to  the  servants.  During  the  day  he  had  to  supervise  the  various 
parts  of  the  household— the  storehouse,  the  kitchen,  the  bakery,  the 
smithy,  the  brewery,  the  butcher  shop,  the  yards,  and  so  on.  Most  of 
his  attention  was  given  to  the  kitchen,  for  both  the  workmen  in  the 
castle  and  those  on  the  farms  received  their  food  from  the  lord.  The 
amount  of  food  was  definitely  prescribed.  In  Krumlevo,  for  instance, 
each  servant  received  six  small  loaves  of  bread  in  the  winter  and  eight 
during  the  more  strenuous  working  period  of  the  summer.  Although 
the  servants  were  not  given  too  much  food,  there  was  a  prohibition 
against  cutting  their  ration,  for  it  was  realized  that  it  was  easier  to 
manage  people  who  were  satisfied  and  not  discontented.  The  ration 
was  distributed  at  a  certain  time  of  the  day.  No  bread  was  given  from 
morning  until  noon,  from  afternoon  until  supper  time,  or  after  supper. 
In  Krumlevo  an  exception  was  made  for  the  personal  servants  of  "her 
ladyship."  After  the  morning  distribution  of  provisions,  the  assistant 
manager  used  to  go  to  the  kitchen  to  see  what  was  being  cooked  for 
the  servants,  and  to  give  any  necessary  instructions.  Tablecloths,  plates, 
and  spoons  had  to  be  kept  clean.  "Dirt  rots  more  table  linen  than  use.'* 
In  Potstein  each  of  the  servants  received  one  loaf  of  bread  for  break- 
fast, one  for  supper,  and  as  much  as  he  could  eat  for  dinner.  The 


596  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

assistant  manager  was  given  permission  to  distribute  two  or  three  addi- 
tional loaves  of  bread  to  workmen  who,  according  to  his  estimation, 
were  deserving.  In  Krumlevo  the  baker  distributed  two  loaves  per  per- 
son during  breakfast,  and  everyone  had  to  be  satisfied  with  this 
amount.  Bread  was  usually  brought  to  the  table  only  after  all  the 
servants  were  in  their  places  and  the  main  dish  had  been  served.  It  was 
an  old  tradition  that  only  higher  employes  were  given  their  bread  at 
the  time  the  table  was  set.  A  bell  rang  at  the  hour  appointed  for  the 
meals,  and  the  servants  assembled  in  a  large  hall.  The  second  man  was 
always  present  in  the  dining  hall  while  the  servants  were  eating, 
though  he  ate  separately  from  them.  Guests,  noise,  disorder,  drunken- 
ness, swearing,  and  indecent  conversation  were  prohibited  at  the  table. 
The  meal  was  kept  for  servants  who  were  away  on  business  at  meal- 
time, and  hence  the  cooks  always  inquired  as  to  who  was  absent  and 
why. 

Servants  were  not  permitted  to  take  the  food  which  they  could  not 
eat  at  the  table  with  them.  If  any  one  did  it,  he  was  arrested  by  the 
second  man,  and  the  incident  brought  before  the  attention  of  the  lord. 
The  food  which  was  sent  from  the  castle  to  the  laborers  on  the  farms 
during  harvesting  times  was  limited  to  the  most  necessary  things. 
Thriftiness  and  the  desire  to  produce  as  much  as  possible  at  home  in 
order  to  avoid  buying  anything  were  basic  in  the  system  of  manage- 
ment. The  flour  was  exclusively  from  the  lord's  farms,  and  it  was  pro- 
hibited to  take  it  anywhere  else.  Among  the  various  articles  of  food, 
only  salt,  seasonings,  and  hops  were  purchased.  The  expense  of  the 
hops  was  covered  by  the  income  from  selling  the  surplus  beer  pro- 
duced at  the  castle.  In  addition,  the  manager,  or  getman,  was  ordered 
to  organize  a  special  hops-growing  field  in  order  to  save  even  this  item 
of  expense.  Rye,  wheat,  peas,  millet,  buckwheat  for  gruel,  barley  for 
gruel  and  beer,  oats  for  horses,  poultry  and  geese,  lard,  corned  beef, 
fish,  poultry,  eggs,  pigs,  milk,  cheese,  and  vegetable  oil  were  among 
the  things  produced  on  the  manor.  Each  article  was  listed  in  the  ac- 
count books  according  to  its  market  price. 

Other  items  of  monetary  expense  for  the  castle  manor  were  not  large. 
They  were:  (1)  money  paid  for  iron  (nails  and  bolts),  steel  (for  re- 
pairing wagons  and  so  on),  harnesses,  bridles,  ropes,  tar,  and  clay  pot- 
tery; (2)  money  for  paper;  (3)  expenses  for  the  pedestrian  and  horse 
messengers  of  the  manager. 

Despite  the  fact  that  the  monetary  expenses  were  small,  the  accounts 
which  were  kept  of  them  were  even  more  careful  than  those  of  the 
natural  supplies.  The  carefulness  with  which  the  weekly  accounts  were 
made  and  verified  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  manager  or  getman 
signed  the  bills  only  in  the  presence  of  the  higher  employes,  including 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  597 

the  fishmaster,  the  superiors  of  the  farms,  and  the  assistant  manager. 
Each  of  these  persons  had  to  verify  the  figures  which  directly  con- 
cerned his  field.  The  items  of  income  and  expense  which  amounted  to 
"many  thousands"  of  crowns  were  subject  to  a  still  more  careful  ac- 
counting. 

The  various  sources  of  the  income  of  the  lord  were  divided  into  two 
large  groups,  one  a  more  or  less  homogeneous  group  of  "constant" 
income,  and  one  a  heterogeneous  group  of  "current"  income.  The  con- 
stant income  consisted  of  taxes,  levies,  and  corvees  of  the  peasants, 
which  might  be  either  in  money  or  in  kind.  They  were  collected  twice 
a  year;  their  amount  depending  on  the  size  of  the  allotment  of  the 
holders.  The  land  tax  was  paid  on  the  basis  of  urbaria,  the  account 
book  of  the  peasant  holdings,  which  determined  juridically  for  all  time 
the  sizes  of,  and  the  corresponding  taxes  on,  each  of  the  allotments. 
These  records  were  necessary  for  the  lords  in  the  determination  and 
collection  of  the  natural  and  money  taxes.  King  Maximilian,  who  had 
purchased  in  1560  the  estate  of  Par  dub,  sent  to  the  newly  appointed 
getman  the  usual  instructions:  "without  further  delay  put  in  good 
shape  the  local  urbarium  (the  account  book)  and  frame  special  instruc- 
tions for  the  guidance  of  the  assistant  manager."  This  was  necessary 
in  order  to  avoid  assuming  responsibility  for  the  mistakes  in  the  old 
records  made  by  the  preceding  manager. 

Urbaria  were  rewritten  only  on  the  basis  of  the  personal  testimony 
of  subordinates.  During  the  winter  when  the  peasants  did  not  have 
much  work,  they  were  called  to  the  castle.  The  questioning  was  con- 
ducted in  the  order  in  which  the  possessions  were  listed  in  the  old 
urbarium.  The  getman  usually  tried  to  determine  whether  any  person 
had  debts  and  arrears.  The  answers  of  the  subordinates  were  compared 
with  the  previous  records  and  were  recorded  in  the  new  ones.  Thus 
every  peasant  knew  exactly  how  much  he  owed  his  lord.  The  urbaria 
served  two  functions:  first,  they  protected  the  lord  from  losses,  and 
second,  they  prevented  possible  controversy  with  subordinates.  Not 
only  the  duties  of  the  peasants  but  also  their  rights  were  recorded  in 
these  books. 

The  "current"  income  consisted  of  the  income  from  the  personal 
estate  of  the  lord  and,  since  it  was  a  commercial  income,  was  subject 
to  some  fluctuation  as  contrasted  with  the  steady  income  of  the 
urbarium.  The  most  important  items  of  current  income  were  the  sales 
of  grain  and  flour,  cattle,  and  sometimes  butter  and  cheese.  Another 
item  of  income  was  the  fish  with  which  the  ponds  were  stocked.  The 
fish  were  recorded;  big  fish  like  pickerel  and  carp  (bass)  were  counted 
by  %opa  (60  pieces),  while  smaller  fish  were  counted  by  pails.  The 
first  fishing  of  the  season  furnished  a  basis  for  estimating  how  much 


598  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

income  would  be  derived  from  the  selling  of  fish  during  the  entire 
season.  Special  preparations  were  made  ahead  of  time  for  fishing  from 
the  ponds,  as  this  was  considered  to  be  very  important  financially. 
The  time  was  announced  in  the  surrounding  villages.  The  getman  or 
his  second  man  arrived  to  supervise  the  work  and  to  see  that  neither 
the  fishmaster,  the  workmen,  nor  the  people  stole  fish  or  made  any 
presents  "even  to  a  father  or  brother."  The  local  peasantry,  towns- 
people, and  buyers  usually  gathered  together  at  the  fishery,  and  the 
selling  and  buying  was  conducted  on  the  spot.  Fish  were  sold  by  pails 
at  as  high  a  price  as  possible. 

Beer  was  another  important  item  of  current  income  and  was  the 
subject  of  a  yearly  conference  of  the  employes  of  the  lord.  Since  the 
subordinates  were  prohibited  from  brewing  beer,  the  breweries  of  the 
lord  enjoyed  a  very  privileged  situation.  As  the  forests  of  the  lord  were 
not  regularly  managed,  the  only  income  from  them  was  from  wood 
which  was  sold  for  fuel.  Aside  from  the  items  of  income  already  men- 
tioned, the  current  income  included  tolls  collected  for  goods  trans- 
ported over  the  roads,  the  income  from  the  lord's  mill  and  from  saw 
mills.  Money  from  these  sources  was  delivered  to  the  castle  weekly. 
The  rent  from  saloons,  mills,  local  lands,  pastures,  and  so  on  was  in- 
cluded in  this  group  of  current  income. 

A  few  words  may  be  said  concerning  the  landlord's  estate,  properly 
speaking.  The  salary  of  the  employes  constituted  at  least  half  of  all  the 
money  expenses  of  the  manor.  The  number  of  people  employed  was 
not  constant  throughout  the  year.  The  haymakers  and  harvest  people 
were  hired  only  for  the  harvesting  season  and  then  discharged  in  order 
to  avoid  expense.  The  regular  year-round  employes  were  registered  in 
personal  lists  which  specified  the  time  they  started  to  work  and  the 
conditions  under  which  they  were  hired.  The  amounts  that  were  paid 
in  advance  of  the  yearly  account  were  very  carefully  specified.  Unquali- 
fied laborers,  if  girls,  were  paid  two  fyopa  of  grosh  a  year;  if  men,  the 
salary  was  twice  as  much.  (A  l^opa  of  grosh  is  equal  to  $1.25.) 
The  remuneration  of  the  watchmen  was  similar,  The  work  of  the 
shepherds,  the  men  who  looked  after  the  cattle,  and  the  kitchen  hands 
was  paid  at  a  still  lower  rate.  Special  employes  had  higher  salaries  of 
from  6  to  9  fopa  of  grosh.  The  getman  received  40  \opa  yearly,  and 
his  second  man  (furkrabit) >  20.  Aside  from  the  differences  in  the 
amount  of  money  received,  the  upper  employes  were  distinguished 
from  the  workmen  socially.  The  getman  and  the  purfyabii  were  free 
people,  gentry,  and  in  some  instances  perhaps  townsmen.  The  common 
laborers,  beginning  with  the  "superiors**  of  the  farms,  were  either 
serfs,  dependents  of  the  castles,  or  hired  from  among  the  dependent 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  599 

laborers  of  other  manors.  Juridically  there  was  an  enormous  difference 
between  the  free  people  and  the  dependents.* 

72.  J.  H.  BREASTED:  THE  STATE  MANAGEMENT  OF  AGRICULTURE  IN 

ANCIENT  EGYPT)- 

The  supreme  position  occupied  by  the  Pharaoh  meant  a  very  active 
participation  in  the  affairs  of  government.  .  .  .  The  Pharaoh's  office 
was  the  central  organ  of  the  whole  government  where  all  its  lines  con- 
verged. .  .  .  The  great  object  of  government  was  to  make  the  country 
economically  strong  and  productive.  To  secure  this  end,  its  lands, 
chiefly  owned  by  the  crown,  were  worked  by  the  king's  serfs,  con- 
trolled by  his  officials,  or  entrusted  by  him  as  permanent  and  indivisible 
fiefs  to  his  favorite  nobles,  his  partisans,  and  relatives.  Divisible  par- 
cels might  also  be  held  by  tenants  of  the  untitled  classes.  .  .  .  For  pur- 
poses of  taxation  all  lands  and  other  property  of  the  crown,  except  that 
held  by  the  temples,  were  recorded  in  the  tax-registers  of  the  White 
House,  as  the  treasury  was  still  called.  On  the  basis  of  these,  taxes 
were  assessed.  They  were  still  in  kind:  cattle,  grain,  wine,  oil,  honey, 
textiles,  and  the  like.  If  we  may  accept  Hebrew  tradition  as  trans- 
mitted in  the  story  of  Joseph,  such  taxes  comprised  one-fifth  of  the 
produce  of  the  land. 

73.  M.  ROSTOVTZEFF:  THE  STATE  MANAGEMENT  OF  AGRICULTURE 

IN  PTOLEMAIC  EGYPT 

We  must  remember  that  the  economic  activity  of  Egypt  was  highly 
centralized  and  nationalized,  and  that  all  branches  of  it  were  super- 
vised, and  some  even  monopolized,  by  the  state.  From  the  economic 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — The  bibliography  on  the  organization  of  the  manorial  and  lati- 
fundian  type  of  rural  aggregates  includes  besides  the  works  quoted  above  and  those 
mentioned  later:  G.  Aubin,  Zur  Geschtchte  des  gutsherrltch-bauerlichen  Verhaltnisses  in 
Qstpreusscn,  1910;  M.  Bosch,  Die  wirtschajtlichcn  Bedingungen  der  Befreiungen  des 
Baucrnstandes  im  Herzogtum  Kleve  .  ,  .  ,  1920;  F.  Engcls,  Der  deutsche  Baueinkrieg, 
1908;  J.  Fuchs,  Der  Untergang  des  Batternstandes  und  das  Aujkommen  der  Gutsherr- 
schajt,  1888;  K.  Grunberg,  Die  Bauern  Befreiung  und  die  Aujhebung  der  guuherrlich' 
batterlichcn  Verhdltnisse  In  Bohmen,  Mahren,  und  Schlesien,  1893-1894;  H.  Hoffman, 
Der  landliche  Grundbesitz  im  Ermlande  bis  zum  Jahre  1375,  1877;  G.  F.  Knapp, 
Grundhemchaft  und  Rittergut,  1897;  Die  Landarbeiter  in  Knechtschaft  und  Freiheit, 
1909;  M.  Kovalevsky,  Die  o^onomische  Enttvicklung  Europas  bis  zum  Beginn  der 
\apitalistischcn  Wirtschajujorm,  1901-1914,  6  vols.;  P.  Struve,  Serfdom  Economy 
(Russ,),  1913. 

Of  the  works  quoted  before  see  particularly  those  of  P.  Vinogradoflf,  W.  Sombart, 
Fustel  de  Coulanges,  E.  Levasseur,  H.  S6e,  Auge-Laribe",  Boissonade,  Kluchevsky,  and 
M.  Rostovtzeff. 

f  James  H.  Breasted,  "The  Foundation  and  Expansion  of  the  Egyptian  Empire," 
in  the  Cambridge  Ancient  History,  Cambridge  University  Press,  1924,  II,  43-45, 


600  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  legal  point  of  view  the  king  was  the  owner  of  the  soil,  and  the 
tillers  of  the  soil  were  his  lessees.  This  involved  for  the  peasants  not 
only  very  high  taxation  but  also  careful  supervision  of  their  work  and 
strict  control  over  their  resources.  Without  a  system  of  dykes  and  canali 
Egypt  could  not  exist.  Her  prosperity  required  minutely  organized  ir- 
rigation work  before  and  after  the  Nile  flood,  equal  distribution  oi 
water,  drainage  of  swampy  and  marshy  places,  and  so  forth.  Such 
work  could  only  be  accomplished  by  the  joint  efforts  of  the  whole 
population;  and  these  efforts,  which  took  the  form  of  compulsory  laboi 
(corvee),  had  to  be  regulated  and  organized.  .  .  .* 

The  economic  and  fiscal  policy  of  the  Ptolemies  made  its  chief  aim 
to  establish  and  confirm  the  prosperity  of  Egypt.  .  .  .  But  it  goes  with- 
out saying  that  they  did  their  best  to  make  use  of  this  prosperity  for  the 
purposes  of  state.  The  Greeks  had  always  put  the  interests  of  the  state 
a  long  way  first  and  private  interests  second.  .  .  .  The  governing  idea 
was  that  Egypt,  both  the  country  itself  and  the  provinces,  belonged  tc 
the  king  and  that  the  king  had  the  full  right  to  use  for  the  purposes 
of  state,  that  is  for  the  general  good,  the  wealth  and  strength  of  the 
population.  On  these  two  premises  the  whole  financial  organization  oi 
the  country  was  built  up. 

The  Ptolemies,  both  as  successors  of  the  Pharaohs  and  so  gods  in 
human  form  and  the  sons  of  gods,  and  also  as  persons  who  held  Egypt 
by  right  of  conquest,  were,  as  we  said  above,  the  owners  of  the  whole 
land  of  Egypt  and  all  that  it  contained.  From  time  immemorial,  the 
land  had  been  cultivated  by  the  native  population  living  in  the  towns 
and  villages.  Year  after  year  they  would  plough  this  or  that  plot  as 
crown  peasants  ...  of  the  crown  land  .  .  .  assigned  to  this  or  that 
village.  Owners  of  this  land  they  had  never  been  and  did  not  consider 
themselves  such.  The  land  belonged  to  the  god  and  king,  and  its  tilling 
was  carried  out  by  the  directions  of  the  king  and  his  officials.  But  aj 
a  matter  of  fact  the  peasants  were  bound  to  the  land  and  the  land 
to  them  by  ties  going  back  hundreds  of  years.  To  break  these  ties  was 
neither  in  the  power  nor  in  the  interest  of  the  king.  So  under  the  Ptole- 
mies as  under  the  Pharaohs,  the  crown  land  continued  to  be  ploughed 
by  the  crown  peasants.  Their  right  to  the  land  was  not  defined  juridi- 
cally. In  Greek  terminology  they  were  leaseholders  paying  to  the  king 
rent  in  money  or  in  kind.  But  they  differed  from  a  Greek  leaseholder 
in  that  they  were  bound  to  their  land  and  compelled  to  cultivate  it 
under  whatever  conditions  the  state  might  dictate  to  them.  Still,  the 
state  was  not  really  free  in  defining  the  conditions.  They  had  been  for- 
ever defined  by  a  tradition  based  upon  the  experience  of  centuries,  and 

*  M.  Rostovtzeff,  The  Social  and  Economic  History  of  the  Roman  Empire,  pp.  259- 
260,  Oxford,  Clarendon  Press,  1926.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  author. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  601 

any  infringement  of  the  tradition  aroused  mass  resistance:  the  peasants 
appeal  to  God,  go  off  to  "take  seat"  in  a  temple,  and  refuse  to  work. 

The  peasants  who  tilled  the  land  to  support  the  temples  and  the  cult 
of  the  gods  were  upon  the  same  footing.  They  too  labored  for  them- 
selves and  also  for  the  state.  But  into  their  relations  with  the  temples 
and  the  priests  the  Ptolemies  brought  a  great  change  by  cutting  the 
direct  connection  between  the  peasants  and  the  priesthood:  hencefor- 
ward the  peasants  paid  their  rent  not  to  the  priests  but  to  the  king's 
officials;  the  state  in  return  guaranteed  to  supply  the  needs  of  each  tem- 
ple and  its  cult.  .  .  . 

