of the year on their estates, were perhaps more respected but still less
liked. Any attempt at careful management of the estate was invariably
considered to be a sign of stinginess or of hardheartedness. The idea of
property is not clearly defined in the mind of the average peasant who
considers plants that are not planted but grow wild to be a gift of God.
In disputes involving such cases the line between rightful possession
and theft is difficult to draw, and men who took the controversy to
court were invariably hated. A glaring example of this kind was an
otherwise liberal minded landowner, a well known professor of sociology,
who spent three-quarters of a year in lecturing at a foreign university
of which he was a member and who was finally murdered on his own estate.

The home life of even liberal intellectuals was another barrier between
them and the masses. Not only was coarse food considered to be good
enough for domestics, but they seldom, if ever, had a decent corner
for themselves in the house and their miserable wages were out of all
proportion with the long hours of service required. Many families had
guests almost daily, the company sitting around a samovar, discussing
and conversing until one or two in the morning, while the sleepy
domestics were stealing a nap in the anteroom, ready to appear at the
call of the mistress. The table had to be cleared after the guests and
the family retired for the night and the breakfast had to be prepared,
boots polished, stoves heated, rooms cleaned in the early morning. For
the master might rest until ten or eleven, but the children have to be
at school by eight and the servants must be ready to serve them. And
though many families kept professional servants, the country homes
depended almost entirely in winter as well as in summer on local help.

Attempts to improve the condition of peasants were numerous and in
some respects successful, but found an obstacle on the one hand in the
attitude of the Government and on the other in the conservatism and
suspicion of the peasants themselves. Fire insurance and cooperative
enterprises helped to a certain degree, but an almost complete absence
of expert agriculturists in the ranks of the landowners prevented them
from demonstrating on their own estates the value of applied knowledge
as well as from teaching the peasants how to increase the productivity
of the land through intensive farming. Thus it came to pass that the
vast