frugal sinewy peasants who, through centuries of oppression and
starvation, have kept, in spite of almost complete illiteracy, a
curiously vivid sense of personal independence. In the backs of taverns
revolutionary tracts are spelled out by some boy who has had a couple
of years of school to a crowd of men who listen or repeat the words
after him with the fervor of people going through a religious mystery.
Unspeakable faith possesses them in what they call "_la nueva
ley_" ("the new law"), by which the good things a man wrings by his
sweat from the earth shall be his and not the property of a distant
senor in Madrid.

It is this hopefulness that marks the difference between the present
agrarian agitation and the violent and desperate peasant risings of the
past. As early as October, 1918, a congress of agricultural workers was
held to decide on strike methods and, more important, to formulate a
demand for the expropriation of the land. In two months the unions,
("_sociedades de resistencia_") had been welded--at least in the
province of Cordova--into a unified system with more or less central
leadership. The strike which followed was so complete that in many
cases even domestic servants went out. After savage repression and the
military occupation of the whole province, the strike petered out into
compromises which resulted in considerable betterment of working
conditions but left the important issues untouched.

The rise in the cost of living and the growing unrest brought matters
to a head again in the summer of 1919. The military was used with even
more brutality than the previous year. Attempts at compromise, at
parcelling out uncultivated land have proved as unavailing as the
Mausers of the Civil Guard to quell the tumult. The peasants have kept
their organizations and their demands intact. They are even willing to
wait; but they are determined that the land upon which they have worn
out generations and generations shall be theirs without question.

All this time the landlords brandish a redoubtable weapon: starvation.
Already thousands of acres that might be richly fertile lie idle or are
pasture for herds of wild bulls for the arena. The great land-owning
families hold estates all over Spain; if in a given region the workers
become too exigent, they decide to leave the land in fallow for a year
or two. In the villages it becomes a question of starve or emigrate. To
emigrate many certificates are needed. Many o