From  the  land,  accordingly,  the  state  received  partly  a  rent  in  kind, 
partly  dues  either  in  kind  or  money.  .  .  .  Landholders  had  to  divide 
among  themselves  certain  special  taxes,  both  temporary  and  perma- 
nent, and  were  also  subject  to  certain  other  special  conditions.  For  ex- 
ample, as  the  state  had  th,e  right  to  buy  up  the  whole  crop  of  oil- 
producing  plants  at  its  own  price,  and  naturally  did  not  wish  to  take 
more  of  the  produce  than  it  needed,  it  regulated  the  amount  of  these 
crops  to  be  sown  each  year  throughout  the  whole  of  Egypt.  The  state 
also  claimed  to  control  the  cattle  fodder  with  which  land  was  sown 
after  the  cereals  had  been  carried  or  in  the  years  of  "resting"  pre- 
scribed by  the  rotation  of  crops  mostly  practised  in  Egypt.  For  the 
right  of  using  this  fodder  for  their  cattle  the  landholders  and  lease- 
holders paid  definite  sums.  They  also  paid  fees  for  the  privilege  of 
turning  their  beasts  out  on  the  pastures  which  were  reckoned  state 
property,  or  for  hiring  the  pastures.  Besides  these  permanent  taxes, 
landholders  and  people  occupied  in  keeping  cattle  or  transport  work 
paid  a  separate  tax  for  the  right  to  keep  cattle.  The  state  itself  owned 
great  droves  of  oxen  and  cows,  pigs,  goats,  sheep  and  geese,  which 
were  looked  after  by  special  keepers  who  hired  them  from  the  state. 
There  was  a  tax  on  slaves,  as  we  have  seen;  moreover,  a  special  due 
was  paid  for  the  right  of  plying  a  particular  handicraft.  Finally,  the 
whole  population  except  the  soldiers  and  officials  paid  a  poll  tax. 

The  collection  of  all  these  dues  required  a  strict  registration  of  the 
land,  cattle,  and  people,  an  exact  calculation  of  what  was  due  and  an 
exact  account  of  what  was  paid.  All  this  was  the  business  of  the  officers 
of  the  nome,  working  in  some  branches  in  conjunction  with  the  tax- 
farmers,  who  were  responsible  for  the  collection  and  received  in  con- 
sideration of  their  labor  and  responsibility  a  certain  percentage  of 
what  was  collected.  .  .  . 

Certain  raw  products  were  a  state  monopoly.  These  the  state  further 
manufactured  in  its  own  factories,  strictly  reserving  to  special  conces- 
sionaires the  right  of  selling  them.  In  other  branches  of  industry  the 
state  confined  itself  to  its  right  of  manufacturing  the  produce  of  which 


602  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

it  had  need  for  its  own  purposes  (army,  temples,  export)  in  unlimite 
quantities  at  its  own  fixed  price  in  private  establishments  compelled  t 
work  for  the  state.  In  certain  other  occupations,  as  fowling  and  fishini 
the  state,  to  begin  with,  claimed  for  itself  a  high  proportion,  25  p< 
cent,  of  the  catch.  In  many  cases  the  state  laid  a  certain  tax  on  the  trac 
and  often  reserved  to  persons  who  bought  it  from  the  state  the  right  < 
selling  retail.  .  .  . 

Besides  all  these  payments  in  money  and  kind  the  inhabitants  we; 
obliged  to  render  the  state  service  both  in  person  and  with  their  beast 
By  this  forced  labor  of  man  and  beast  two  essential  needs  of  the  sta 
were  met:  the  construction,  cleaning  out,  and  upkeep  of  the  emban 
ments  and  canals  without  which  Egypt  could  not  exist,  and  transpo 
both  by  road  and  water.  The  whole  population  of  Egypt  had  to  do  i 
duty  by  the  embankments  and  canals.  The  native  population  with  i 
beasts  of  burden  had  to  give  its  own  labor;  the  privileged  classes  cou 
pay  to  be  let  off.  For  each  day's  work  the  state  gave  pay,  but  of  cour 
at  the  lowest  possible  rate.  .  .  .  Compulsion  was  also  employed  by  tl 
Ptolemies  in  getting  together  labor  for  the  mines  and  quarries,  f 
great  buildings,  and  men  to  go  long  expeditions  to  catch  elephan 
.  .  .  Finally  there  were  requisitions  and  forced  sales  of  goods  to  t" 
state  at  its  own  price.  .  .  .  Upon  definite  occasions  the  Ptolemies  e 
pected  the  population  to  express  their  loyalty  by  complimentary  pr< 
ents  (crowns,  stephanoi).* 

74.  Louis  BAUDIN:  AGRARIAN  COMMUNITIES  IN  PRE-COLUMBIAJ 

PERUf 

Among  the  great  ancient  civilizations  there  is  one  that  has  be 
largely  neglected  by  economists  and  sociologists:  this  is  pre-Columbi 
Peru.  .  .  .  The  primary  social  unit  of  Peru  is  the  ayllu — a  toten 
clan  composed  of  all  the  descendants  of  a  real  or  supposed  comm 
ancestor.  When  the  clan  had  become  sedentary  it  gradually  lost  its  p 
sonal  character  and  assumed  a  territorial  basis.  Land  replaced  bio 
ties  as  the  basis  of  social  organization.  The  ayllu  of  the  conquer! 
Incas  alone  continued  to  remain  purely  consanguineous.  The  territoi 
ayllu  is  the  agrarian  community. 

As  is  natural  in  any  country  where  the  soil  is  of  poor  quality  a 
whose  population  continues  to  increase,  agriculture  occupied  a  place 

*Frorn  M.  Rostovtzeflf,  "Ptolemaic  Egypt,"  in  the  Cambridge  Ancient  History,  ^ 
VII,  The  Hellenistic  Monarchies  and  the  Rise  of  Rome,  New  York,  1928,  pp.  13  6-] 
Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publisher.  See  also  the  bibliogra 
in  this  volume  of  the  Cambridge  Ancient  History. 

-\Rcvue  d'histoire  economique  et  soriale,  1927,  No.  3,  XV,  302-320.  Numerous  < 
tions  of  other  sources  and  an  extensive  bibliography  are  not  included  here. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  603 

importance  in  Peru.  Upon  certain  days  the  sovereign  himself  took  the 
plow  in,  hand — as  did  also  the  emperor  o£  China — and  plowed  the  field 
of  Koltympata,  which  was  sacred  to  the  sun,  while  numerous  courtiers 
looked  on.  Each  official  of  a  province  did  likewise.  ...  If  the  Physio- 
crats had  known  of  Peru  they  doubtless  would  have  praised  it  even 
more  than  they  did  China! 

Agrarian  policy.— In  order  to  understand  their  policy,  we  must  put 
on  an  Indian  fyuchma,  a  sleeveless  shirt,  and  follow  one  of  the  Incas 
who  had  just  conquered  a  plateau  province  and,  after  having  frat- 
ernized with  the  conquered  in  great  festivals,  announced  that  he  was 
going  to  organize  their  region  so  as  to  make  it  as  rich  and  as  pros- 
perous as  the  other  countries  already  in  his  power. 

At  first  nothing  was  changed.  The  \ura^a  or  local  chief  remained  in 
authority  and  the  ayllu  kept  their  goods;  shortly  a  host  of  officials  ar- 
rived in  Cuzco  and  set  to  work.  Before  distributing  the  lands  they  had 
to  increase  their  extent;  thus  the  battle  against  the  environment  con- 
tinued and  was  intensified. 

The  Inca  agents  began  by  grouping  into  villages  all  the  Indians  who 
had  withdrawn  into  isolated  places,  into  the  pulsar  a  or  fortifications, 
either  from  fear  or  in  order  to  be  near  some  sacred  place.  .  .  .  Then 
the  surveyors  proceeded  to  measure  the  tillable  land  by  means  of  ropes 
and  stones,  while  the  statisticians  enumerated  the  people.  Men,  women, 
children,  houses,  animals,  woods,  mines,  salt  beds,  springs,  lakes,  rivers 
— all  were  duly  noted  and  counted,  and  after  this  a  relief  map  was  pre- 
pared. 

In  the  light  of  these  documents,  the  Inca  and  his  council  decide  if  it 
is  necessary  to  send  colonists,  teachers,  materials,  or  seeds  into  the 
region  and  what  works  should  be  completed.  Then  the  engineers 
gather  the  natives  and  make  them  build  earthworks  and  canals.  .  .  . 
Not  only  do  the  terraces  increase  the  tillable  area;  they  also  prevent 
the  devastating  effects  of  the  rains,  which  tend  to  wash  away  the 
seeds.  ...  It  is  still  a  matter  of  surprise  for  the  traveler  to  see  how  the 
smallest  plot  of  ground  was  utilized  and  also  what  gigantic  tasks  were 
often  accomplished  in  order  to  lead  the  water  into  these  tiny  parcels 
of  land.  To  have  land  is  not  alone  sufficient;  there  must  also  be  present 
the  necessary  water  to  make  it  fertile.  .  .  . 

The  feats  of  irrigation  engineering  accomplished  by  the  Indians  ap- 
pear fantastic  to  us.  The  canals,  of  which  the  longest  were  frequently 
in  excess  of  100  kilometers,  were  hewn  in  the  rock,  carried  through 
tunnels  and  across  valleys  over  aqueducts  from  15  to  20  meters  in 
length,  .  .  .  The  use  o£  the  water  which  had  been  brought  at  such 
great  cost  was  strictly  controlled.  Each  Indian  must  receive  his  share 
for  a  certain  interval  and  at  a  predetermined  time;  he  was  punished  if 


604  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

he  failed  to  obey  the  regulations.  This  regulation  recalls  that  of  the 
Spanish  comunidades  dc  aguas.  ...  It  also  reminds  us  o£  the  custom 
among  the  Mormons  on  the  banks  of  Great  Salt  Lake,  except  that  the 
members  of  the  latter  community  were  authorized  to  draw  water  in 
a  quantity  proportionate  to  the  labor  they  had  expended  upon  the  con- 
struction of  the  canal.  .  .  . 

After  the  amount  of  tillable  land  had  been  augmented  and  the  soil 
irrigated,  it  was  necessary  to  establish  boundaries.  In  order  to  avoid  all 
confusion  the  experts  sent  by  the  Inca  gave  names  to  the  points  of  relief 
or  confirmed  those  that  already  existed.  Then  they  marked  off  the  ter- 
ritories of  each  community  by  placing  markers.  There  remained  only 
the  distribution  of  the  land. 

Division  of  the  land.— In  general,  the  land  granted  to  each  com- 
munity was  divided  into  three  parts:  the  first  was  dedicated  to  the  Sun, 
the  second  to  the  Inca,  and  the  third  to  the  community  itself.  Such 
a  division  is  found  among  other  peoples.  .  .  .  The  first  concern  of  the 
sovereign  was  to  give  to  each  community  territory  sufficient  to  permit 
it  to  live;  consequently,  in  regions  with  large  populations  or  inferior 
soil,  the  portions  of  the  Sun  and  the  Inca  were  small;  where  conditions 
were  of  opposite  nature,  the  shares  of  these  two  parties  were  im- 
portant. .  .  . 

The  area  recognized  as  adequate  for  nourishing  a  married  man  with- 
out children  was  an  economic  unit  called  tupu,  a  word  signifying  "a 
measure."  Division  was  thus  according  to  needs,  which  were  assumed 
to  be  uniform;  the  division  related  to  the  means  of  production  and  not 
to  the  products.  An  Indian  received  a  tupu  on  the  day  he  took  a  wife 
and  was  no  longer  cared  for  by  his  parents;  he  received  another  unit 
for  each  son,  one  for  each  servant,  and  a  half  unit  for  each  daughter. 
The  chiefs  had  many  servants  and  thus  received  many  tupu* . . .  When 
the  lands  of  the  community  were  of  varying  quality  the  tupu  consisted 
of  several  parts  scattered  so  that  each  cultivator  had  land  of  different 
grades  to  till. . . .  Redivisions  of  the  land  occurred  annually  among  the 
heads  of  the  families;  these  were  divisions  for  use  only,  not  of  owner- 
ship. .  .  . 

The  Peruvian  system  did  not  differ  markedly  from  that  existing 
among  many  ancient  peoples.  There  was  an  annual  redistribution  in. 
Germany,  each  family  receiving  whatever  area  it  desired,  for  the  popu- 
lation was  sparse.  In  Spain  during  the  nineteenth  century  there  were 
also  frequent  reallotments  at  short  intervals.  ...  In  Morocco  the  tribal 
assembly  reassigned  the  land  every  four  or  five  years  among  the  vil- 
lages; and  each  village  assembly  in  turn  made  an  annual  distribu- 
tion among  the  heads  of  families.  Among  the  Incas  it  is  probable  that 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  605 

the  community  itself  made  the  distribution.   The  tupu  was  marked 
by  stone  fences  once  it  had  been  surveyed. 

Division  of  flocks. — The  rules  concerning  flocks  were  similar  to 
those  which  we  have  just  given,  but  the  number  of  beasts  left  to  the 
Indian  was  a  minimum.  .  .  .  Each  head  of  a  family  received  a  couple 
of  llamas,  which  he  had  to  care  for  and  which  he  could  not  kill  until 
they  were  old.  .  .  .  The  flocks  of  the  Inca  were  actually  state  herds 
devoted  to  the  needs  of  the  whole  population;  they  were  national  en- 
terprises in  stock-raising.  The  flocks  were  distinguished  by  color.  When 
a  lamb  in  one  was  of  a  different  color  from  its  mother  it  was  placed 
in  a  herd  of  its  own  color.  The  grassy  plateau  served  as  pasture  land, 
all  irrigable  land  being  cultivated. 

Cultivation  of  the  land. — Once  the  land  had  been  improved  and  the 
areas  marked  off,  cultivation  began.  .  .  .  Generally  each  Indian  family 
tilled  its  own  tupu,  the  neighbors  aiding  when  necessary.  This  mutual 
aid  has  persisted  down  to  contemporary  times.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
sovereign  lands  and  those  of  the  cult  were  tilled  by  all  the  members 
of  the  community  under  the  supervision  and  orders  of  their  chief. 
This  work  in  common  led  to  a  division  into  individual  tasks;  this 
division  was  necessary  in  order  to  prevent  some  profiting  from  the  la- 
bor of  others  by  not  working  themselves.  .  .  .  When  one  had  finished 
his  individual  task,  he  did  not  aid  the  others;  without  this  arrange- 
ment nothing  would  have  been  accomplished,  for  each  would  have 
counted  on  the  aid  of  others  and  would  have  worked  as  slowly  as 
possible.  These  individual  assignments  consisted  of  long,  narrow,  paral- 
lel strips  of  earth  assigned  to  the  Indians  on  the  lands  of  the  Inca  and 
of  the  Sun.  These  lots  should  not  be  confused  with  the  tupu;  the  latter 
Were  parts  of  the  common  land  whose  yields  belonged  to  the  tillers. 
One  of  the  chief  merits  of  the  Inca  ruler  was  his  ability  in  making  this 
working  of  the  land  a  real  pleasure.  "The  Incas  had  disposed  and  regu- 
lated this  service  so  that  the  Indians  performed  their  tasks  as  recrea- 
tion," said  Cobo. 

Order  of  cultivation. — The  order  in  which  the  various  types  of  land 
were  cultivated  is  indicated  by  Garciloso  to  be  as  follows: 

1.  The  lands  of  the  Sun.  The  divinity  came  first  as  a  usual  thing. 
These  lands  were  indeed  reserved  for  the  Sun  and  not  for  the  priests, 
for  the  latter  could  use  the  products  belonging  to  the  Sun  only  during 
the  time  when  they  were  in  service  at  the  temple,  such  service  being 
given  by  the  priests  in  turn.  When  they  were  not  officiating,  they  had 
to  cultivate  their  own  land,  which  they  were  allotted  in  the  same 
fashion  as  the  other  Indians.  The  lands  of  the  Sun  should  be  correctly 


606  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

called  cult  lands  or  religious  lands,  for  the  Sun  was  not  the  sole  bene- 
ficiary. All  sorts  of  secondary  deities  and  local  idols  had  their  share  in 
the  products. 

2.  The  lands  of  the  "incapable."  These  were  the  holdings  of  wid- 
ows, orphans,  invalids,  the  blind,  the  sick,  soldiers  in  the  armies,  and 
wives  of  soldiers.  These  lands  confirmed  the  right  to  assistance  of  all 
who  could  not  or  were  no  longer  able  to  work.  .  .  . 

3.  The  lands  of  capable  Indians.  These  belonged  to  subjects  fully 
able  to  work. 

4.  The  lands  of  the  military  chiefs  and  high  officials. 

5.  The  lands  of  the  Inca.  Work  on  these  lands  constituted  the  prin- 
cipal tribute  paid  to  the  sovereign;  this  was  not  an  innovation  intro- 
duced by  the  conquest,  for  the  former  chiefs  had  required  no  other 
contribution  from  their  subjects.  .  .  . 

Evidence  of  individual  ownership. — Such  is  the  agrarian  system  in 
its  entirety,  which  Count  Carli  and  Florenz  Estroda  regard  as  the  best- 
known  system;  a  system  that  is  not  at  all  communistic,  as  was  affirmed 
by  so  many  authors.  It  is  much  better  to  qualify  it  as  collectivistic,  since 
the  Indian  owned  privately  all  the  returns  from  his  tupu.  The  factor 
of  production,  the  land,  was  alone  held  in  common. 

The  other  goods  that  are  private  property  are  the  house,  enclosure, 
fruit  trees,  a  few  domestic  animals,  and  the  household  goods.  Immov- 
able property  that  is  limited  to  the  house  and  adjoining  garden  is  ob- 
served among  many  former  peoples;  Romans,  Germans,  Javanese,  and 
Russians.  The  principal  source  of  private  property  is  in  grants  from 
the  Inca.  This  ownership  deriving  from  donations  is  individual  owner- 
ship and  not  mere  tenure;  but  it  presents  many  special  characteristics 
that  distinguish  it  from  the  individual  property  (quiritaire)  of  Roman 
law,  since  it  is  not  absolute,  as  the  holder  can  neither  exchange  nor  sell 
the  grant.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  not  a  system  of  collective  owner- 
ship; these  lands  were  periodically  reallotted  and  transmitted  to  the 
descendants  of  the  owner. 

To  summarize:  three  kinds  of  property  coexisted  in  Peru,  the  third 
being  much  the  least  important:  (1)  national  property  (of  die  state): 
public  buildings,  lands,  pastures,  forests  in  regions  not  wooded,  cocoa 
plantations,  mines;  (2)  collective  property  (of  the  communities),  either 
with  common  exploitation  (pasturage,  lands  of  those  unable  to  till 
them,  and  forests  in  wooded  regions)  or  with  familial  exploitation 
(tillable  land);  (3)  private  property:  houses,  enclosures,  and  property 
issuing  from  grants.* 

*  A  complete  bibliography  in  the  field  is  given  in  the  paper  of  Baudin,  We  omit  it 
here  for  the  sake  of  economy  of  space. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  607 

75.  }.  P.  WALTZING:  STATE  MANAGEMENT  OF  AGRICULTURE 
AND  INDUSTRY  IN  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE* 

After  Augustus  the  Roman  trade  unions  ceased  to  be  purely  private 
associations;  in  order  to  obtain  authorization  they  had  to  have  a  social 
utility.  This  utility  for  many  was  derived  solely  from  the  necessity  for 
their  trade  in  a  well-organized  society.  In  authorizing  them  the  state 
considered  that  it  was  favoring  the  development  of  the  profession, 
which  was  regarded  as  a  sort  of  public  function.  At  first  the  trade 
unions  were  authorized,  then  maintained,  and  finally  rendered  obliga- 
tory for  that  reason  only.  .  .  .  Instead  of  demanding  money  of  the 
citizens  as  do  modern  states  and  instead  of  paying  from  the  public 
treasury  for  all  necessary  services,  the  Roman  state  required  work 
from  its  citizens.  .  .  . 

In  the  Eastern  Roman  Empire  the  trade  unions  were  forced  by  the 
Empire  and  by  the  cities  to  perform  the  services  which  these  crafts 
had  voluntarily  assumed;  this  service  became  obligatory  and  hereditary. 
The  members  of  the  professions  and  trade  unions  (corporati  and  col- 
legiati)  together  with  their  goods  became  the  property  of  the  govern- 
ment. The  state,  which  believed  it  had  a  mission  to  be  not  only  the 
maintainer  of  public  order,  peace,  and  justice  but  also  the  "housewife" 
for  the  Empire  and  the  overseer  of  all  public  and  private  needs,  inevi- 
tably came  to  the  stage  of  making  private  labor  obligatory.  The  artisan 
and  the  business  man  must  devote  themselves  to  their  trade  and  to 
their  business,  just  as  the  husbandman  must  cultivate  his  land.  This 
was  the  situation  in  two  capitals  at  least,  if  not  elsewhere. 

The  Empire  was  thus  transformed  into  a  vast  workshop,  where, 
under  the  control  of  an  army  of  officials,  one  labored  for  the  em- 
peror and  for  the  needs  of  the  state  and  of  other  individuals.  Most 
of  the  industries  were  directed  by  the  state,  which  divided  the  products 
quite  unequally.  The  members  of  the  trade  unions  were  not  free  citi- 
zens working  at  their  will  in  order  to  support  their  own  families;  they 
were  servants  of  the  state  receiving  a  wage,  as  did  officials,  but  an  in- 
sufficient wage.  Already  master  of  land  and  of  labor,  the  emperor 
finally  applied  the  theory  of  Plato  to  the  letter:  "In  my  capacity  as  law- 

*  From  J.  P.  Waltzing,  fctude  h'tstorique  sur  let  corporations  projessionnelles  chez  les 
Romatns  depuis  les  origines  jwqtt'h  la  chute  de  I' empire  d'occidcnt,  Vol.  II,  Les  colleges 
profcssionnels  considers*  comme  institutions  officietles,  Louvain,  Pceters,  1896,  pp.  480- 
483. 

