gly increased, and its cause was--starvation. In
lands the richest in the world, tilled by a people with a passion for
agriculture, there was not enough bread! The reasons for this are too
complex to be stated here, but a few may have brief mention. The
allotment of land bestowed upon each liberated serf was too small to
enable him to live and to pay his taxes, unless the harvests were
always good and he was always employed. He need not live, but his
taxes must be paid. It required three days' work out of each week to
do that; and if he had not the money when the dreaded day arrived, the
tax-collector might sell his corn, his cattle, his farming implements,
and his house. But reducing whole communities to beggary was not wise,
so a better way was discovered, and one which entailed no disastrous
economic results. He was flogged. The time selected for this settling
of accounts was when the busy season was over; and Stepniak tells us it
was not an unusual thing for more than one thousand peasants in the
winter--in a single commune--to be seen awaiting their turn to have
their taxes "flogged out." Of course, before this was endured all
means had been exhausted for raising the required amount. Usury, that
surest road to ruin, and the one offering the least resistance, was the
one ordinarily followed. Thus was created that destructive class
called _Koulaks_, or _Mir-eaters_, who, while they fattened upon the
necessities of the peasantry, also demoralized the state by creating a
wealthy and powerful class whom it would not do to offend, and whose
abominable and nefarious interests must not be interfered with.

Then another sort of bondage was discovered, one very nearly
approaching to serfdom. Wealthy proprietors would make loans to
distressed communes or to individuals, the interest of the money to be
paid by the peasants in a stipulated number of days' work every week
until the original amount was returned. Sometimes, by a clause in the
contract increasing the amount in case of failure to pay at a certain
time, the original debt, together with the accruing interest, would be
four or five times doubled. And if, as was probable, the principal
never was returned, the peasant worked on year after year gratuitously,
in the helpless, hopeless bondage of debt. Nor were these the worst of
their miseries, for there were the _Tchinovniks_--or government
officials--who could mete out any punishment they pleased, could ord