fer anything, to impose any privations
on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to
obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will
not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the
rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex,
the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage.
Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days
and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The
laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his
daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or
involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. His principal care
is to place her where she can earn some money."

In some of the industrial districts of Russia villages may still be
found populated at certain seasons of the year exclusively by women and
children. The women plough the land, sow, reap, work on the roads and
pay the taxes. They fill the offices of _starosta_ (policeman) and
tax-gatherer; in short, conduct the entire communal administration. On
the shores of the White Sea women often drive the post-carts, whence
that branch of the service has taken the name of _sarafannaya_ or
"petticoat post." Where are the men who should be seen in these villages
of Amazons--the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons of these hard-worked
women? Drafted into the army or gone to seek work in the adjacent towns.

The terrible burdens which the government and social system of Russia
heap upon the peasant-man can best be realized from a description of its
effects upon the unhappy creature whom this man, himself a slave in all
but name, may treat--nay, almost must treat--as a slave. To pay the
quit-rent and taxes the peasant hires himself to the neighboring lord to
mow his corn at sixty-five cents an acre--a price which falls to forty
cents an acre before the harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn
an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his
body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders
at its work. Yet swath after swath marks the sweep of his arms, and his
poor dull mind is filled with the thought of the day of liberation that
is drawing nigh. Still, he has not earned by a good deal the sum that
will save him from starvation. Starvation! Why? Because should he fail
to pay, the lord has the power, and will not f