EDITORS'  NOTE. — As  is  known,  the  economic  organization  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
after  the  end  of  the  third  century  A,  D.,  was  marked  by  such  an  expansion  of  the  gov- 
ernment control  that  it  approached  what  might.be  styled  "state  socialism."  The  expan- 
sion of  government  control  extended  also  to  agriculture,  thus  furnishing  an  example  of 
rural  organization  controlled  and  managed  by  the  state. 


608  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

maker  I  do  not  consider  either  you  or  your  goods  as  belonging  to  your- 
self but  I  regard  all  your  family  and  its  goods  as  the  property  of  -the 
state"  (Laws,  XI,  6,  p.  923a) .  This  system  was  an  organization  of  labor 
for  the  Roman  state  in  whose  hands  were  found  the  control  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth. 

Such  was  the  social  order,  the  result  of  a  poor  political  constitution 
and  of  a  vicious  economic  system.  The  Empire  offers  an  object  for  the 
consideration  of  the  economist  and  the  historian.  It  could  do  naught 
else  but  perish  by  such  a  regime,  which  answered  neither  to  the  well- 
understood  interest  of  the  state  nor  to  that  of  individuals.  For  the  citi- 
zen and  for  the  state  the  consequences  were  disastrous,  either  from  the 
economic  or  the  political  point  of  view. 

In  the  trade  unions  of  the  Eastern  Empire,  as  in  all  the  bodies  into 
which  the  citizens  were  enrolled,  there  was  no  question  of  individual 
rights  or  liberty.  There  were  only  duties;  privileges  were  equally  lack- 
ing and  were  of  no  other  purpose  than  to  aid  the  members  of  the  group 
to  better  fulfil  their  duties  to  the  profit  of  the  state.  The  most  sacred 
rights  and  essential  privileges  of  a  citizen  had  been  ravished;  law  and 
the  political  liberty  of  the  citizens  became  mere  empty  words.  Chained 
to  their  present  state  by  bonds  that  were  veritably  indissolvable,  con- 
fined in  a  form  of  caste  that  opened  only  to  permit  entrance  but  not 
exit,  they  could  not  hope  to  climb  higher.  Civil  and  private  rights  were 
destroyed  or  allowed  to  remain  only  enough  to  facilitate  the  services 
to  the  state  on  the  part  of  the  members  of  these  craft  unions.  Patri- 
monies became  inalienable;  the  right  of  ownership,  that  right  to  which 
men  clung  most  tightly,  no  longer  existed  for  them  or  had  become  an 
empty  form.  Of  professional  liberty  there  remained  nothing.  The  cor- 
porati  were  not  able  to  choose  the  type  of  work  suited  to  their  tal- 
ents, tastes,  or  vocations;  they  could  not  work  where  they  wished,  for 
they  finally  became  attached  to  a  certain  workshop  or  city,  losing 
the  right  to  settle  where  they  wished.  They  had  not  liberty  of  mar- 
riage; they  had  not  even  the  control  of  their  own  persons;  and  their 
wives  and  children  participated  in  their  servitude.  They  and  theirs 
were  slaves,  and  they  remained  slaves.  There  was  no  way  of  escape. 
This  regime  indeed  injured  them  in  every  way,  and  one  cannot  be 
astonished  that  they  prayed  for  the  coming  of  their  barbarian  libera- 
tors. 

Thus  a  numerous  class  was  sacrificed  for  the  general  well-being.  It 
was  a  crying  injustice;  but  did  this  sacrifice  assure  general  prosperity? 
Certainly  it  was  dearly  bought!  but  let  us  examine  the  administrative 
and  economic  situation  of  the  Empire. 

Alas!  The  "sovereign  people,"  that  is,  the  idle  and  hungry  urban 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  609 

mob  for  which  so  many  people  suffered,  were  scarcely  more  fortunate. 
Famine  threatened  them  and  they  frequently  revolted.  The  administra- 
tion of  the  public  annona  (the  public  food  supply  service),  maintained 
in  the  poorly  understood  interest  of  the  ruler  without  regard  to  sound 
economic  principles,  did  not  succeed  in  serving  Rome  as  successfully  as 
the  private  and  free  economic  organization  does  London  and  Paris 
today.  Were  the  other  services  better  executed?  All  the  administrative 
operations  destined  to  fill  the  treasury,  to  furnish  luxurious  surround- 
ings for  the  court,  to  equip  the  army,  to  provision  the  cities,  and  to 
finance  public  works  did  not  operate  as  efficiently  as  would  have  been 
expected  from  an  organization  of  such  strength  and  tyranny.  Whatever 
the  state  did  was  done  neither  quickly  nor  cheaply.  Despite  excessively 
severe  penalties,  fraud  was  rampant;  preventive  measures  were  futile. 
Indeed,  it  was  the  officials  who  participated  in  the  fraud;  they  ruined 
the  state  by  their  malpractices  and  the  citizens  by  extortion.  The  pub- 
lic treasury  was  systematically  robbed,  says  Salvianus.  Private  indi- 
viduals became  uninterested  and  inert;  private  initiative  disappeared. 
The  state  undertook  to  do  everything,  with  the  result  that  the  citizens 
did  nothing.1  Where  force  was  used,  men  were  lacking  to  perform  the 
tasks;  the  cor  fees  (labor  taxes)  were  everywhere  in  arrears.  The  trade 
unions,  the  pivots  of  all  administrations,  were  depleted  in  numbers; 
their  members  no  longer  remained  with  their  tasks,  now  burdened 
with  excessive  charges,  but  fled  from  their  insufferable  condition;  they 
no  longer  married,  in  order  to  avoid  bringing  more  unfortunates  into 
the  world.  These  results  were  due  in  great  part  to  that  general  organi- 
zation or  system  of  work.  Never  had  there  been  an  administration 
more  troublesome  to  individuals  and  less  productive  for  the  state.* 

76.  BASIL  MAKLAKOV:  THE  PEASANT  QUESTION  AND  THE  RUSSIAN 

REVOLUTION! 

There  are  peasants  everywhere;  but  what  is  the  peasantry  in  Europe? 
It  is  a  social  class.  Every  small  landowner  who,  because  he  is  small, 
works  and  lives  in  given  conditions,  is  a  peasant;  such  may  anyone 

*Duruy,  Histoirc  des  Remains,  VII,  541, 

*  On  Roman  and  Byzantine  organization  of  economic  life  and  agriculture  sec  M.  Ros- 
tovtzcfT,  The  Social  and  Economic  History  of  the  Roman  Empire,  chaps,  ix-xii;  P.  Vino- 
grado£f,  "Social  and  Economic  Conditions  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  Fourth  Cen- 
tury," in  the  Cambridge  Medieval  History,  1911,  Vol.  I;  L.  Brentano,  "Die  byzantin- 
ischc  Volkswirtschaft,"  in  Schmollers  Jahrbuch,  1917,  XLI,  77  ff.;  J.  Brissand,  Lc  regime 
de  la  terre  dans  la  societ^  batiste  du  Bas-Empire,  Paris,  1927.  Other  literature  is  given  in 
the  works  of  Rostovtzeff  and  others  cited, 

fFrom  B.  Maklakov,  "The  Peasant  Question  and  the  Russian  Revolution/'  in  the 
Slavonic  Review,  December,  1923,  No,  5,  II,  226-236.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of 
the  editors  of  the  Slavonic  Review. 


610  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

become.  This  class  can,  o£  course,  have  its  own  special  interests,  needs, 
and  even  programs.  But,  apart  from  these  special  interests  connected 
with  their  calling,  European  peasants  are  not  at  all  distinguishable 
from  other  people;  they  are  under  the  same  laws,  they  have  the  same 
rights,  they  feel  themselves  in  the  same  legal  position  as  everyone  else. 
To  raise  any  question  as  to  their  rights  would  seem  to  them  unin- 
telligible. 

Very  different  is  the  picture  presented  by  the  peasant  class  in  Rus- 
sia. The  very  idea  of  "peasant"  was  quite  different.  The  peasantry  in 
Russia  are  not  a  social  class,  but  a  caste  confined  in  peculiar  legal  lim- 
its. Let  us  take  two  neighboring  owners  of  exactly  the  same  amount 
of  land,  one  a  peasant  and  the  other  not.  Their  legal  position,  even 
in  the  most  various  questions,  will  not  be  the  same.  Take  the  ques- 
tion of  land:  the  non-peasant  can  do  what  he  likes  with  his  land;  he 
can  sell  it  or  mortgage  it;  the  peasant  has  not  this  right.  Take  the  do- 
main of  public  law.  The  peasant  will  be  a  member  of  a  special  unit 
of  self-government,  he  will  be  under  special  taxation,  he  will  elect  his 
own  special  officers;  the  non-peasant  will  not  have  these  rights  or  these 
duties.  If  they  both  take  part  in  the  common  local  self-government  and 
in  elections  to  the  legislative  chambers,  even  though  they  may  live  side 
by  side  and  have  exactly  the  same  kind  of  property,  they  will  choose 
separately  from  each  other  and  under  quite  different  regulations.  It 
will  be  the  same  in  the  matter  of  civil  rights:  they  will  be  judged  by 
different  laws  and  even  in  different  courts;  in  case  of  death,  their  prop- 
erty will  follow  different  principles  of  inheritance.  These  examples, 
which  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  show  that  the  idea  of  peas- 
antry in  Russia  is  quite  different  from  what  is  called  peasantry  in 
Europe,  and  that  the  peasant  question  presented  itself  to  Russian  legis- 
lators in  a  form  which  has  long  been  unknown  in  Europe. 

Only  on  March  3  (February  19),  1861,  was  there  made  by  the  Em- 
peror Alexander  II  the  reform  which  freed  the  peasant  from  the  power 
of  the  squire  (pomeshchify ;  thus  it  was  only  fifty  years  before  the 
revolution  that  the  essence  of  a  feudal  system — that  is,  the  dependence 
of  one  caste  on  another— was  destroyed  in  Russia,  and  the  peasant  be- 
came politically  free.  Unfortunately,  when  it  made  this  reform,  the 
government  thought  it  convenient  for  the  time  of  transition  to  keep 
for  the  peasants  certain  features  of  their  former  state,  some  of  them 
even  in  their  own  interests. 

I  will  mention  some  of  the  peculiarities  preserved  after  the  liberation 
of  the  peasants  from  bond  dependence.  As  the  chief  and  the  most  bene- 
ficial to  the  peasantry,  we  must  regard  that  special  protection  which  the 
state  gave  to  peasant  landownership.  When  the  peasants  were  freed, 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  611 

the  government  endowed  them  with  land,  but  justly  feared  that  the 
peasantry  would  not  be  able  to  keep  it;  it  therefore  decided  to  preserve 
this  land  for  them  by  artificial  means.  All  land  which  by  the  reform 
of  1861  was  assigned  to  the  peasantry  was,  under  the  name  of  allotted 
land  (nadelnaya),  confirmed  exclusively  to  the  peasant  class.  Its  posses- 
sion became  a  privilege  of  this  class.  No  one  except  peasants  could 
acquire  this  land,  and  on  no  grounds  could  it  be  alienated  from  them. 

The  second  peculiarity  aiming  at  the  same  object,  namely,  combat- 
ing landlessness  of  the  peasantry,  was  that  the  owner  of  the  allotted 
land  was  not  the  individual  peasant  but  the  peasant  community,  the 
mir.  This  mir  was  not  at  all  a  creation  of  the  reform  of  1861.  It  had 
formed  itself  in  practice  before  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  both  on 
crown  land  and  on  squires'  land;  it  then  arose,  not  so  much  for  the 
benefit  of  the  peasants  as  for  the  convenience  of  the  master  of  the 
land,  whether  a  private  individual  or  the  state.  A  certain  measure  of 
self-government  of  the  peasants  living  on  a  squire's  land  in  no  way 
limited  the  power  of  the  squire  over  the  peasants.  Meanwhile,  it  was 
a  useful  way  of  dealing  with  his  peasants,  a  means  of  keeping  an  eye 
on  them  and  of  securing  the  execution  of  the  various  duties  incumbent 
on  them  to  the  squire  or  to  the  state.  For  the  squire  himself  it  was 
more  convenient  to  deal,  not  with  individual  peasants,  but  with  the 
whole  community  by  means  of  representatives,  either  appointed  by  him 
or  elected  by  the  community  on  his  instructions.  While  freeing  the 
peasants  from  the  power  of  the  squire,  the  state  for  the  same  reasons 
thought  it  useful  to  itself,  not  only  to  preserve,  but  also  to  legalize  this 
peasant  organization.  Thus  was  established  by  law  the  peasant  com- 
munity with  its  sovereign  organ,  the  peasant  meeting,  which  received 
rights  of  various  kinds  over  its  individual  members;  this  peasant 
community  obtained  the  right  of  self-government,  the  right  of  self- 
taxation,  of  choosing  peasant  officials  with  disciplinary  power  over  the 
peasants,  and  so  on.  At  the  same  time,  the  individual  peasant  com- 
munities were  united  into  larger  units  of  peasant  self-government, 
the  volosts,  which  were  at  this  time  an  entirely  artificial  creation.  These 
volosts  with  the  same  rights  of  self-government,  self-taxation,  and  elec- 
tion of  officials,  including  judges,  were  afterwards  turned  into  a  terri- 
torial foundation  for  the  administrative  division  of  the  country.  But 
this  last  is  a  very  complicated  question,  to  which  I  shall  again  have  to 
allude  later. 

The  rights  of  the  fundamental  peasant  unit,  namely,  the  peasant 
community,  over  the  individual  peasant  were  of  considerable  impor- 
tance; firstly,  in  the  most  important  matter  for  the  peasants — namely, 
the  land— not  the  individual  peasant,  but  the  community,  was  owner 


612  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  official  administrator;  from  this  came  the  mischievous  right  of 
peasant  partitions.  Fearing  the  peasants  might  become  landless,  that 
the  land  might  be  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  the  rich  and  a  danger- 
ous proletariat  class  might  thus  be  created,  the  state  gave  the  communi- 
ties the  right  to  redistribute  their  land  among  individual  families,  aim- 
ing at  an  equal  division  of  it  between  all.  Thus  the  individual  peasant 
had  no  fixed  and  guaranteed  landed  property.  His  land,  on  which  he 
worked,  might  legally  be  taken  away  from  him  and  given  to  someone 
else.  I  do  not  enter  into  the  details  of  this  complex  process  and  of  the 
stubborn  conflict  between  two  principles-— the  principle  of  equality 
which  was  the  origin  of  the  land  commune  and  the  wish  of  each  indi- 
vidual to  possess  fixed  personal  property.  The  history  of  that  time  is 
full  of  this  conflict;  one  thing  one  may  say:  the  right  of  redivision  was 
greatly  restricted;  the  principle  of  personal  property  triumphed,  al- 
though not  everywhere  alike  and  not  completely. 

In  the  south  of  Russia,  in  Ukraine,  communal  land  tenure  did  not 
exist  at  all;  it  had  been  replaced  by  the  so-called  podvorny  tenure.  One 
need  not  exaggerate  the  importance  of  this  peculiarity.  In  podvorny 
tenure,  too,  there  were  traces  of  the  communal;  if  it  did  not  admit  of 
periodical  divisions  of  land,  the  dependence  of  the  peasant  on  the  mir 
as  to  land  was  still  preserved;  the  land  of  each  peasant  family  was  not 
in  one  place,  but  split  up  over  a  number  of  small  wedges  cut  out  in 
each  separate  category  of  land.  This  was  the  logical  consequence  of 
the  tendency  to  equality.  The  system  of  podvorny  tenure  in  a  way 
stabilized  forever  one  of  the  moments  when  the  land  was  redivided 
with  the  object  of  equality.  No  more  redivisions  were  allowed;  in  fu- 
ture the  peasant  might  feel  assured  that  his  land  would  not  be  given 
to  anyone  else;  but  his  dependence  on  the  system  of  agriculture  of  the 
whole  peasant  community,  his  need  not  only  to  take  account  of  it  but 
to  follow  it  slavishly,  was  fully  preserved;  he  could  not  sow  where  the 
community  had  pasture,  and  so  on;  personal  initiative  and  enterprise 
in  agricultural  improvements  were  restricted  to  the  minimum. 

The  power  of  the  peasant  community,  however,  did  not  limit  itself 
only  to  questions  of  land.  When  freeing  the  peasant  from  the  power  of 
the  squires,  the  state  left  to  the  community  also  a  considerable  part 
of  its  administrative  power  over  its  individual  members;  it  endowed 
the  peasants  with  the  right  of  self-government  with  all  its  conse- 
quences; it  was  inspired  not  by  any  political  idealism,  not  by  a  wish  to 
develop  among  the  peasants  the  beneficent  principle  of  self-govern- 
ment. The  causes  were  different.  For  the  government  it  was  easier,  both 
administratively  and  especially  financially,  to  deal  not  with  individuals 
but  with  a  whole  community,  especially  if  this  community,  by  its 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  613 

origin,  consisted  of  persons  who  were  yesterday  serfs  accustomed  to 
submit,  persons  from  whom  one  could  not  fear  any  political  preten- 
sions. To  endow  the  community  with  rights  over  its  members  became 
perfectly  logical  from  the  time  when  the  government  for  the  pay- 
ment of  their  dues  introduced  the  principle  of  the  joint  guarantee, 
that  is,  of  a  common  responsibility  of  the  whole  community  for  indi- 
vidual peasants.  This  principle,  useful  to  the  state,  but  indefensible, 
lying  heavily  on  the  more  well-to-do  and  industrious  peasants,  as  it 
compelled  them  to  pay  for  the  idlers,  the  unsuccessful,  and  the  incom- 
petent, was  repealed  only  under  Alexander  III.  But  the  existence  of 
a  common  responsibility  of  the  whole  community  logically  presup- 
posed the  right  of  the  community  not  only  to  control  individual  tax- 
payers but  to  use  against  them  the  most  various  measures  of  discipline. 

Such  were  the  principles  which  compelled  the  state  to  maintain  and 
extend  the  right  of  peasant  self-government.  The  power  of  the  com- 
munities and  of  the  elected  peasant  officials  over  individual  members 
of  the  community  was  very  great  indeed.  They  had  the  right  of  levy- 
ing administrative  and  disciplinary  fines  on  insubordinate  members, 
which  were  not  experienced  by  any  other  class.  Lastly,  those  peculiar 
legal  conditions  in  which  the  peasantry  lived,  coming  from  the  prin- 
ciple of  communal  land  tenure,  the  joint  guarantee,  and  other  regula- 
tions unknown  to  other  classes,  had  logically  made  necessary  special 
peasant  law  courts  and  the  application  by  these  courts,  not  of  the  gen- 
eral laws  but  of  the  peasant  customs,  which  had  never  been  sanc- 
tioned by  the  government,  but  which  nevertheless  regulated  all  the 
civil  relations  of  the  peasantry. 

These  peculiarities  in  the  position  of  the  peasants  were  justified  also 
by  a  laudable  desire  to  disturb  as  little  as  possible  existing  relations  in 
peasant  life  and  even  peasant  customs.  And  if  only  the  state  had  tried, 
steadily  though  gradually,  to  bring  the  peasant  as  soon  as  possible  out 
of  this  temporary  position  and  bring  him  under  the  common  law,  these 
peculiarities  in  fifty  years  would,  of  course,  have  disappeared  after  ful- 
filling their  mission.  But,  unfortunately,  after  1861  political  life  ran 
quite  otherwise. 

As  I  have  already  shown,  the  power  of  the  peasant  community  over 
the  peasant  was  very  great,  and  above  all  was  uncontrolled*  For  an 
individual  peasant  it  was  almost  impossible  to  find  any  defence  against 
injustice  and  downright  abuses  on  the  side  of  the  community.  As  was 
once  truly  said  in  the  Imperial  Duma  by  N.  N.  Lvov,  the  state,  by 
its  policy  in  the  peasant  question,  developed  two  principles:  absence  of 
personal  rights  and  mob  government,  But  if  the  peasant  community, 
as  far  as  the  state  was  concerned,  had  complete  control  over  the  indi- 


614  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

vidual  member,  it  was  itself  in  a  subordinate,  and,  in  many  ways,  right- 
less  position.  And  the  result  of  this  was  that  those  very  regulations 
and  peculiarities  which  were  at  first  preserved  in  the  interests  of  the 
peasantry  in  course  of  time  were  turned  against  it  and  became  weap- 
ons of  the  state  for  its  oppression.  We  can  see  this  process  in  a  num- 
ber of  individual  instances. 

And  the  first  question  was:  Who  was  a  peasant?  Abroad  this  is  a 
"social  class,"  in  Russia  it  is  a  "caste";  it  was  formed  out  of  the  former 
serfs  who  after  1861  became  personally  free  and  even  landowners, 
but  continued  to  be  under  the  domination  of  special  laws.  But  who 
might  be  a  member  of  this  caste?  How  could  one  enter  it  or  leave  it? 
Practically,  there  was  only  one  way:  a  criminal  of  a  higher  class  con- 
demned by  a  law  court  to  be  deprived  of  all  the  rights  of  his  class 
after  his  term  of  punishment  became  a  peasant.  That  was  the  only 
legal  way  of  entering  this  class  from  outside — by  being  declassed,  Let 
us  take  the  other  side.  How  could  you  leave  this  class?  Even  earlier, 
with  leave  of  the  squire,  a  peasant  might  become  free — that  is,  leave 
the  class  of  serfs.  The  right  of  entering  another  class  was  continued 
also  after  the  Emancipation.  But  this  was  not  all;  in  a  number  of 
cases  it  became  obligatory,  automatic.  For  instance,  education,  govern- 
ment service,  and  even  grades  of  distinction,  gave  to  a  peasant  the 
rights  of  a  higher  class,  of  burgesses  or  of  gentry.  Thus,  if  a  peasant 
reached  a  certain  stage  in  education  and  attained  the  corresponding 
diploma  or  a  reward  in  service,  even  military,  if  he  were  promoted  to 
be  an  officer  on  the  field  of  battle,  he  automatically,  even  though  against 
his  will,  was  registered  into  another  class  and  ceased  to  be  a  peasant. 
This  was  accounted  to  be  promotion  on  the  social  ladder. 

Into  the  peasant  caste  no  one  was  admitted;  it  consisted  exclusively 
of  descendants  of  the  serf  population.  And  so  all  those  who  could  be- 
come its  leaders,  the  champions  of  its  interests,  were  forcibly  cut  off 
from  it.  Only  social  elements  on  the  down  grade,  condemned  criminals, 
could  enter  it. 

Let  us  take  the  fate  of  the  organs  of  peasant  self-government,  the 
elected  peasant  officials.  One  might  think  that  they  had  enough  to  do 
in  dealing  with  peasant  interests.  They  had  been  elected  at  the  peasant 
meeting  exclusively  by  peasants  from  their  own  number.  They  were 
paid  by  them  alone  out  of  the  rates  of  their  class.  But  the  peasant  caste 
was  too  weak  to  defend  its  class  interests  against  the  state;  and  thus 
we  see  the  peasant  officials  gradually  drawn  into  the  general  system  of 
administration,  subordinated  to  it  for  additional  service  of  general 
state  needs;  to  the  disadvantage  of  their  class  interests,  these  elected 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  615 

officials  became  not  peasant  authorities  but  simply  the  lowest  agents 
of  the  administration.  What  was  the  result  of  this  system?  The  state 
received  at  the  expense  of  the  peasantry  an  agent,  a  very  bad  one,  but 
which,  anyhow,  cost  it  nothing;  meanwhile,  the  peasant  class  without 
a  shadow  of  justice  was  compelled  to  bear  alone  the  service  not  only 
of  its  class  needs  but  of  those  of  the  whole  population. 

In  full  analogy  with  this  was  another  category  of  burdens,  in  form 
different,  but  really  like  the  former,  which  were  called  "natural  duties." 
By  this  name,  in  distinction  from  money  dues,  were  called  services  to 
the  state  which  had  to  be  rendered  by  direct  labor  of  the  population — 
repairing  the  roads,  extinguishing  forest  fires,  combating  floods,  pro- 
viding quarters  for  troops  and  officials,  provision  of  horses  and  of 
carts,  arid  a  great  deal  else.  These  duties,  which  were  often  more  in 
the  interest  of  the  squire  than  of  the  peasant,  were  discharged  by  the 
labor  of  the  peasant  class  alone;  persons  of  the  privileged  class  were 
relieved  of  them. 

These  indications  will  be  enough  to  show  in  general  features  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  peasantry  in  Russia;  it  is  not  difficult  to  guess 
the  special  psychology  which,  thanks  to  this  system,  it  received.  The 
most  numerous  class  in  Russia,  it  was  the  most  humbled;  enclosed  in 
a  special  organization,  burdened  with  special  dues,  of  money,  of  nat- 
ural services,  and  of  state  obligations,  working  for  the  profit  of  others, 
or  at  least  for  the  welfare  of  others,  the  peasant  class  inevitably  worked 
out  a  consciousness  of  its  own  class  solidarity  and  a  sense  of  the  oppo- 
sition of  its  interests  to  those  of  others.  It  became  a  state  within  a  state. 

77.  S.  N.  PROKOPOVITCH:  THE  SOVIET  GOVERNMENT  AND  THE 

PEASANTS* 

Abolition  of  private  property  on  land. — On  October  26,  1917,  at  2 
A.M.  a  decree  was  passed  abolishing,  immediately  and  without  any 
compensation,  large  estates.  Soon  the  Soviet  government  decreed: 

(1)  Private  ownership  of  land  is  abolished  forever.  (2)  Land  cannot 
be  sold,  purchased,  leased,  mortgaged,  or  in  any  other  way  alienated. 
(3)  All  land,  be  it  owned  by  state,  cabinet,  monastery,  church,  land- 
owner, or  peasant,  is  confiscated  without  compensation  and  becomes 
national  property.  In  the  law  about  socialization  of  land  (of  February 
19,  1918)  we  read:  "All  ownership  in  mines,  land,  water,  forest,  and 

*  From  S,  N,  Prokopovitch,  The  Economic  Condition  of  Soviet  Russia,,  London, 
P.  S.  King  &  Son,  1924,  pp.  62-100,  passim.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  pub- 
lisher. This  and  the  subsequent  paper  describe  the  outstanding  phases  of  the  Soviet 
agricultural  policies  and  reconstruction.  In  view  of  the  great  importance  of  the  Russian 
agricultural  revolution  this  consideration  of  the  subject  needs  no  special  justification. 


616  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

living  power  of  nature  within  the  boundaries  of  the  Russian  Federa- 
tive Soviet  Republic  is  abolished  forever," 

Thus  the  peasants1  land  was  also  nationalized.  Further,  according  to 
the  summary  of  instructions,  the  right  of  cultivation  was  granted  to 
all  citizens  of  Russia  of  both  sexes,  who  wished  to  till  the  land  person- 
ally, with  the  assistance  of  their  family  or  in  company  with  other 
people,  but  only  so  long  as  they  were  able  to  do  so.  Hired  labor  was 
forbidden.  Highly  cultivated  lots  of  land,  like  gardens,  plantations, 
nurseries,  hothouses,  etc.,  were  alone  exempted  from  nationalization. 
Cultivation  was  to  be  based  upon  egalitarian  principles,  i.e.,  the  land 
was  to  be  distributed  among  those  who  worked  on  it,  according  to 
the  labor  or  consumption  norm,  conformably  with  the  local  condi- 
tions. .  .  . 

In  the  first  months  of  its  existence  the  Soviet  government  had  at  its 
disposal  no  administrative  apparatus  through  which  it  could  carry  out 
its  ideas.  Therefore  the  socialization  of  land  prescribed  by  the  law  of 
February  19, 1918,  "was  not  carried  out  on  a  national  scale.  In  practice, 
the  land  was  simply  appropriated  by  the  local  peasants.  .  .  ." 

This  has  provoked  an  epidemic  of  land  partitioning— which  began 
in  1918,  went  on  in  1919  and  1920,  and  in  many  places  still  continues. 
In  the  majority  of  cases  the  land  was  distributed  among  the  consum- 
ers and  not  among  the  laborers.  Constant  redistribution  of  land  created 
general  instability  of  agrarian  relations  and  was  the  cause  of  bad  culti- 
vation, decrease  of  the  area  under  crops,  and  bad  conveyance  of  ma- 
nure. For  these  reasons  the  Soviet  government  was  forced  to  fight 
the  incessant  partitioning  of  land,  which  undermined  the  productivity 
of  the  peasants'  farms.  On  July  1, 1919,  a  decree  was  issued,  forbidding 
the  partition  of  land  inside  an  allotment  without  the  permission  of  the 
local  agricultural  section. 

As  a  result  of  the  above-described  agrarian  revolution  the  big  estates 
totally  disappeared  and  the  peasants  received  a  considerable  area  of 
land.  According  to  the  data  of  B.  N.  Knipovitch,  in  1919  the  land 
was  distributed  in  the  following  way ;  * 


THIRTY-TWO 
PROVINCES  OF 
GREAT  RUSSIA 

THE 
UKRAINE 

Percentage 

Percentage 

Peasants'  lands                              ,    . 

.     .    .    .    96.8 

96.0 

Collective  farms    

0.5 

0.8 

Soviet  farms  (so-called  "Sovkhoses"), 
industrial  institutions,  etc.     ,  .    . 

farms  of 
.   .     ..          2.7 

3.2 

1  B.  N.  Knipovitch,  An  Outline  of  the  Wort{  of  People's  Commissariat  of  Agriculture 
during  1917-1920  (Russ.)»  1920,  p.  67. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  617 

Yet,  all  this  land  did  not  become  the  property  of  the  peasants  who 
were  engaged  in  agriculture  before  1917.  The  decay  of  large  and  small 
industries,  the  practically  complete  cessation  of  the  peasants'  migration 
to  industrial  centers  during  the  winter  months,  the  desire  to  partici- 
pate in  the  expected  distribution  of  land,  the  food  and  fuel  crisis  in 
towns,  led  in  1917-1920  to  a  mass  migration  of  the  urban  population 
to  the  country.  All  those  factory  workers,  artisans,  servants,  etc.,  on 
coming  to  the  country,  claimed  their  share  of  the  land  and  actually 
obtained  it.  Consequently,  the  allotment  received  by  the  original  peas- 
ant farmer  was  much  smaller  than  it  might  have  been.  The  enormous 
amount  of  land,  when  distributed  among  many  millions,  gave  very 
poor  results.  In  twenty-nine  provinces  of  European  Russia  before  the 
revolution  there  were  1.87  dessiatines  *  per  consumer;  after  the  revo- 
lution— 2.26  dessiatines,  i.e.,  an  increase  by  039  dessiatine,  or  21  per 
cent.  That  addition  is  so  insignificant  that  we  may  well  ask  ourselves 
if  there  is  any  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  results  of  the  agrarian  revo- 
lution. 

Changes  in  the  peasants'  farming. — It  was  generally  expected  that 
the  liquidation  of  large  estates  and  the  transfer  of  them  into  the  peas- 
ants' hands  would  give  an  impetus  to  the  development  of  peasant  farm- 
ing. In  the  economic  literature  of  the  day  the  additional  allotment  of 
land  was  regarded  as  a  necessary  condition  of  the  further  intensifica- 
tion of  agricultural  production.  Those  expectations  were  not  justified. 
After  the  agrarian  revolution  of  1917,  a  decay  of  agriculture  set  in, 
the  extent  of  which  may  be  seen  from  the  following  table  (the  figures 
refer  to  thousands  of  dessiatines  and  heads  of  livestock) : 

1916  1917  1921  1922 


Area  under  cultivation. 
Working  horses  .  . 

..   .     79,167 

22,725 

53,217 
18,283 

43,813 
14,031 

Cows 

21,542 

19,801 

Area  under  potatoes  .      .    , 
Area  under  flax  
Area  under  hemp     

2,323         ..    . 
.    .        1,317 
518 

1,407 
653 

246 

1,280 
400 

187 

Area  under  sugar  beet 

550         .... 

190 

162 

Area  under  cotton      ,      .    .    . 

.   .         714 

110 

64 

That  decay  was  partly  due  to  the  character  of  the  agrarian  revolu- 
tion, in  which  the  egalitarian  principles  leading  to  an  inevitable  eco- 
nomic regress  got  the  upper  hand.  Partly  it  was  caused  by  the  com- 
munistic policy  of  the  Soviet  government. 

*  EDITORS'  NOTE. — A  dessiatine  is  equal  to  2.7  acres. 


618  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  introduction  of  communism  into  peasant  farming. — The  Com- 
munists themselves  realized  that  both  the  structure  and  the  psychology 
of  the  peasants'  economics  were  utterly  antagonistic  to  the  Communist 
ideas  and  regime.  Nevertheless,  they  tried,  with  an  obstinacy  not  stop- 
ping at  violence,  to  instil  communist  ideas  into  the  anti-communist 
brain  of  the  peasant  and  to  reorganize  farming  according  to  their 
principles,  with  the  result  that  agricultural  production  fell  once  more. 
Since  the  peasants  showed  no  intention  of  substituting  communist 
forms  of  agriculture  for  their  individual  farms,  the  Soviet  politicians 
had  to  "invent"  those  forms  and  impose  them  upon  the  peasants. 

Agricultural  communes  and  associations  (artels), — The  beginning 
was  made  by  the  decree  concerning  socialization  of  land,  published  on 
February  19,  1918,  article  35  of  which  runs  as  follows:  "The  Russian 
Socialist  Federative  Soviet  Republic  pursuing  the  aim  of  a  speedy  ac- 
complishment of  socialism  lends  its  full  support  to  the  collective  culti- 
vation of  land  and  gives  preference  to  the  laboring  communist  cor- 
porative or  cooperative  farms,  as  compared  with  those  run  personally. 
Therefore,  as  far  as  the  distribution  of  land  is  concerned,  the  right  of 
priority,  according  to  article  20,  belongs,  first,  to  agricultural  com- 
munes, then  to  corporations  and  societies,  and  lastly  to  private  persons 
and  families." 

A  step  farther  is  taken  by  the  decree  concerning  the  socialist  organi- 
zation of  land  and  the  measures  for  transition  to  socialist  forms  of 
farming.  It  states  that  in  order  to  put  an  end  to  the  exploitation  of  one 
man  by  another  it  is  necessary  to  pass  over  from  the  individual  form 
of  land  cultivation  to  the  collective  one.  .  .  . 

However,  to  nationalize  18  million  peasant  farms  appeared  impos- 
sible even  to  the  most  unrestrained  fancy  of  the  Communists.  The 
practical  measures  which  contributed  to  the  gradual  introduction  of 
communistic  principles  in  agriculture  may  be  divided  into  two  groups. 
To  the  first  group  belong  the  measures  towards  the  creation  of  agri- 
cultural communes  and  Soviet  farms.  To  the  second — those  which  had 
the  object  of  contributing  towards  the  gradual  communization  of  the 
peasants'  farming.  Here  we  include  the  nationalization  of  agricultural 
revenue  and  the  projects  of  regulation  of  the  peasants'  farming. 

Let  us  see,  then,  to  what  results  that  movement  has  led,2 

The  table  at  the  top  'of  page  619  illustrates  the  growth  of  the  land 
communes  and  associations  in  European  Russia.  Thus  we  see  that  the 
number  of  communes  reached  its  maximum  in  the  summer  of  1919; 
then  it  began  to  diminish.  The  number  of  associations  (artels) ,  on  the 

3  See  the  article  of  B,  K  Knipovitch  in  the  miscellany  About  the  Lands  (Russ.)»  I» 
36-42, 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  619 


COMMUNES 

ASSOCIATIONS 

January,  1919 
June,  1919    .     . 
April,  1920        .  . 
January,  1921     ,         .    . 

....         950 
.  .     .      2,099 
.     .          1,732 
.      1,829 

422 
1,935 
3,865 
9,064 

September,  1921 

1,528 

10,015 

contrary,  is  growing  uninterruptedly.  If  we  classify  both  communes 
and  associations  by  the  lands  on  which  they  sprang  up,  we  shall  obtain 
the  following  percentage  figures: 


COMMUNES     ASSOCIATIONS 

Peasants'  lands  .          

10                 31 

Previous  landlords'  lands 
Church  and  monastery  lands  . 
State  lands     .  .       .           

74                 48 
12                  10 
.     .        4                 11 

The  peasants  objected  to  their  lands  being  utilized  for  communes, 
and  cases  of  it  are  rare;  so  that  the  main  role  in  the  communes  appears 
to  have  been  played  by  outsiders  who  seized  private  landlords'  and 
state-owned  lands  at  the  end  of  1917.  (See  further  a  history  of  the 
communes  and  artels  for  the  years  1920-1930.) 

Soviet  farms.— The  disorganization  of  food  supply  in  the  country 
was  becoming  more  serious  every  day.  It  was  very  hard  to  obtain  grain 
from  the  peasants,  even  by  the  use  of  armed  force.  Then  the  idea 
emerged  of  creating  a  big  state  farm,  a  grain  and  meat  factory,  so  to 
speak.  In  the  first  annual  survey  of  the  food  policy  of  the  Soviet  gov- 
ernment we  find  the  following  reflections  on  that  subject: 

"It  is  necessary  to  draw  the  most  serious  attention  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  large  national  farms,  which  alone  can  ensure  a  constant  supply 
of  foodstuffs  for  the  urban  and  industrial  population  and  mobilize  our 
agricultural  wealth. . . .  Our  most  urgent  task,  dictated  by  severe  neces- 
sity, is  to  make  the  urban  and  industrial  population  independent  of  the 
villages,  as  far  as  the  supply  of  foodstuffs  is  concerned.  In  that  lies  the 
political  meaning  of  such  large  national  estates.  The  more  'grain  fac- 
tories' are  erected,  the  better  it  will  be  for  the  proletarian  government, 
and  the  stronger  will  be  the  hold  of  the  working  class  inside  the  hos- 
tile domain  of  peasantry." 3 

55  N.  Orlov,  The  Food  Policy  of  the  Soviet  Government  (Russ.)»  1918,  pp.  272,  377. 


620  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  idea  of  creating  Soviet  farms  soon  became  popular  in  the  lead- 
ing (Communist)  circles.  The  law  about  the  socialist  land  organiza- 
tion and  the  measures  for  transition  to  socialist  farming  published  on 
February  14,  1919,  defines  in  the  following  way  the  aims  of  that  new 
institution:  "The  Soviet  farms  are  organized  for  the  purposes  of  (a) 
the  maximum  increase  of  supply,  by  means  of  an  increase  o£  agricul- 
tural productivity  and  of  the  area  under  cultivation;  (b)  creating  the 
conditions  for  a  complete  transition  to  communist  farming;  (c)  the 
formation  and  development  of  centres  for  the  diffusion  of  agricultural 
knowledge." 

In  October,  1918,  the  estates  which  were  not  partitioned  by  the  peas- 
ants began  to  be  taken  over  by  the  Commissariat  of  Agriculture,  which 
appointed  the  district  organs  of  administration.  But  the  process  went 
on  very  slowly  and  by  February,  1919,  only  thirty-five  Soviet  farms  with 
a  total  area  of  12,000  dessiatines  were  subjected  to  central  administra- 
tion; the  rest  were  still  in  the  hands  of  the  local  organs,  economically 
in  a  lamentable  condition.  The  total  of  Soviet  farms  at  the  end  of 
1919  was  as  follows: 


TOTAL  OF 
SOVIET 
FARMS 

FARMS 
TAKEN  OVER 

BY  THE 

COMMISSARIAT 

1918 

3,101 

1919 

3,547 

516 

1920 

4,292 

1,636 

1921 

5,918 

2,136 

By  the  end  of  1921,  Soviet  farms  occupied  an  area  of  3,079,262  des- 
siatines. So  long  as  they  were  run  by  the  state,  they  brought  no  reve- 
nue, notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  labor  was  practically  free,  as 
the  peasants  who  tilled  the  land  did  it  as  their  "labor  duty."  Already  by 
the  end  of  1920  it  became  clear  that  "under  the  present  conditions  of 
the  state's  resources  it  was  not  possible  to  expect  anything  in  the  way 
of  large  state  agricultural  concerns.  Statistical  data  about  the  Soviet 
farms  showed  that  there  was  no  considerable  increase;  and,  as  the 
census  of  1921  clearly  showed,  the  existing  Soviet  farms  could  not  be 
run  economically.  Therefore,  in  spite  of  all  the  measures  that  had  been 
taken,  we  were  compelled  to  abandon  the  hope  that  the  Soviet  farms 
would  become  in  the  near  future  the  factories  of  grain  and  meat."  4 

4  Report  of  the  Commissariat  of  Agriculture  to  the  IXth  Congress  of  the  Soviets  for 
the  Year  1921  (Russ,),  p.  7. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  621 

In  view  of  that,  a  tendency  to  give  the  Soviet  farms  in  leasehold 
began  to  show  itself  from  the  end  of  1921;  some  of  the  provincial 
agricultural  sections  intended  to  give  in  leasehold  about  75  per  cent 
of  the  Soviet  farming  area. 

Thus  both  attempts  at  implanting  collective  forms  of  farming  ended 
in  failure.  They  were  both  confined  to  that  3  per  cent  of  the  agricul- 
tural area  of  the  country  which  does  not  belong  to  the  peasants. 

78.  PITIRIM  A.  SOROKIN:  SUBSEQUENT  CHANGES  IN  SOVIET  AGRI- 
CULTURAL POLICY  AND  THE  NEW  AGRARIAN  REVOLUTION 

To  1928.— The  preceding  paper  of  Prof.  S.  Prokopovitch  accurately 
describes  the  evolution  of  the  Soviet  agrarian  policies  and  their  results 
up  to  1924.  The  policies  for  the  years  1925-1927  produced  nothing  new, 
and  the  Soviet  government  did  not  attempt  to  vitalize  its  aims  to  com- 
munize  and  collectivize  farming.  The  new  economic  policy  openly 
recognized  the  legitimacy  of  individual  farming  and  land  possession 
and  tried  to  obtain  all  the  agricultural  products  it  could  from  the  indi- 
vidual system.  Consequently  there  was  very  little  progress  during  these 
years  toward  the  communization  and  collectivization  of  peasants  and 
their  farms.  The  following  official  figures  show  this  quite  clearly.1 
"An  idea  of  the  development  of  the  agricultural  communes  and  asso- 
ciations during  the  period  from  1920  to  1926  is  given  by  the  following 
data  of  the  Central  Statistical  Board  of  Soviet  Russia." 


YEAR 

NUMBER  OF 
AGRICULTURAL 

COMMUNES 

NUMBER  OF 
AGRICULTURAL 
ASSOCIATIONS 

NUMBER  OF 
COOPERATIVE 
AGRICULTURAL 
UNIONS 

1920 

1,759 

8,067 

695 

1921 

3,015 

9,777 

2,497 

1922 

1,943 

8,459 

5,038 

1923 

1,874 

6,809 

5,319 

1924 

1,571 

7,381 

4,571 

1925 

1,829 

8,802 

4,547 

In  1927  the  number  of  communes  decreased  to  95.2  per  cent  of  their 
number  in  1925;  the  number  of  agricultural  associations  decreased  to 

1The  data  and  quotations  are  taken  from  D.  Karpusi,  "Die  kollektive  Ackerbauwirt- 
schaft  in  der  U.  d.  S.  S.  R.,"  Agrar-Probleme,  Berlin,  1928,  Band  I,  Heft  3,  459-496, 
Agrar-Probleme  being  a  publication  of  the  Soviet  International  Agrarian  Institute  in 
Moscow;  and  from  A.  Gaister,  Achievements  and  Difficulties  of  the  Organization  of  the 
Collective  Agricultural  Enterprises  (Dostijenia  t  troudnosti  ^ol^hosnago  stroitclstva) 
(Russ,)»  published  by  the  Communist  Academy,  Moscow,  1929,  pp.  1-43,  63,  76  and 
passim. 


622  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

87.9  per  cent  of  their  number  in  1925.  Only  the  number  of  the  unions 
which  are  merely  the  usual  type  of  cooperative  organization  of  peasants 
continued  to  increase.  The  total  labor  of  these  communal  and  coopera- 
tive enterprises  in  relation  to  the  labor  employed  in  individual  peasant 
enterprises  composed  35  per  cent  in  1920,  66  in  1924,  and  73  in  1926. 
The  gross  production  of  these  collective  and  communal  enterprises  in 
relation  to  the  gross  production  of  the  total  peasant  enterprises  com- 
posed 78  per  cent  in  1926.  The  previous  socio-economic  position  of  the 
members  of  these  communes  was  as  follows:  52  per  cent  of  them  did 
not  have  any  land  previously;  18.9  per  cent  had  each  from  1  to  3  des- 
siatines  of  land;  21.5  per  cent  had  from  3  to  15  dessiatines;  and  7,6 
per  cent  had  more  than  15  dessiatines.  Sixty-one  per  cent  of  all  these 
communes,  artels,  and  unions  were  organized  on  land  that  did  not 
belong  to  the  peasants  but  was  that  of  the  landlords'  estates,  and  only 
39  per  cent  on  land  that  belonged  either  to  the  village  communities  or 
to  the  relatively  rich  peasants  from  whom  the  land  was  taken.  Of  the 
communes,  84  per  cent  were  on  the  land  of  the  previous  landlords' 
estates.  This  shows  that  these  communes  were  merely  a  kind  of  ex- 
ploitation of  the  estates'  lands,  buildings,  and  inventories  by  persons 
— predominantly  the  Communists — who  received  them  for  nothing. 

Hired  labor,  prohibited  to  the  peasants,  was  permitted  to  these  col- 
lective enterprises.  The  percentage  of  hired  labor  used  in  these  enter- 
prises in  relation  to  the  members  of  the  communes  was  as  follows: 
17.4  per  cent  in  the  communes;  32.5  per  cent  in  the  artels;  and  13.4  per 
cent  in  the  cooperative  agricultural  unions.  This  shows  that  in  their 
essence  these  communal  enterprises  were  but  disguised  capitalist  enter- 
prises in  which  the  role  of  capitalists  and  "exploiters"  was  played  by 
members  of  the  communes  (mostly  Communists).  Part  of  these  hired 
laborers  were  seasonal  laborers  only;  a  second  part  were  day  laborers; 
and  a  third  part  were  represented  by  the  "piece  laborers."  The  average 
daily  wage  of  the  members  and  the  daily  and  seasonal  laborers  was  (in 
}(ppe\s*}  respectively:  131,  102,  and  72  in  communes;  253,  93,  and  86 
in  artels;  and  405,  77,  and  26  in  the  agricultural  cooperative  unions. 
Thus  no  equality  in  remuneration  existed  in  these  communal  enter- 
prises, and  the  discrepancy  between  the  wages  of  the  members  and  the 
laborers  was  scarcely  less  than  that  between  the  wages  ~  of  the  farmer- 
owner  and  the  tenant  or  hired  laborer  in  any  "capitalist  country." 

The  average  size  of  these  enterprises  fluctuated  from  75  to  225  des- 
siatines, according  to  the  province.  The  average  number  of  families 
united  in  one  commune  was  16,  with  30  laborers;  in  artels ,  9  families, 

*Onc  hundred  kopeks  equals  one  ruble.  The  purchasing  power  of  the  Soviet  ruble 
during  1927-1928  was  no  more  than  thirty  cents;  in  1929-1930  it  fell  to  approximately 
fifteen  cents. 

2  Sec  N.  Sukhanov's  remarks  in  the  work  of  Gaister  cited,  p.  63, 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  623 

with  21  laborers;  and  in  the  agricultural  cooperative  unions,  16,  with  33 
laborers.  In  regard  to  machinery,  cattle,  credit,  taxes,  agronomic 
service,  and  buying  and  selling,  the  government  put  the  communal 
enterprises  in  a  much  more  privileged  position  than  the  peasant  farms. 
Directly  and  indirectly  the  former  were  subsidized  and  helped  by  the 
Soviet  authorities,3  while  the  latter  were  rather  oppressed.  And  yet  the 
net  income  of  the  communal  agricultural  enterprises — if  the  data  are 
to  be  trusted— was  only  slightly  above  that  of  the  individual  peasant 
farms.  There  are  serious  reasons  leading  us  to  think  that  this  "net 
income"  of  the  former  was  rather  fictitious  and,  other  conditions  being 
equal,  would  be  in  no  way  higher  than  that  of  the  peasant.  The  divi- 
sion of  the  produce  was  made  according  to  different  bases  in  different 
communes:  in  a  few  the  produce  was  divided  among  the  member 
families  according  to  the  number  of  "eaters"  in  each  family,  in  others 
according  to  the  number  of  "eaters"  with  consideration  of  the  age  of 
each  "eater,"  in  a  third  group  according  to  the  amount  of  the  invest- 
ment in  the  communal  enterprise,  in  a  fourth  group  according  to  the 
amount  of  work  done,  etc. 

If  we  turn  from  these  communistic  and  collectivistic  agricultural 
groups  to  the  Soviet  farms  that  were  managed  entirely  by  the  govern- 
ment, the  situation  up  to  1928  was  as  follows4: 

The  sowing  area  of  the  Soviet  farms  composed  1.2  per  cent  of  the  total 
sowing  area  of  the  U.  S.  S.  R.  The  total  merchandised  amount  of  the 
agricultural  production  of  these  farms  composed  6.2  per  cent  of  the  mer- 
chandised agricultural  produce  of  the  country.  The  total  number  of  laborers 
engaged  on  these  farms  yearly  was  about  200,000.  With  the  members  of 
their  families,  this  number  rose  to  1,000,000.  The  laborers  fell  into  the  fol- 
lowing categories:  permanent  laborers  and  employes,  seasonal  laborers,  day 
laborers,  and  piece  laborers. 

Permanent  laborers  and  employes  constituted  from  35  to  52  per  cent 
of  the  total  number  of  laborers,  the  percentage  varying  according  to 
the  region;  seasonal  and  day  laborers  constituted  from  44  to  54  per 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  63-76. 

*The  data  are  also  taken  from  the  publications  of  the  Soviet  government  and  the 
Communist  party  of  Russia:  namely  from  F.  Galevius,  "Die  Arbeitsprobleme  in  der 
Grosswirtschaft  (Sowietwirtschaft)  der  U.  d.  S.  S.  R.,"  Agrar-Probleme,  Berlin,  1928, 
Band  I,  Heft  4,  661-690;  also  from  V.  Kavraiski  and  I.  Nusinoff,  Classes  and  Class 
Relationships  in  the  Contemporary  Soviet  Village  (Russ.),  1929;  M.  Fenomenotf,  Contem- 


JakovlerT,  For  Agricultural  Communes,  Moscow-Leningrad,  1929;  A.  Gaister,  Achieve- 
ments and  Difficulties  of  the  Communal  Organization,  Moscow,  1929;  G.  S.  Gordieefl, 
Agricultural  Economy  in  War  and  Revolution,  Moscow-Leningrad,  1925.  These  are  all 
in  Russian  and  all  are  publications  either  of  the  Soviet  government  or  of  the  organs  of 
the  Russian  Communist  party  and  the  Third  International. 


624  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

cent;  while  piece  laborers  constituted  only  from  3  to  12  per  cent,  The 
proportion  of  permanent  laborers  decreased  from  1925  to  1927,  while 
the  proportions  in  the  other  categories  of  hired  labor  tended  to  increase. 
In  1927  there  were  on  the  average  7.1  yearly  laborers  per  one  hundred 
hectares  (annual  labor  unit) .  The  managerial  staff  of  these  farms  com- 
posed 7  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  hired  persons  in  August  of 
1927  and  29  per  cent  in  January  of  the  same  year.  The  annual  wages 
in  1927  were  about  400  rubles  for  permanent  laborers,  207  rubles  for 
seasonal  and  day  laborers,  and  650  rubles  for  piece  laborers,  (Nomi- 
nally the  ruble  is  equivalent  to  $0.51,  but  the  purchasing  power  of  the 
Soviet  ruble  was  about  $030  in  1927  and  from  $0.15  to  $0.20  in  1929.) 

Radical  changes  in  the  years  1928-1930.— The  years  1928  and  1929 
were  marked  by  vigorous  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  Soviet  government 
to  break  peasant  individualism  and  to  introduce  state  socialism  into 
the  agricultural  industry  in  Russia.  These  efforts  were  dictated  by  the 
practical  necessity  of  obtaining  sufficient  amounts  of  agricultural  prod- 
ucts from  the  peasantry  to  provide  for  the  government  and  the  cities 
and  to  finance  the  whole  economic  policy  of  the  Communist  party. 
During  the  years  from  1923  to  1928  the  Soviet  government  attempted 
to  buy  agricultural  products  from  the  peasantry.  Since  the  government 
had  a  monopoly  in  this  field,  it  paid  the  peasants  only  from  a  fourth 
to  a  half  of  the  prices  the  products  would  have  brought  in  the  world 
market.  Naturally  the  peasants  objected  strenuously  to  such  exploita- 
tion and  preferred  to  feed  their  grain  to  cattle  and  use  their  products 
themselves  rather  than  sell  them  to  the  Soviet  government  at  such  low 
prices.  As  a  result  the  government  had  to  stop  exporting  agricultural 
products,  though  this  exportation  was  necessary  in  order  to  pay  for 
foreign  importations.  In  addition,  the  government  was  beginning  to 
feel  a  shortage  of  food  for  its  numerous  agents,  the  members  of  the 
Communist  party,  the  army,  and  the  urban  proletariat.  All  this  jeopar- 
dized its  position  and  endangered  its  stability.  The  peasants  were  not 
greatly  dependent  on  the  government  for  their  economic  necessities,  so 
they  began  to  show  themselves  more  and  more  independent  of  the 
Soviet  regime.  It  was  necessary  for  the  government  to  do  something 
drastic  in  order  to  maintain  itself.  As  a  result,  in  1928  the  general  policy 
was  changed  under  Stalin's  influence  to  resemble  the  offensive  com- 
munism of  the  years  19174921* 

Since  1928  the  agricultural  policy  has  had  as  its  goal  the  collectiviza- 
tion of  farming  and  the  communization  of  the  peasants.  The  govern- 
ment has  applied  all  the  forms  of  pressure  that  might  help  in  the  reali- 
zation of  these  objectives.  By  a  series  of  decrees,  among  which  the  de- 
crees of  August  26, 1929,  have  been  especially  important,  the  Soviet  gov- 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  625 

ernmerit  has  established  the  collective  responsibility  of  the  peasants  of 
each  community  for  giving  to  the  government  the  prescribed  amount 
of  agricultural  products.  The  policy  of  buying  has  been  replaced  by 
that  of  requisitioning  agricultural  products  from  the  peasants  for  noth- 
ing or  for  a  purely  fictitious  price.  In  case  of  nonfulfillment  of  this 
duty  the  entire  community  and  each  peasant  household  in  it  have 
been  made  responsible  and  have  been  subjected  to  fines  several  times 
as  great  as  the  value  of  the  prescribed  amount  of  products,  to  con- 
fiscation pf  all  their  property,  to  imprisonment,  to  banishment,  and  to 
execution.  In  other  words,  the  government  has  introduced  something 
very  similar  to  state  socialist  serfdom  with  collective  responsibility. 

In  order  to  break  peasant  individualism  the  government  began  to 
tax  the  individual  peasant  farms  so  excessively,  to  impose  so  many 
duties  on  them,  and  to  subject  individual  peasants  so  often  to  dis- 
franchisements  of  political  and  civil  rights,  arrest,  imprisonment,  exe- 
cution, and  similar  measures,  that  successful  individual  farming  has 
become  exceedingly  difficult,  if  not  impossible.  Under  such  conditions 
many  peasants  have  been  forced  to  give  up  their  individual  farms  and 
declare  themselves  partisans  of  collective  farm  enterprises  in  order  to 
protect  themselves.  Herein  lies  the  explanation  of  the  mysterious  and 
conspicuous  growth  of  collective  farm  enterprises  in  the  year  1928-1929. 
According  to  the  official  paper  of  the  Soviet  government,5  there  were 
18,600  collective  farms  of  all  types  (including  communes,  associations, 
and  unions)  on  October  1,  1927.  This  number  increased  to  32,400  by 
May  1, 1928;  to  37,000  by  October  1,  1928;  and  to  60,000  by  the  end  of 
1929.  Thus  the  above  conditions  caused  these  years  to  be  marked  by  an 
excessive  growth  of  the  collective  forms  of  farming. 

This  policy  has  been  pursued  still  more  vigorously  during  the  last 
three  months  of  1929  and  in  1930.  It  was  finally  formulated  expresses 
verbis  by  Stalin  in  his  address  at  the  Conference  of  the  Marxian  Agri- 
cultural Economists,  on  December  27,  1929.6  This  was  the  Soviet  dic- 
tator's declaration  of  war  on  individual  farming  generally  and  on 
all  the  peasants  who  wanted  to  remain  individual  farmers.  Stalin  de- 
clared that  from  now  on  the  Soviet  government  was  pursuing  unhesi- 
tatingly a  policy  aiming  toward  the  collectivization  of  all  farms;  the 
individual  lands  of  peasants  and  their  agricultural  implements,  cattle, 
and  other  forms  of  property  would  have  to  be  merged  into  large  col- 
lective farm  enterprises,  nominally  managed  by  persons  elected  by  the 
members  of  the  collective  farms,  but  factually  by  the  agents  of  the 

15  "Today's  Tasks  in  the  Organization  of  the  Collective  Farms,'*  editorial,  Uvcstia, 
August  29,  1929.  See  also  the  editorial  in  Uvestia,  August  28,  1929.  (Isvcrtia  is  the 
official  paper  of  the  Soviet  Central  Government.) 

°Sce  "The  Address  of  Comrade  Stalin,"  Isvestia,  December  29,  1929. 


626  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Soviet  government  and  the  Communist  party.  Stalin  believes  that  such 
a  form  of  agricultural  organization  is  best,  contrary  to  the  prejudices 
and  biases  of  the  "bourgeois  economists"  who,  according  to  Stalin,  have 
succeeded  in  seducing  some  members  of  the  Communist  party.  The 
dictator  believes  that  the  bourgeois  theory  of  the  stability  of  family 
farms  is  nothing  but  capitalistic  prejudice.  Stalin  declared  further: 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  small  family  farms  and  individual  farm  own- 
ership are  incompatible  with  the  Communist  regime.  If  the  Communist 
party  and  the  Soviet  government  are  going  to  create  a  communist  society 
in  the  place  of  a  capitalistic  society,  they  can  no  longer  tolerate  the  bulwark 
of  the  latter  in  the  form  of  individual  or  family  farms  and  their  proprietors. 
Neither  can  they  afford  to  leave  this  matter  to  the  natural  development  in 
the  course  of  time,  but  instead  they  must  foster  it  by  all  possible  means. 
The  development  of  Communistic  and  collective  farming  is  such  fostering, 
for  these  forms  of  farm  organization  are  nothing  but  the  realization  of  the 
communist  society. 

Collective  farms  as  a  type  of  enterprise  are  one  of  the  forms  of  socialist 
economic  organization.  There  is  no  doubt  of  that.  One  of  the  comrades 
tried  to  uncrown  them,  he  tried  to  assure  us  that  collective  farms  have  noth- 
ing in  common  with  the  socialist  organization.  He  is  quite  wrong.  .  .  . 
Of  course,  in  the  collective  farms  there  are  some  antagonisms,  many  indi- 
vidualistic and  even  exploitatory  prejudices.  .  .  .  But  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  that,  in  spite  of  these  antagonisms  and  conflicts,  they  represent  a  so- 
cialistic development  of  the  village  which  is  quite  opposite  to  its  capitalistic 
development.  .  .  .  Some  other  comrades  claim  also  that  in  the  collective 
farms  the  class  struggle  continues  and  that  it  is  in  no  way  different  from  the 
class  struggle  outside.  More  than  that,  they  claim  that  it  becomes  even  more 
violent  and  acute  in  the  collective  farms,  .  .  .  We  must  not  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  this  squeak  and  scream  of  our  left  communist  wing.  ...  Of  course, 
collective  farming  is  not  full  socialism,  but  it  is  a  step  toward  it.  ... 

In  subsequent  parts  of  his  address  Stalin  declared  that  the  Commu- 
nist party  and  government  were  now  in  a  position  "to  develop  an  of- 
fensive against  individual  farming  along  the  whole  frontier  and  to  re- 
place the  policy  of  limitation  of  the  exploitation  of  the  tendencies  of 
individual  peasants  by  that  of  liquidation  of  the  individual  peasants  as 
a  social  class." 

This  address  was  only  a  moderate  summary  of  the  policy  of  the 
Soviet  government  in  this  field  as  it  has  manifested  itself  during  the 
second  part  of  1929  and  during  1930.  During  this  period  all  possible 
pressures  and  measures  have  been  applied  to  the  peasantry  in  order  to 
force  them  to  quit  individual  farming  and  to  give  up  their  land, 
farms,  implements,  and  property  to  the  collective  farms.  The  official 
newspapers  of  the  Communist  party  and  the  Soviet  government  (Isves- 
tia,  Pravda,  Leningrad  Pravda,  Krasnaia  Gazettd)  give  evidence  con- 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  627 

cerning  the  kind  of  measures  used.  In  some  places  the  Soviet  agents 
simply  declared  to  the  peasants  that,  if  they  would  not  collectivize 
their  farms,  lands,  cattle,  etc.,  the  land  and  the  farms  and  all  their 
property  would  be  taken  from  them.  The  peasants  of  one  region  asked 
the  agents  what  they  would  do  without  land  and  farms,  and  they  re- 
ceived  the  answer:  "Migrate  to  the  planet  Mars  and  start  your  indi- 
vidual farming  there."  At  another  place  the  agents  closed  all  the  wells 
and  water  sources  of  the  community,  and  the  population  was  deprived 
of  water  until  the  peasants  agreed  to  collectivize  their  farms.  Con- 
fiscation of  all  the  property  of  the  stubborn  peasants,  imprisonment, 
banishment  from  the  native  place,  and  executions  were  the  ordinary 
methods  of  forcing  the  peasants  to  enter  the  paradise  of  collectiviza- 
tion.7 According  to  an  approximate  estimation,  from  5,000  to  12,000 
peasants  were  executed  in  October  and  November  of  1929  alone.8  A 
decree  legalizing  a  complete  confiscation  of  the  land  and  other  prop- 
erty of  such  peasants  and  banishment  of  the  peasants  themselves  to 
other  remote  parts  of  Russia  was  enacted  February  2,  1930.9  Tens  of 
thousands  of  such  confiscations  and  banishments  have  already  taken 
place. 

When  all  this  is  taken  into  consideration,  it  is  not  surprising  to  dis- 
cover that  "a  most  successful  collectivization  of  farms"  has  progressed 
since  that  time.  The  Soviet  authorities  expect  three-fourths  of  all  peas- 
ant farms  to  be  collectivized  in  1930.10  Individual  farms  are  already 
entirely  abolished  in  many  large  regions  which  are  styled  as  "regions 
of  the  wholesale  collectivization  of  farms."  At  the  same  time,  the  Soviet 
government  is  quite  logically  developing  a  policy  as  a  result  of  which 
the  difference  between  the  Soviet  farms  and  the  collective  farms 
tends  to  be  obliterated.  The  collective  farms,  like  the  Soviet  farms,  are 
tending  more  and  more  to  be  organized  and  managed  by  govern- 
mental agencies.  As  the  membership  of  the  Communist  party  is  not 
sufficiently  large  to  force  the  peasants  to  conform  to  these  new  policies, 

7  A  purely  random  sample  of  the  copies  of  the  above  official  newspapers,  especially 
Prat'da  and  Isvestia,  for  the  last  three  months  of   1929   and  for   1930  will  furnish 
abundant  information  of  this  kind. 

8  The  number  of  the  executions  for  that  period,  published  in  the  Soviet  papers,  is 
about  250.  But  Soviet  papers  publish  usually  an  insignificant  part  of  the  actual  executions. 

u  See  hvestia,  February  2.  According  to  a  rough  estimate,  during  the  last  four  months 
of  1929  and  the  first  three  months  of  1930  about  two  million  of  the  most  industrious 
peasant  families  suffered  confiscation  of  all  their  property,  expulsion  from  their  farms, 
and  banishment  to  northern  Russia  where  they  were  condemned  to  hard  labor  under 
the  harshest  conditions. 

10  "Perspectives  of  Agriculture  in  1930,"  Isvestia,  February  1,  1930.  Isvestia,  February 
12,  1930,  says  that  the  farm  population  of  the  collective  farms  from  October  1,  1928,  to 
January  1,  1930,  increased  from  2,534,700,  or  2  per  cent  of  the  peasant  population,  to 
25,000,000,  or  more  than  20  per  cent  of  the  peasant  population.  (Paper  of  P.  Savchuk, 
"Agriculture  on  a  New  Road.") 


628  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  Soviet  authorities  have  made  a  special  mobilization,  somewhat  simi- 
lar to  a  military  mobilization,  of  the  Communists  or  pro-Communist 
sympathizers  among  the  urban  workers.  Idlers,  parasites,  individuals 
who  prefer  food  to  starvation  in  the  cities,  failures,  incapables,  and  vari- 
ous good-for-nothing  elements  in  the  villages  (the  so-called  "village 
poors")  are  sent  to  the  villages  as  agents  of  the  Soviet  government  to 
enforce  its  policies.11  These  persons,  together  with  the  members  of  the 
Communist  party  and  the  Soviet  government,  are  to  be  the  managers, 
instructors,  superintendents,  and  directors  of  the  collective  farms.  At 
the  same  time  they  are  the  punitive  forces  for  the  peasants  who  refuse 
to  obey  the  orders  of  the  government.  As  the  peasants  say,  they  are  the 
new  fomeschikjs  (landlords)  who  come  in  the  place  of  the  old  ones. 

It  is  comprehensible  that  these  new  policies  do  not  have  the  hearty 
approval  of  the  peasantry.  In  spite  of  the  sonorous  phraseology  of  the 
Communist  reconstructors,  the  collectivization  of  farms  has  not  yet 
given  any  benefits  to  the  peasants.  The  factual  results  of  this  new 
policy  may  be  summarized  as  follows: 

(1)  For  the  enormous  majority  of  the  peasants  it  means  complete 
dispossession  of  their  land,  farms,  cattle,  inventory,  and  some  other 
property.  (2)  They  are  transformed  from  independent  producers,  land- 
possessors,  and  managers  of  their  own  farms,  families,  and  businesses 
into  hired  laborers.  With  the  exception  of  the  Communist  managers 
and  superintendents,  the  independent  peasant  who  goes  to  a  collective 
farm  is  nothing  but  a  subordinated  manual  laborer  who  has  to  do  what 
his  new  bosses  order  without  protest  or  objection.  He  can  neither  pro- 
test nor  quit  the  collective  farm,  because  in  that  case  he  is  accused  of 
counter-revolution  and  is  pitilessly  punished,  often  executed.  He  is 
paid  very  poorly  and  exploited  most  unmercifully.  Thus  his  status  ap- 
proaches that  of  the  Roman  colonus  or  the  medieval  serf,  the  only  dif- 
ference being  that  the  serfs  often  belonged  to  private  landlords,  while 
he,  like  the  serfs  during  Ptolemy's  regime  in  ancient  Egypt  or  those  of 
Rome  after  Diocletian,  is  subjugated  to  the  members  o£  the  Com- 
munist party  and  the  Soviet  agents.  This  difference  does  not  make  serf- 
dom any  sweeter  for  the  Russian  peasant.  (3)  The  development  of  the 
system  by  the  Soviet  promises  other  "pleasures"  to  the  peasantry :  dwell- 
ing in  communistic  houses,  like  cattle  in  common  stables;  communistic 
meals;  communistic  dormitories;  communistic  education  of  children; 
and  even  the  communistic  family.  So  far  all  this  has  been  in  the  most 
miserable  forms,  lacking  even  the  most  elementary  hygienic  and  com- 

11  According  to  copies  of  Soviet  newspapers  for  January  and  February  of  1930>  more 
than  200,000  persons  from  the  cities  and  many  hundreds  of  thousands  (out  of  more  than 
one  hundred  million  of  the  rural  population)  from  the  villages  are  already  mobilized  for 
this  warfare  with  the  peasantry. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  629 

fortable  conditions.  Conditions  are  somewhat  better  on  a  very  few 
Soviet  farms,  which  are  mostly  for  exhibition.  All  the  brilliant  pictures 
painted  by  the  Soviets  concerning  the  beauty  of  their  Communist 
farms  and  agricultural  cities  remain  only  on  paper.  The  reality  is  very 
grim  and  disconsolate. 

Anyone  who  knows  a  little  history  can  see  that  the  new  Communist 
agricultural  regime  is  a  replica  of  the  regime  of  the  fellahins  in  the 
collective  farming  system  of  the  Ptolemies  and  of  a  regime  which 
occurred  several  times  in  the  history  of  China,  especially  in  the,  eleventh 
century  A.  D.?  under  the  leadership  of  Wang-an-Shi.12  The  "new  Com- 
munist creation"  is  a  mere  restoration  of  something  that  is  very  old. 
And  since  the  fellahins  of  the  Ptolemies  and  the  Chinese  peasants 
were  dissatisfied  with  their  regime,  we  can  scarcely  expect  the  Russian 
peasantry  to  be  satisfied.  (See  Rostovtzeff's  and  Waltzing' s  papers  in 
this  chapter.) 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  peasantry  who  have  been  driven  into  these 
collective  stables  have  already  shown  the  bitterest  opposition  to  this 
policy  of  collectivization.  We  enumerate  the  principal  forms  in  which 
this  opposition  has  been  manifested  according  to  the  data  given  in  the 
official  Soviet  newspapers  themselves.13  First,  the  number  of  murders 
of  Communists  by  peasants  has  increased  greatly.  According  to  Isvestia, 
the  number  of  such  murders  was  greater  for  November  and  Decem- 
ber, 1929,  than  for  the  whole  of  1928.14  The  situation  became  so  dan- 
gerous for  the  Communists  and  the  Soviet  agents  that  the  government 
introduced  an  especially  high  sort  of  insurance  and  remuneration  for 
all  Communists  and  Soviet  agents  who  are  sent  to  work  in  the  villages. 
Second,  many  Soviet  and  collective  farms  were  burned  by  the  peasants. 
Every  copy  of  the  Soviet  newspapers  gives  several  instances  of  such 
cases  and  information  concerning  the  trials  and  sometimes  the  execu- 
tions of  such  peasant  incendiaries.  Third,  the  peasants  who  were  going 
to  be  forced  to  go  into  this  regime  began  to  slaughter  their  cattle  and 
horses,  and  to  eat  them  or  to  turn  them  into  valuables.  As  a  result  there 
has  been  a  crisis  in  regard  to  the  meat  supply  in  Soviet  Russia  since 
November,  1929,  and  the  spring  of  1930  witnesses  an  enormous  defi- 
ciency of  cattle  and  other  animals  for  agricultural  works  as  well  as  of 
their  manure,  necessary  for  the  fertilization  of  the  fields. 

13  See  especially  IvanofF,  Wang*an-Shit  St.  Petersburg,  1909;  see  also  Lee's  Economic 
History  of  China,  cited;  Rene  Grousset,  Histoire  de  I'Asie,  Paris,  1922,  II,  325  fl.j  and 
Chen  Huan-Chang,  The  Economic  Principles  of  Confucius,  II,  497  ff. 

13  These  facts  are  reported  in  practically  every  copy  of  the  Isvestia,  Pravda,  and  other 
Soviet  newspapers  for  the  end  of  1929  and  for  1930,  For  this  reason,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  give  a  special  enumeration  of  the  copies. 

^tweftitt,  January  31,  1930.  Likewise,  the  first  half  of  1930  has  been  marked  by  a 
series  of  peasant  revolts  in  the  Far  East,  Siberia,  the  Caucasus,  and  the  Don  region, 
which,  in  spite  of  suppression,  have  assumed  a  somewhat  serious  character. 


630  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  situation  became  so  catastrophic  by  the  end  of  1929  that  the 
Soviet  government  was  forced  to  issue  a  special  law  punishing  the 
slaughtering  of  cattle  and  horses  by  the  peasant  proprietors  with  sev- 
eral years  imprisonment  and  confiscation  of  property.15  It  has  not 
helped,  and  the  process  of  slaughtering  has  continued  since  the  passing 
of  the  law  as  intensively  as  before.16  Since  the  peasant  is  to  be  robbed 
of  all  his  property  by  the  government  and  to  be  forced  to  go  into  serf- 
dom, he  prefers  to  enjoy  the  meat  of  the  cattle  or  to  sell  it  and  to  turn 
it  into  a  valuable  in  the  hope  that  the  policy  of  the  government  will 
be  changed  before  long.  Furthermore,  the  individual  peasant  farmers 
reduced  the  area  of  their  cultivated  land  to  a  minimum  because  the 
cultivation  of  an  additional  portion  gave  no  profit,  as  everything  above 
a  minimum  agricultural  produce  is  taken  by  the  government  without 
remuneration.  Such  are  the  main  categories  of  facts  in  which  the  peas- 
ant opposition  to  the  new  regime  has  manifested  itself. 

To  the  end  of  February,  1930,  the  problem  of  the  spring  seeding  be- 
came so  menacing  and  so  hopeless  that  the  Communist  party  itself  was 
forced  to  begin  to  moderate  the  process  of  collectivization.  A  formal 
manifestation  of  this  soft-pedaling  was  Stalin's  address  "Dizziness 
from  Success,"  published  in  Isuestta  on  March  2,  1930.  In  this  paper, 
putting  the  blame  upon  the  ordinary  members  of  the  Communist 
party  for  their  stupidity,  the  dictator  stated  that  they  had  become  giddy 
from  the  success  of  the  policy  of  collectivization;  that  with  an  idiotic 
zeal  they  had  enforced  collectivization  by  all  means,  regardless  of  con- 
ditions; and  that  in  doing  so  they  had  endangered  the  agricultural 
situation  and  the  position  of  the  government.  Moderation  in  the  en- 
forcement of  collectivization  was  demanded.  By  moderation  was 
meant,  first,  that  collectivization  should  assume  the  form  of  an  artel 
or  association,  but  not  that  of  a  communistic  commune;  and  second, 
that  it  should  be  free,  not  forced  and  obligatory,  as  it  had  been  up 
to  that  time.  Stalin's  paper  was  followed  by  a  long  series  of  other 
papers  and  measures  that  openly  disclosed  the  nature  of  the  preceding 
policy  of  collectivization.  These  papers  have  shown,  first,  that  the  ap- 
parently miraculous  progress  of  collectivization  during  the  preceding 
months  was  purely  fictitious  and  that  the  statistical  figures  of  the  col- 
lectivized farms  were  for  the  most  part  imaginary.  Within  two  or 
three  weeks  after  the  publication  of  Stalin's  paper,  the  percentage  of 

"See  "Urgent  Objectives  of  Animal  Husbandry,"  editorial,  Itvesria,  January  15,  1930, 
"According  to  the  official  Red  Gazette  (Krasnaia  Gaxtttti,  February  7,  1930),  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1930,  all  kinds  of  cattle  had  decreased  from  20  to  40  per  cent  since  the  year 
before.  See  also  the  editorial  in  Isvcstia,  February  12,  1930.  According  to  Stalin's  own 
statement,  in  1930  the  number  of  houses  decreased  by  8  per  cent;  that  of  cattle,  by 
25  per  cent;  that  of  sheep,  by  30  per  cent;  that  of  hogs,  by  43  per  cent.  See  Stalin's 
address  in  Isvestia,  June  29,  1930. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  631 

collectivized  farms  dropped  from  55  to  35  and  less.  Preobrajensky,  one 
of  the  leaders  of  the  Communist  party,  in  a  paper  published  in  Pravda 
indicated  sarcastically  that  in  the  province  of  Moscow,  according  to  the 
Soviet  data,  12.7  per  cent  of  the  farms  were  collectivized  farms  on  Janu- 
ary 1,  1930;  36  per  cent  on  February  1;  72.2  per  cent  on  February  20; 
and—after  Stalin's  paper  and  a  change  of  the  policy— only  23  per  cent 
on  April  1,  1930.  He  properly  styled  all  these  figures  as  purely  fictitious. 
Furthermore,  these  official  papers,  including  the  second  paper  of  Stalin, 
"Answer  to  the  Comrades — Members  of  the  Collective  Farms,"  pub- 
lished in  Isvestia  on  April  3,  1930,  and  the  official  decree  of  the  Central 
Committee  of  the  Russian  Communist  party,  "About  the  Struggle 
against  Abuses  of  the  Party's  Policy  in  the  Collectivization  of  Farms," 
published  in  Isvestia  on  March  15,  1930,  now  frankly  confessed  that 
the  preceding  policy  of  collectivization  was  purely  coercive;  that  the 
rudest  forms  of  violence — the  wholesale  confiscation  of  property,  ar- 
rests, banishments,  the  closing  of  churches,  market  places,  stores,  and  so 
forth — had  been  applied  to  the  peasants  to  force  them  onto  the  col- 
lective farms 17  ;  that  the  success  of  the  seeding  campaign  was  greatly 
endangered  thereby;  and  that,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  individual 
peasant  farms  were  still  the  principal  source  of  agricultural  production, 
a  continuation  of  such  abuses  would  lead  to  nothing  but  a  complete 
disorganization  of  agriculture  and  famine.  In  brief,  the  dictator  and 
the  Communist  party  confessed  that  they  had  been  too  rash  in  their 
reconstruction  of  the  agricultural  system  and  called  upon  their  agents 
to  moderate  their  zeal  for  collectivization.  .  .  . 

Great  confusion  resulted  from  this  sudden  change  of  policy.  Peasants 
interpreted  it  as  permission  to  leave  the  collective  farms,  and  accord- 
ingly a  great  mass  exodus  of  the  peasants  from  collective  farms  began. 
The  regular  agents  of  the  government  and  the  Communist  party  were 
stunned  by  this  unexpected  change  in  the  political  wind  of  their  bosses 
and  were  lost,  not  knowing  what  to  do  or  what  was  the  genuine  line 
of  the  party's  policy.18  The  number  of  collectivized  farms  began  to 
decrease  as  astonishingly  as  they  had  been  increasing.  Trying  to  cope 
with  the  situation,  particularly  to  stop  the  mass  exodus  of  peasants 
from  the  collective  farms  and  secure  the  success  of  the  spring  seeding 
campaign,  Stalin  and  the  government  modified  their  policy  by  grant- 
ing various  privileges  to  the  members  of  collective  farms,  urging  the 
governmental  agents  to  help  also  the  individual  non-collectivized 

"See  also  Isvestia,  March  14,  March  18,  April  5,  April  18,  1930;  and  practically  any 
copy  of  Krasnaia  Gazetta,  Pravda,  and  Leningrad  Pravda,  for  March  and  April,  1930, 
These  contain  numerous  articles  denouncing  abuses  and  idiocies  in  the  enforcement  of 
collectivisation. 

18  See  any  copy  of  Isvestia,  'Pravda,  Krasnaia  Gassetta,  or  Leningrad  Pravda  for  March, 
April,  May,  or  June,  1930, 


632  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

peasants;  delivering  seeds,  agricultural  machinery,  and  fertilizers  to 
the  peasants;  freeing  the  collective  farms  from  taxation;  and  so  on.19 
At  the  same  time  the  government  issued  a  new  "Constitution  of  the 
Collective  Farms/'  in  which  the  forms  of  collectivization  were  made 
somewhat  more  moderate  than  before  but  which,  nevertheless,  pre- 
served many  obnoxious  traits  of  collectivization.  Coercion,  for  instance, 
was  not  entirely  abandoned;  moreover,  if  a  peasant  joined  a  collective 
farm,  he  lost  the  right  to  take  back  his  land  and  farm  in  case  he  de- 
sired to  leave. 

Such  is  the  situation  created  by  this  new  agrarian  revolution.  Under 
these  conditions  the  spring  seeding  campaign  has  been  carried  on.  In 
this  campaign  many  coercive  measures  have  again  been  applied  to  the 
peasants  to  force  them  to  seed  the  land.  If  we  are  to  rely  upon  the 
Soviet  data,  the  seeding  campaign  seems  to  have  been  only  partially 
successful  According  to  the  official  report  of  the  Soviet  Commissariat 
of  Agriculture  (dated  June  20,  1930,  which  practically  closes  the  cam- 
paign) only  92.9  per  cent  of  the  area  planned  by  the  government  was 
seeded.20  The  same  report  shows  that  the  total  area  of  individual 
farms  is  50,839,000  hectares,  while  the  area  of  collective  farms  is  only 
35,562,000  hectares— far  from  55  per  cent  of  the  total  peasant  farms, 
as  the  government  had  claimed.  There  is  every  reason  to  regard  these 
figures  as  greatly  exaggerated  by  the  Soviet  government.-1  There  is 

"See  the  decree  of  the  government  "Concerning  New  Grants  and  Privileges  for  the 
Members  of  the  Collective  Farms,"  April  2,  1930,  published  in  Isvestict,  April  5,  1930, 

™Uvestia,  June  25,  1930. 

21  Soviet  statistics  are  generally  quite  unreliable,  for  they  are  made  to  order.  This  is 
exemplified  by  the  above  data  on  the  percentages  of  collectivized  farms  before  and  after 
March  1,  1930.  We  have  been  assured  many  times  that  agricultural  production  in  Soviet 
Russia  in  1927  exceeded  prerevolutionary  production.  (See,  for  instance,  such  a  claim 
in  Ten  Years  of  Soviet  Power  in  Figures,  an  official  yearbook  of  the  Soviet  government, 
Moscow,  1927,  p.  iv.)  In  the  recent  address  of  Stalin  at  the  Sixteenth  Conference  of  the 
Russian  Communist  party  we  read  that  only  in  1930-1931  can  we  expect  the  area  of 
the  cultivated  land,  as  well  as  the  total  agricultural  production,  to  reach  the  level  of 
1913;  to  date  they  have  been  notably  below  this  level  (94  per  cent  of  it  in  1929),  (See 
the  seven-hour  address  of  Stalin  in  Isvcstia,  June  29,  1930.)  This  shows  how  unreliable 
the  Soviet  data  is.  When  one  follows  the  reports  of  the  Commissariat  of  Agriculture  on 
the  progress  of  the  seeding  campaign  this  spring,  one  can  easily  see  that  these  reports 
are  made  to  order  and  made  so  rudely  that  the  fictitious  character  of  the  data  is  easily 
detectable  by  any  statistician.  (See  a  special  paper  by  A.  S.  tzgoieff,  entitled  "'How  They 
Lie,"  in  Russia  and  Slavs,  May  24,  1930,  which  clearly  shows  the  nonsense  and  contra- 
dictions of  the  figures  in  the  twenty  reports  issued  thus  far  by  the  Commissariat  of  Agri- 
culture.) Evidence  of  a  permanent  lack  of  food  in  the  country  is  excellently  shown  by 
the  reintroduction  of  the  ration  system  in  the  cities  and  some  rural  parts;  the  beggarly 
quantities  of  rations  issued,  scarcely  sufficient  to  satisfy  even  the  physiological  hunger 
of  the  people;  the  starvation  of  large  classes  of  the  population;  and  the  lack  of  meat, 
butter,  and  other  forms  of  food:  even  the  most  privileged  part  of  the  urban  population 
in  Leningrad,  the  urban  proletariat,  is  promised  for  July,  1930,  only  400  grams  of 
butter  and  10  eggs  per  month  for  its  children,  while  other  classes  of  the  population 
cannot  have  even  these.  (Sec  this  announcement  in  the  Krasmia  Gazctm,  June  19,  1930.) 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  633 

also  serious  reason  to  believe  that  the  work  of  seeding  was  done  care- 
lessly as  regards  the  quality  of  the  seeds  and  many  other  requirements 
of  good  seeding.  Furthermore,  one  cannot  be  sure  that  the  harvesting, 
storing,  and  transportation  of  the  crop's  will  be  done  as  it  is  necessary.22 
Considering  these  and  similar  conditions,  one  cannot  help  but  be  skep- 
tical of  the  success  of  the  new  agricultural  revolution  of  Stalin. 

There  is  no  doubt,  and  the  Communists  themselves  openly  recognize 
it,  that  the  enormous  majority  of  the  peasants  are  quite  inimical  to 
the  new  policy  of  the  Soviet  government.  One  of  the  editorials  of  the 
Isvestia,  the  mouthpiece  of  Stalin,  says :  "Either  we  break  the  backbone 
of  the  individualistic  peasantry,  or  it  will  break  our  backbone." 

So  far  the  new  policy  has  only  harmed  and  disorganized  agriculture, 
produced  the  most  bitter  class  struggle  among  the  peasantry,  and  intro- 
duced an  enormous  confusion  in  the  field.  There  are  a  series  of  other 
aggravating  circumstances.  In  order  for  state  management  of  the  en- 
tire agricultural  industry  in  such  an  enormous  country  as  Russia  to  be 
successful,  there  must  be  a  sufficient  supply  of  tractors  and  agricultural 
machinery  and  fertilizers  and  a  sufficient  number  of  experienced  and 
skilled  organizers,  technicians,  agronomers,  superintendents,  and  other 
managerial  personnel;  and  the  whole  complex  mechanism  of  the  state 
management  must  be  well  organized  and  function  smoothly.  All  these 
and  other  conditions  are  lacking.  Neither  the  agricultural  machinery, 
implements,  manure,  and  fertilizers  nor  the  experienced  personnel  are 
present  to  even  half  the  extent  that  would  be  necessary.  Hundreds  of 
thousands  of  the  Communist  superintendents  mobilized  by  the  gov- 
ernment (see  above)  have  no  experience  in  agriculture;  the  peasants 
laugh  at  them  and  style  them  "twenty-four-hour  cultivators."  The  char- 
acter of  their  selection  makes  them  representative  of  the  worst  elements 
and  those  least  capable  of  supervising  and  instructing  the  more  experi- 
enced and  industrious  elements  among  the  peasants.  Evidently  such 
selection  is  far  from  satisfactory. 

The  state  machinery  also  functions  defectively.  The  government 
tries  to  cure  all  these  defects  by  its  magical  medicine,  pitiless  punish- 
ments, but  if  this  medicine  proves  effective  in  inhibiting  undesirable 
actions,  it  is  rather  impotent  where  creative  and  constructive  actions 
are  necessary. 

When  all  this  and  hundreds  of  similar  circumstances  are  taken  into 
consideration,  one  may  well  be  apprehensive  in  regard  to  the  final  re- 

Theso  and  similar—- unfortunately  quite  authentic — facts  are  very  convincing  proof  of 
the  deceptive  character  of  the  Soviet  statistics,  The  lack  of  textile  and  industrial  products 
is  also  convincing  evidence  of  the  fictitious  character  of  the  Soviet  figures  pertaining  to 
the  miraculous  progress  of  Soviet  industry. 

33  July  Soviet  papers  are  already  publishing  much  information  about  many  defects  in 
these  fields. 


634  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

suits  of  this  policy  and  its  stability  and  duration.  A  similar  policy  in  the 
years  1917-1921  disorganized  industry  as  well  as  agriculture  and  pro- 
duced the  terrible  famine  of  1921-1922.  One  need  not  be  surprised  if 
in  the  next  few  years  a  similar  famine  results  from  the  new  spasm 
of  the  communization  of  agriculture.  Whatever  the  results  are  going 
to  be  in  the  future,  so  far  the  policy  has  given  little  benefit  to  the  peas- 
antry; it  has  aggravated  the  economic  situation  in  the  country;  it  has 
sharpened  its  food  crisis  and  has  led  to  the  establishment  of  the  card 
or  starvation  ration  system  for  bread,  meat,  and  all  kinds  of  food  prod- 
ucts in  the  cities  and  among  the  bulk  of  the  peasantry. 

Abstaining  from  any  prophecy  concerning  the  final  results  of  this 
new  experiment,  an  attentive  observer  must  watch  its  further  develop- 
ment most  carefully.  The  experiment  promises  to  be  most  instructive 
from  any  standpoint  and  deserves  to  be  followed  in  its  further  destinies. 

79,  PETER  MANNICHE:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  DANISH  PEASANTRY* 

The  Danish  peasantry  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  an  under  class.  In  sullen  resignation  it  spent  its  life  in  dependence 
on  estate  owners  and  government  officials;  it  was  without  technical 
skill,  and  was  seldom  able  to  rise  above  the  level  of  a  bare  existence. 
Great  agricultural  reforms  were  carried  through  without  the  support 
of  the  peasants,  who  did  not  even  understand  the  meaning  of  them. 
.  .  .  Yet  this  same  under  class,  in  the  course  of  a  century,  has  changed 
into  a  well-to-do  middle  class,  which  now  takes  a  leading  part  in  the 
life  of  the  Danish  people.  .  .  . 

If  we  examine  the  typical  features  of  Danish  history  during  the  last 
century,  it  becomes  evident  that  we  can  reach  a  clear  understanding  of 
the  rise  of  the  peasantry  only  when  we  reckon  with  the  influence 
emanating  from  the  adult  schools.  .  ,  . 

The  word  "democratic"  is  frequently  used  in  reference  to  the  dis- 
tribution of  land  within  Danish  agriculture,  and  this  is  done  in  order 
to  emphasize  the  similarity  between  the  sizes  of  the  allotments.  Dur- 
ing the  nineteenth  century  the  number  of  freeholdings  in  Denmark 
doubled:  in  the  year  1800  they  totalled  about  91,000,  and  in  1916  the 
figure  was  something  like  184,000.  That  means  that  over  90  per  cent 
of  the  holdings  in  Denmark  are  freeholdings.  This  notable  change 
has  taken  place  through  an  increase  in  the  number  of  middle-sized 
farms,  and  also  through  the  advent  of  many  small  holders  (known  as 

*From  the  English  Sociological  Review,  1927,  XIX,  35»37}  218,  based  on  The 
Fol^  High  Schools  of  Denmar\  and  the  Development  of  a  Farming  Community  by 
Holgcr  Begtrup,  Hans  Alsler  Lund,  and  Peter  Mannichc  (Oxford  University  Press), 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  635 

house-men)  who,  in  past  centuries,  were  without  importance  in  Dan- 
ish agriculture. 

The  rapid  growth  of  the  number  of  small  holdings  in  Denmark  has 
been  made  possible  partly  by  a  large  reclamation  of  heath,  moor,  etc., 
and  partly  by  the  fact  that  individual  holdings  have  been  reduced  in 
size.  TJhis  development  happened  whilst  liberalism  was  the  dominating 
economic  policy  in  Denmark,  the  state,  generally  speaking,  adopting 
the  attitude  of  a  passive  spectator.  During  recent  years,  however,  the 
establishment  of  about  ten  thousand  small  holdings  has  been  due  to 
state  legislation. 

The  daily  practices,  routine,  etc.,  of  Danish  landholdings  differ  ac- 
cording to  the  size  of  the  property.  On  the  large  estates  (which  are 
now  very  few)  the  owner  has  no  direct  contact  with  the  actual  manual 
and  technical  work;  he  administers  and  guides,  but  frequently  he  is  so 
much  in  the  background  that  even  these  duties  are  taken  over  by  a 
manager.  On  these  estates  the  relatively  insignificant  number  of  agri- 
cultural laborers  find  employment. 

On  the  average  medium-sized  farms,  the  owner  joins  with  his  helpers 
in  the  work  of  the  field  and  stables.  His  fellow  workers  are  either  his 
own  sons  and  daughters  or  the  children  of  other  farmers;  and  they 
work  with  the  conviction  that,  in  due  course,  they  also  will  become  in- 
dependent landholders.  On  these  farms  the  rising  generation  of  farm- 
ers get  their  practical  experience.  The  young  people  board  and  lodge 
on  the  farms,  and  this,  in  most  cases,  means  that  the  employer's  home 
is  also  their  home,  where  they  eat,  work,  and  spend  their  leisure  with 
the  family. 

The  small  holdings  fall  into  two  groups:  the  larger  contains  about 
70,000,  each  being  worked  by  the  owner  and  his  family  and  being 
their  entire  means  of  support;  the  smaller  contains  less  than  40,000, 
each  being  too  small  to  meet  the  needs  of  a  family  and  making  it  neces- 
sary for  the  man  either  to  take  additional  work  of  a  similar  kind  with 
strangers  or  to  procure  an  extra  income  as  an  artisan  or  in  some  other 
way. 

In  speaking  of  the  Danish  peasantry,  the  people  alluded  to  are,  in 
general,  the  owners  of  the  medium-sized  farms  and  the  small  holders. 
To  them,  first  and  foremost,  the  distinctive  character  of  the  rural  life 
is  due;  and  it  is  especially  from  their  homes  that  the  students  of  the 
high  schools  have  been  recruited. 

These  conditions  of  landownership  have  been  of  vital  importance 
in  the  development  of  Danish  life.  Where  social  gulfs  are  wide,  class 
feeling  and  class  distinction  have  an  easy  growth;  but  where,  as  in 
Denmark,  the  core  of  the  social  life  is  found  in  the  work  of  many 


636  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

small  and  medium-sized  independent  farmers,  and  where,  further- 
more, the  division  between  group  and  group  is  such  that  it  is  often 
difficult  to  distinguish  between  a  small  farmer  and  a  small  holder,  and 
between  a  large  farmer  and  a  small  landed  proprietor,  there  is  no  place 
for  caste  feeling  and  class  struggle.  The  sense  of  fellowship  and  the 
recognition  of  common  interests  are  the  strongest  bonds  that  unite 
Danish  farmers.  A  fact  of  great  importance  is  that  the  medium-sized 
farmers  and  the  small  holders  come  from  the  same  stock,  the  children 
and  grandchildren  of  the  farmer  constituting  a  large  proportion  of  the 
latter.  .  .  . 

Cooperation  in  Denmark  is  a  rural  movement.  Until  the  beginning 
of  this  century  it  was,  literally  speaking,  only  the  rural  population  who 
were  members  of  the  associations;  but  from  that  time  people  of  the 
towns  also  joined.  The  center  of  gravity  of  the  movement,  however, 
remains  in  the  country.  Of  the  rural  population  the  farming  element 
constitutes  the  majority. 

80.  JAN  ST.  LEWINSKI:  ORIGIN  AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF  FORMS  OF 
LANDOWNERSHIP  AND  LAND  POSSESSION* 

The  fact  that  so  many  authors  speak  of  common  property  among 
nomads  is  simply  due  to  the  fact  that  they  have  not  tried  to  learn  the 
characteristics  of  property.  I  shall  therefore  begin  this  study  with  a 
definition. 

What  is  property? 

//  is  the  permanent  possession  of  an  object,  conferring  the  exclusive 
right  to  use  it  or  to  dispose  of  it.  The  simple  use  and  exclusiveness  are 
not  sufficient  characteristics  to  constitute  property.  Football  players  in 
a  public  park  have,  while  they  are  playing,  the  exclusive  right  to  use 
the  place  they  occupy,  as  indicated  by  the  rope  that  surrounds  their 
ground.  They  are  not,  however,  proprietors  of  it,  because  their  right 
is  not  permanent  and  does  not  confer  the  power  to  dispose  o£  it  by 
sale,  transfer,  or  bequest.  The  same  applies  to  the  occupier  of  a  room 
in  a  hotel,  a  seat  in  a  library  or  railway  carriage,  etc.  ,  .  . 

The  right  to  own  land  as  property  has  not  always  existed.  "The 
primitive  nomads,"  writes  Mr.  Shcherbina,  "who  wander  from  north 
to  south  over  hundreds  of  versts  and  are  constantly  on  the  move, 
are  in  no  way  attached  to  the  land,  to  this  or  to  that  locality,  and  in 
consequence  no  ownership  of  land  exists  among  them,  .  .  .** x 

When  at  a  later  stage  limits  begin  to  be  formed  between  the  differ- 

*Jan  St,  Lewinski,  The  Origin  of  Property,  London,  Constable  fie  Co,,  Ltd.,  1913, 
pp.  5-8,  57-71.  Reprinted  with  the  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publisher, 
*  Kaufman,  Russian  Qbschina  (Russ.)>  Moscow,  1908,  p.  91, 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  637 

ent  groups,  each  member  within  the  group  keeps  the  same  freedom 
in  the  use  of  the  soil.  This  we  notice  all  over  the  world.  Dargun,  with 
reference  to  nomadic  peoples  in  general,  writes,  "All  may  use  the  pas- 
ture as  they  like;  the  community  has  not  the  right  to  dispose  of  it."2 

It  is  thus  quite  erroneous  to  speak  here  of  common  property,  as 
some  authors  do.  It  is  only  by  confusing  the  existence  of  boundaries 
with  the  idea  of  property  that  this  mistake  is  possible.  The  relation 
between  the  community  and  the  soil  among  nomads  is,  as  the  German 
jurist  Gierke  points  out,  rather  similar  to  the  international  right  which 
a  state  has  to  its  territory,  and  not  to  the  right  it  has  over  a  domain. 

So  long  as  the  right  to  dispose  of  a  thing  does  not  exist  we  cannot 
speak  of  property,  and  while  every  member  is  free  to  take  as  much 
land  as  he  wishes,  and  where  he  wishes,  it  is  impossible  to  call  the 
land  common  property. 

The  whole  evolution  of  property  could  be  traced  back  to  four  ele- 
ments: (1)  the  economic  principle;  (2)  the  principle  of  numerical 
strength;  (3)  the  growth  of  population;  (4)  the  relation  of  nature  to 
human  wants.  Let  us  see  how  far  this  assertion  is  right.  The  influence 
of  the  economic  principle,  the  assumption  according  to  which  man 
tries  to  obtain  the  greatest  possible  quantity  of  material  goods  neces- 
sary for  the  satisfaction  of  his  wants  with  the  least  possible  effort, 
could  be  observed  very  clearly.  During  the  process  of  formation  of 
property  this  principle  manifested  itself  in  this  form,  that  man  under- 
took the  effort  of  appropriation  only  when  without  it  he  risked  being 
exposed  to  a  much  greater  loss. 

The  nomad,  who  had  no  difficulty  in  replacing  the  pasture  he  had 
left  behind  by  another  equally  good,  did  not  know  the  institution  of 
property  in  land.  We  saw  how  meadows  and  forests  in  the  beginning, 
as  long  as  they  were  abundant,  were  used  freely  everywhere.  Land  at 
this  stage  had  no  greater  value  for  us  than  air,  and  consequently  it 
was  treated  in  the  same  manner.  This  state  of  things  changed  with 
the  passage  to  agriculture  and  to  settled  life.  A  cultivator,  who  might 
'  be  deprived  of  a  piece  of  land  in  which  he  had  incorporated  his  labor, 
would  be  obliged  to  repeat  this  burdensome  task.  In  the  same  manner 
he  could  replace  a  piece  of  land  adjacent  to  his  dwelling  only  by  a 
more  distant,  and  in  consequence  a  less  convenient,  one.  In  both  cases 
he  was  exposed  to  a  loss  of  time  in  comparison  to  which  the  effort  of 
appropriation  was  relatively  small,  and  for  this  reason  economically 
rational  Property  then  originated  from  the  two  sources,  labor  and  in- 
dividual scarcity. 

3  Dr.   Lothar  Dargun,   "Ursprung  und   Entwickclungs-Geschichte  des  Eigentums," 
Zeitschrijt  fur  vcrgkichcnde  'Rcchtswissenschajt,  V,  59. 


638  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

In  the  smallest  details  we  could  observe  how  the  formation  of  prop- 
erty was  connected  with  these  two  factors.  In  the  same  communities 
we  saw  that  the  forms  of  property  were  different  as  regards  meadows 
which  were  manured,  drained,  etc.,  and  those  in  which  no  labor  had 
been  incorporated.  Arable  lands,  the  tillage  of  which  had  required 
much  labor  (clearing  of  stones,  forests,  etc.)  were  individual  hereditary 
property;  all  others  were  held  only  in  temporary  possession  as  long  as 
the  system  of  shifting  cultivation  prevailed.  Lands  in  which  no  labor 
was  incorporated,  and  which  were  adjacent  to  the  cultivator's  dwell- 
ing, were  private  property;  the  more  distant  ones  remained  a  long  time 
open  for  the  free  use  of  all. 

We  observed  also  the  influence  of  the  economic  principle  during 
the  passage  from  individual  to  common  property.  The  division  of  land 
is  not  only  a  troublesome  task,  but  also  by  restricting  the  individual 
it  hinders  him  in  the  most  economical  use  of  his  labor.  It  is  clear 
nobody  will  desire  such  a  measure  if  in  exchange  he  does  not  obtain 
some  economic  advantage.  As  long  as  everyone  could  find  more  land 
that  he  was  able  to  cultivate,  it  did  not  matter  to  him  how  great  was 
the  property  of  his  neighbor.  He  did  not  covet  it,  because  without  it  he 
had  a  superabundance.  This  changed,  however,  when  a  class  of  poor 
grew  up  who  found  only  inferior  land,  and  in  an  insufficient  quantity. 
By  dividing  the  fertile  soils  of  the  rich  they  were  able  to  better  their 
economic  conditions;  they  could  obtain  more  of  the  goods  necessary 
for  the  satisfaction  of  their  wants,  and  with  a  smaller  effort. 

Here  also  we  could  observe  in  the  smallest  details,  in  the  discrimina- 
tion between  meadows  and  fields  of  different  fertility,  between  those 
which  were  more  or  less  distant  from  the  village,  how  only  when 
scarcity  (social  scarcity)  of  land  began  to  be  felt,  the  community  abol- 
ished the  right  of  free  appropriation.  There  is  perhaps  nothing  more 
characteristic  of  the  relation  which  exists  between  equalization  and 
scarcity,  than  the  fact  that  meadows  were  used  freely  in  good  years 
and  were  divided  only  in  years  of  bad  crops. 

This  policy  having  for  its  purpose  the  amelioration  of  the  economic 
conditions  of  the  poor  had  necessarily  a  tendency  contrary  to  its  aim. 
,  Every  intervention,  namely,  restricted  the  spirit  of  enterprise,  rendered 
an  intensive  cultivation  of  the  soil  more  difficult,  and  by  this  dimin- 
ished the  well-being  of  all.  We  have  seen  how  the  community,  taking 
into  account  the  labor  incorporated  into  the  soil,  tried  to  avoid  all 
these  undesirable  consequences  of  its  policy.  Where  this  was  not  pos- 
sible, where  the  economic  disadvantages  of  a  division  of  land  were  so 
great  that  they  outweighed  the  advantages,  the  community  recoiled 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  639 

from  these  measures.  For  this  reason  homesteads  and  pastures  were 
never  periodically  divided. 

The  economic  principle  in  itself  is  not  sufficient  to  explain  for  us 
all  problems  we  have  analyzed.  The  economic  interests— interests  re- 
sulting from  the  application  of  the  economic  principle — are  not  always 
identical  in  a  community.  We  saw  the  antagonism  existing  between 
the  rich  and  the  poor,  between  those  who  wanted  to  maintain  the  old 
institution  of  private  property  and  those  who  claimed  a  division  of 
lands.  The  prevailing  of  this  or  the  other  form  was  dependent  on  the 
numerical  strength  of  its  adherents.  With  the  increasing  number  of 
the  dissatisfied,  the  measures  abolishing  private  property  became  more 
and  more  radical.  Once  the  poor  had  become  a  majority,  the  days  of 
this  institution  were  numbered. 

The  economic  principle  and  the  principle  of  numerical  strength  are 
constant  elements,  which  do  not  change.  If  they  alone  were  in  exist- 
ence the  forms  of  property  would  be  stationary,  and  the  same  all  over 
the  world.  But  besides  these  there  are  two  varying  elements. 

The  great  dynamic  force  which  caused  all  the  changes  in  the  for- 
mation of  property  was  the  growth  of  population.  It  put  an  end  to  the 
original  abundance  of  land,  and  by  diminishing  the  area  at  the  dis- 
posal of  each  man  forced  him  to  pass  from  nomadism  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  soil,  and  to  settled  life.  We  saw  how  this  gave  rise  to  the 
formation  of  private  property.  With  the  continuous  increase  of  popu- 
lation even  the  more  intensive  use  of  the  soil  could  not  prevent  a 
scarcity  of  land.  The  class  of  poor  grew  up  and  became  more  and  more 
numerous.  How  this  led  to  a  division  of  the  soil  has  been  shown  above. 

So  the  formation  of  private  property  and  its  breakdown  have  been 
caused  by  the  growth  of  population.  It  is  a  unanimous  opinion  of  those 
who  investigated  the  origin  of  the  village  community  in  Siberia,  that 
not  only  in  main  outline  but  in  the  smallest  details  the  whole  process 
has  been  dominated  by  this  factor.3 

For  this  fact,  which  is  beyond  any  dispute,  Lichkow  has  given  a 
statistical  confirmation.  He  has  divided  the  communities  of  three  dis- 
tricts of  the  government  of  Irkutsk  into  four  groups  according  to  the 
development  of  equalization.  He  has  ascertained  also  how  much  arable 
land  each  of  these  groups  possessed  per  head  of  population.  The  fol- 
lowing are  the  results  he  has  obtained4: 

8  A,  Kaufman,  Russian  Obschina  in  the  Process  of  Its  Origin  and  Development, 
Moscow,  1908,  p.  268;  K.  R.  Kacharovski,  Russian  Qbschina,  Moscow,  1906,  pp.  146, 
161,  202?  212;  U.  Krol,  Forms  of  Land  Possession,  1898,  pp.  176,  245;  T.  L.  Segal, 
Peasant  Landownership  in  the  Caucasus,  1912,  pp.  53-56. 

*A.  CX  Lichkow,  Forms  of  Land  Possession  (Russ.)j  1886,  p.  146. 


640  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  EQUALIZATION  OF  ARABLE  LAND 

ARABLL  LAND 
PER  HEAD  OF 
POPULATION 
(DESSIATINES) 

Communities  without  allotments,  or  with  allotments  occupying 

no  more  than  2  per  cent  of  the  whole  area  .  .  4.5 

Communities  with  allotments  occupying  2  to  7.6  per  cent  of 

the  whole  area ....  4.2 

Communities  with  allotments  occupying  more  than  7.6  per  cent 

of  the  whole  area 4.1 

Communities  with  the  prevalence  of  periodical  divisions       .  .          3.7 

We  see  very  clearly  how  the  process  of  equalization  increases  simul- 
taneously with  the  decrease  of  arable  land  per  head  of  population. 

Modern  Russian  historians,  as  Pavlov-Sil'vansky,  point  out,  on  the 
evidence  of  documents  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  that 
the  passage  to  common  property  only  took  place  when  scarcity  of  land 
began  to  be  felt.5 

The  increase  of  population  does  not  produce  everywhere  the  same 
results.  The  intensification  of  economic  life  and  the  occurrence  of 
scarcity  of  land  are  partly  dependent  also  on  the  relation  of  nature  to- 
ward human  wants.  Differences  of  natural  conditions  of  the  soil  play 
in  this  respect  an  important  part.  With  the  same  increase  of  popula- 
tion it  is  necessary  to  incorporate  more  labor  in  forest  regions  (clear- 
ing), for  instance,  than  in  the  steppes.  Where  the  soil  has  a  great  nat- 
ural fertility,  as  in  South  Russia,  manuring  is  much  less  developed 
than  in  the  north. 

All  these  differences  react  on  the  formation  of  property-  The  greater 
the  amount  of  labor  incorporated  in  the  soil,  the  sooner  and  the  more 
strongly  does  individual  ownership  establish  itself,  and  the  greater  are 
the  obstacles  which  equalization  encounters.  Lands  which  have  been 
occupied  by  forests  and  have  been  cleared  are  divided  much  later  and 
for  longer  periods  than  lands  where  this  severe  task  is  not  necessary, 
In  South  Russia  arable  lands  are  redivided  after  six  years,  in  north 
Russia  after  ten  to  twenty  years,  simply  because  the  "black  earth"  does 
not  need  manuring*  For  this  reason  also,  the  scattered  field  system  is 
much  less  complicated  in  the  fertile  south  than  in  the  north. 

Natural  conditions  influence  also  the  scarcity  of  land,  which  is  felt 
much  sooner  in  regions  where  there  is  a  small  quantity  of  soils  suitable 

5N,  P.  Pavlov-Sil'vansky,  Feudalism  in  Ancient  Russia,  1910,  pp.  106-108;  Kaufman, 
op.  at.,  p.  433. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  641 

for  cultivation  than  in  those  where  it  is  much  greater.  For  this  rea- 
son, in  very  infertile  districts  (in  the  government  of  Wologda  and  of 
Tobolsk,  for  instance)  we  find  periodical  divisions,  though  the  quantity 
kof  land  per  head  of  population  is  comparatively  great.6 

Scarcity  does  not  depend  only  on  the  density  of  population  and  on 
natural  conditions  of  the  soil,  but  also  on  the  degree  of  human  wants. 
In  a  primitive  society,  where  land  is  not  acquired  for  speculation,  but 
simply  because  it  enables  man  to  obtain  the  necessaries  of  life,  the  need 
and  want  of  it  is  determined  by  the  existing  economic  system.  The  half- 
nomad  having  many  cattle  needs  first  of  all  pasture  land  and  meadows, 
and  does  not  care  so  much  about  arable  land.  The  opposite  is  true  of 
the  cultivator.  For  this  reason  we  see  that  the  division  of  meadows  is 
sometimes  more  developed  among  half-nomadic  peoples  than  among 
agriculturists,  though  per  head  of  population  the  former  possess  a 
greater  area  of  it.  But  as  at  the  same  time  their  herds  are  much  greater, 
they  feel  more  strongly  a  scarcity  of  meadow  land. 

A  statistical  example  will  illustrate  it.  In  the  eastern  Trans-Baikal  we 
find  as  follows 7 : 


PERCENTAGE 
OF  DIVIDED 

MEADOW 

DESSIATINES 
OF  MEADOW 
PER 
HOUSEHOLD 

LARGE 
CATTLE 
PER 
HOUSEHOLD 

Baptized  natives       
Russian  peasants  

98.0 
92.5 

7.0-29.4 
1.4-  5.8 

18.0-40.7 
7.0-18.6 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  these  differences  of  wants, 
though  they  influence  scarcity,  are  themselves  the  results  of  it.  The 
smaller  the  area  of  meadow  and  pasture  per  head  of  the  population,  the 
smaller,  naturally,  the  number  of  cattle  a  society  can  keep  and  the 
greater  the  importance  it  attributes  to  agriculture. 

I  think  then  that,  under  equal  conditions  of  density  of  population 
and  of  natural  surroundings,  the  needs  and  wants  of  every  individual 
for  land  do  not  greatly  differ.  It  is  not  necessary  in  the  final  conclu- 
sions to  take  them  into  account.  Speaking  then  of  density  of  popula- 
tion and  of  natural  surroundings,  we  tacitly  imply  a  corresponding 
state  of  human  wants. 

The  geographical  conditions  which  we  have  analyzed  hitherto  in- 
fluenced the  pace  of  evolution,  caused  small  differences  in  details,  but 
did  not  change  the  direction  of  the  whole  process.  Out  of  a  state  of 

*  Kaufman,  p.  278. 
T  Krol,  p.  246  et  seq. 


642  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

no  property,  private  property,  and  out  of  it,  the  village  community 
originated. 

Natural  conditions,  however,  modify  sometimes  this  succession  and 
prevent  the  formation  o£  common  property.  We  have  seen  already  that 
homesteads  are  held  always  in  individual  ownership,  because  the  labor 
incorporated  in  them  is  so  very  great.  It  is  clear  that  where  arable  lands 
can  be  made  fit  for  cultivation  only  under  equally  difficult  conditions, 
the  same  must  be  observed.  In  the  Russian  village  communities  great 
areas  covered  with  stones  remain  waste.  The  efforts  necessary  for  an 
individual  to  make  them  fit  for  cultivation  are  generally  so  great  and 
are  recompensed  only  after  so  many  years,  that  the  peasant  does  not 
undertake  their  tillage,  knowing  that  at  the  next  redistribution  he  can 
be  deprived  of  this  land. 

Where,  however,  these  soils  are  cultivated,  they  become,  contrary  to 
the  general  rule  of  redivision  of  soils,  the  hereditary  property  of  those 
who  cleared  them.  In  some  localities  of  the  government  of  Petersburg, 
Tambow,  Orlowsk,  etc.,  where  periodical  divisions  are  the  rule,  these 
lands  are  individual  property.  It  is  clear  that  in  countries  where  all  the 
soil  is  covered  with  stones,  the  village  communities  cannot  exist.  This 
applies  to  Finland,  where  it  is  necessary  to  remove  great  granite  blocks 
to  make  the  soil  fit  for  cultivation.  Here  individual  ownership  of  arable 
fields  always  existed. 

Periodical  divisions  are  only  possible  where  the  preparatory  labor  is 
relatively  so  small  that  it  can  be  remunerated  after  a  few  years  of  culti- 
vation. This  general  rule  explains  to  us  why,  when  agriculture  becomes 
more  intensive,  the  village  community  breaks  down. 

The  configuration  of  the  soil  reacts  also  on  the  formation  of  prop- 
erty. .  .  . 

The  differences  in  a  greater  or  smaller  facility  of  cultivation  of  the 
soil,  in  its  configuration,  etc.,  account  for  the  fact  that  not  everywhere 
does  property  pass  through  the  same  stages.  So  the  growth  of  popula- 
tion explains  to  us  why  the  forms  of  property  are  changing  with  time 
the  relation  of  Nature  towards  human  wants,  why  they  are  different  in 
space.  .  .  . 

Here,  however,  we  must  make  a  restriction.  The  natural  process  of 
formation  of  property,  which  we  tried  to  describe  and  to  explain  above, 
can  be  perturbed  if  the  primitive  population  becomes  dependent  on 
the  economic  resources  of  a  more  advanced  society.  So,  for  instance, 
in  some  villages  of  Siberia,  the  peasants  gained  their  living  by  car- 
rying goods  destined  for  European  markets,  and  they  attached  little 
importance  to  agriculture.  In  consequence  they  did  not  divide  the 
arable  land,  though  under  normal  conditions  it  would  have  been  neces- 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  643 

sary.  This  was  clearly  demonstrated  when,  with  the  building  of  the 
Siberian  railway,  the  carrying  trade  ceased  to  be  lucrative.  The  peas- 
ants at  once  felt  a  scarcity  of  arable  land  and  introduced  divisions,8 

These  perturbations  are  not  only  very  exceptional,  but  they  modify 
slightly  the  formation  of  property.  I  think,  however,  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  draw  attention  to  them,  because  they  show  that,  once  a  primi- 
tive society  is  caught  up  in  a  more  developed  economic  system,  the 
natural  and  normal  process  of  evolution  is  disturbed. 

Having  tried  to  give  hitherto  a  positive  study  of  the  laws  governing 
the  evolution  of  property,  we  want  now  to  make  some  criticisms  of  the 
theories  by  which  others  have  tried  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  village 
community.  A  great  role  has  been  attributed  in  this  respect  to  racial 
elements.  "We  have  seen,"  says  Gomme,  "that  the  evidence  of  compara- 
tive custom  goes  to  prove  that  race  elements  enter  largely  into  the  his- 
tory of  the  village  community  in  the  East,  and  that  the  parallel  between 
the  Eastern  and  English  types  suggests  also  parallel  lines  of  develop- 
ment due  to  race  elements." 9  And  in  Germany,  Meitzen  attributes 
equal  importance  to  the  same  factor,  and  sees  in  the  village  community 
a  feature  of  Germanic,  and  in  the  "Einzelhof"  a  feature  of  Celtic  his- 
tory.10 

Even  at  first  glance  one  can  see  that  there  is  no  relation  between 
race  and  the  forms  of  property.  We  find  the  village  community  among 
the  Malayans  of  Java  as  well  as  among  some  Aryans  of  India  and 
Europe.  Peoples  inhabiting  mountains  never  possessed  common  prop- 
erty, though  they  are  ethnologically  related  to  those  living  in  plains. 
Our  evidence  in  Siberia  shows  most  clearly  that  the  influence  of  race 
on  the  formation  of  property  is  nil.  Krol  tells  us  that  as  the  conditions 
among  which  the  forms  of  equalization  develop  are  quite  the  same 
among  the  natives  (Buriats,  Mongolic  race),  Russian  peasants  and 
Cossacks  (Indo-Europeans),  the  line  of  their  evolution  of  property  is 
quite  the  same  also.11  Among  the  Buriats,  it  is  true,  free  occupation  was 
more  developed  than  among  the  peasants,  but,  as  Professor  Kaufman 
points  out,  "not  because  they  are  natives,  but  because  they  had  a  greater 
abundance  of  land." 12 

It  is  absolutely  false— an  error  widely  prevalent  today— to  think  that 
emigrants  transplant  from  one  country  to  another  the  old  forms  of 
property.  It  is  very  often  supposed  that  the  German  invaders  brought 

8  Kaufman,  p.  279. 

*Oommc,  The  Village  Community,  p.  69. 

10  A,  Meitzen,  Siedlttng  und  Agrarwescn  dcr  Westgcrmancn  und  Ostgcrmancn,  dcr 
tltent  Romer,  Finnen  und  Slaven,  1895, 
"Krol,  p,  177. 
w  Kaufman,  Trans-bridal,  p.  158. 


644  SOURCE  BOOK  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  village  community  to  England.13  Our  material  shows  that  tradition 
does  not  play  a  great  role  where  economic  interests  are  at  stake.  "The 
differences  in  the  forms  of  property,"  says  Professor  Kaufman,  "do 
not  at  all,  or  scarcely  at  all,  depend  on  any  ethnographical  peculiarities 
of  special  groups  of  the  Siberian  population:  the  old  Siberians,  the 
emigrants  from  the  most  divergent  farts  of  European  Russia— from 
those  where  the  village  community  or  the  farm  system  is  the  domi- 
nant feature— nay,  even  the  natives-— form,  as  regards  the  evolutions 
of  property,  one  un differentiated  mass:  the  forms  of  property  develop, 
first  of  all,  according  to  the  degree  of  abundance  of  land." 14 

The  Russian  peasant  emigrating  from  a  village  community  does  not 
think  about  reproducing  the  old  institution  in  Siberia.  Without  much 
hesitation  he  adopts  the  farm  system  and  individual  ownership  as  be- 
ing more  convenient.15 

No  more  than  race  does  imitation  exercise  any  influence  on  eco- 
nomic evolution.  The  settlements  of  Russian  peasants  in  the  Khirgiz 
steppes  do  not  anyhow  affect  the  forms  of  property  of  the  natives.10 
Among  the  Buriats  we  search  in  vain  for  an  example  proving  that  they 
have  introduced  the  division  of  lands,  by  imitating  Russian  peasants, 
who  live  in  their  neighborhood.  "It  is  difficult,  yes,  even  impossible," 
says  Professor  Kaufman,  "to  speak  of  the  borrowing  of  certain  forms 
there,  where  all  the  evolution  is  gradual,  where  the  community,  before 
introducing  divisions,  passes  through  a  number  of  intermediate  stages, 
of  which  each  one  differs  only  a  little  from  the  other,  and  is  organically 
connected  with  it."  17 

The  origin  of  the  village  community  has  been  very  often  explained 
by  the  introduction  of  a  collective  responsibility  for  government  taxes.18 
The  evolution  of  property  has  thus  been  traced  back  to  the  will  of  the 
legislator.  The  study  of  this  problem  in  Russian  Asia  shows  us  that 
this  factor  does  not  play  at  all  the  important  part  attributed  to  it 

In  every  district  of  Siberia  where  there  is  an  abundance  of  land 

13Mcitzen,  op.  cit.t  II,  101.  A  few  pages  before  the  same  author  explains  the  exist- 
ence of  the  "Einzelhof"  in  some  parts  of  Germany  (Westphalia)  by  the  fact  that  it  was 
originally  inhabited  by  Celts.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  in  England  the  German 
tribes  should  have  forced  their  institutions  upon  the  Celts,  and  why,  invading  the  much 
nearer  situated  Westphalia,  they  should  have  forgotten  all  about  common  property,  This 
discrepancy  shows  all  the  weakness  of  the  racial  theory. 

WT.  and  T.,  p,  31.  The  italics  are  mine. 

15  Kaufman,  441-455;  Sib.  Com.,  pp.  275-276. 

18  Kaufman,  K.  tvoprosuf  p.  24. 

"Kaufman,  Trans-bai^al,  p.  159. 

18  In  Russia  this  doctrine  has  been  popular  among  historians  for  a  long  time.  It  has 
been  accepted  by  non-Russian  scholars,  such  as  De  Laveleyc,  Hildebrand,  Rccht  und 
Sitter  p.  1S6,  etc.  About  the  theories  of  the  old  Russian  historical  school  (Chicherine, 
Belaiew,  etc.)  see  the  book  of  J.  V.  Keussler,  Zur  Gcschichtc  und  Kritik  de*  bauerUchen 
Gememdebeshzcs  in  Russland,  1876-1887,  pp.  8  ct  $eq. 


TYPES  OF  RURAL  AGGREGATES  645 

and  where  in  consequence  there  is  no  economic  necessity  to  divide  the 
land  periodically,  all  the  circulars  of  the  government  ordering  such  a 
measure  remained  a  dead  letter.  "Where/'  says  Kacharovski,  "in  com- 
munities, all  the  strength  in  the  internal  struggle  is  on  the  side  of  those 
who  are  opposed  to  divisions,  even  such  a  strong  force  as  administrative 
pressure  is  insufficient  to  produce  them."  19 

The  same  is  pointed  out  by  Professor  Kaufman,  who  writes  that 
where  there  is  plenty  of  land  all  insistence  of  the  authorities  foundered 
against  the  obstinate  opposition  of  the  rich  part  of  the  population.20 
"Where  there  is  no  necessity  for  divisions,"  says  Krol,  "the  circulars 
very  seldom  lead  to  real  divisions,"  21  Among  nomads  (Khirgizes  and 
Buriats)  as  well  as  among  the  Russian  peasants,  it  is  impossible  to  speak 
of  the  administrative  intervention  as  a  constructive  factor  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  property.22  Only  where  the  land  had  ceased  to  be  abundant, 
and  a  strong  desire  to  introduce  divisions  existed,  did  the  communities 
comply  with  the  orders  of  the  administration.23  This  transition,  how- 
ever, took  place  very  often  without  any  external  intervention,  where 
the  evolution  was  ripe  for  transition.24 

New  historical  studies  made  in  European  Russia  have  confirmed 
the  Siberian  observations.  It  has  been  shown  in  the  government  of 
Wologda,  for  instance,  that  the  circulars  of  the  government  ordering 
a  division  of  land  were  preceded  by  petitions  of  the  poor,  claiming 
this  measure.25  Where  there  was  no  such  necessity  the  government 
failed  completely  in  European  Russia  as  well  as  in  Siberia,  in  its  at- 
tempt to  introduce  the  village  community.26 

As  we  see,  legislation  can  simply  facilitate  the  originating  of  new 
forms  of  property,  but  cannot  shape  them  arbitrarily,  .  .  . 

So  we  see  that  such  factors  as  race,  imitation,  legislation,  etc.,  have 
no  important  part  in  the  evolution  of  property,  which  is  the  result  of 
the  combination  of  four  simple  elements.  .  .  . 


19  Kacharovski,  p,  208. 

30  Kaufman,  pp.  415-416. 

21  Krol,  p.  178. 

M  Kaufman,  p.  174. 

nlbid,t  p.  417;  Kacharovski,  pp.  208-209. 

24  Kacharovski,  p.  210. 

38  See  W,  W,,  History,  and  Kaufman,  pp.  426  et  seq. 

20  Kaufman,  pp.  431  ff,