Mutual Aid - Peter Kropotkin (ereader that reads to you .TXT) 📗

Peasant Community (Krestianskaya Obschina), St. Petersburg, 1892, which, apart from its theoretical value, is a rich compendium of data relative to this subject. The above inquests have also given origin to an immense literature, in which the modern village-community question for the first time emerges from the domain of generalities and is put on the solid basis of reliable and sufficiently detailed facts. ↩

The redemption had to be paid by annuities for forty-nine years. As years went, and the greatest part of it was paid, it became easier and easier to redeem the smaller remaining part of it, and, as each allotment could be redeemed individually, advantage was taken of this disposition by traders, who bought land for half its value from the ruined peasants. A law was consequently passed to put a stop to such sales. ↩

Mr. V. V., in his Peasant Community, has grouped together all facts relative to this movement. About the rapid agricultural development of South Russia and the spread of machinery English readers will find information in the Consular Reports (Odessa, Taganrog). ↩

In some instances they proceeded with great caution. In one village they began by putting together all meadow land, but only a small portion of the fields (about five acres per soul) was rendered communal; the remainder continued to be owned individually. Later on, in 1862⁠–⁠1864, the system was extended, but only in 1884 was communal possession introduced in full.⁠—V. V.’s Peasant Community, pp. 1⁠–⁠14. ↩

On the Mennonite village community see A. Klaus, Our Colonies (Nashi Kolonii), St. Petersburg, 1869. ↩

Such communal cultures are known to exist in 159 villages out of 195 in the Ostrogozhsk district; in 150 out of 187 in Slavyanoserbsk; in 107 village communities in Alexandrovsk, 93 in Nikolayevsk, 35 in Elisabethgrad. In a German colony the communal culture is made for repaying a communal debt. All join in the work, although the debt was contracted by 94 householders out of 155. ↩

Lists of such works which came under the notice of the zemstvo statisticians will be found in V. V.’s Peasant Community, pp. 459⁠–⁠600. ↩

In the government of Moscow the experiment was usually made on the field which was reserved for the above-mentioned communal culture. ↩

Several instances of such and similar improvements were given in the Official Messenger, 1894, Nos. 256⁠–⁠258. Associations between “horseless” peasants begin to appear also in South Russia. Another extremely interesting fact is the sudden development in Southern West Siberia of very numerous cooperative creameries for making butter. Hundreds of them spread in Tobolsk and Tomsk, without anyone knowing wherefrom the initiative of the movement came. It came from the Danish cooperators, who used to export their own butter of higher quality, and to buy butter of a lower quality for their own use in Siberia. After a several years’ intercourse, they introduced creameries there. Now, a great export trade, carried on by a Union of the Creameries, has grown out of their endeavours and more than a thousand cooperative shops have been opened in the villages. ↩

Toulmin Smith, English Guilds, London, 1870, Introd. p. xliii. ↩

The Act of Edward VI⁠—the first of his reign⁠—ordered to hand over to the Crown “all fraternities, brotherhoods, and guilds being within the realm of England and Wales and other of the king’s dominions; and all manors, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments belonging to them or any of them” (English Guilds, Introd. p. xliii). See also Ockenkowski’s Englands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters, Jena, 1879, chaps. ii-v. ↩

See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade-Unionism, London, 1894, pp. 21⁠–⁠38. ↩

See in Sidney Webb’s work the associations which existed at that time. The London artisans are supposed to have never been better organized than in 1810⁠–⁠20. ↩

The National Association for the Protection of Labour included about 150 separate unions, which paid high levies, and had a membership of about 100,000. The Builders’ Union and the Miners’ Unions also were big organizations (Webb, History of Trade-Unionism, London, 1894, p. 107). ↩

I follow in this Mr. Webb’s work, which is replete with documents to confirm his statements. ↩

Great changes have taken place since the forties in the attitude of the richer classes towards the unions. However, even in the sixties, the employers made a formidable concerted attempt to crush them by locking out whole populations. Up to 1869 the simple agreement to strike, and the announcement of a strike by placards, to say nothing of picketing, were often punished as intimidation. Only in 1875 the Master and Servant Act was repealed, peaceful picketing was permitted, and “violence and intimidation” during strikes fell into the domain of common law. Yet, even during the dock-labourers’ strike in 1887, relief money had to be spent for fighting before the Courts for the right of picketing, while the prosecutions of the last few years menace once more to render the conquered rights illusory. ↩

A weekly contribution of 6d. out of an 18s. wage, or of 1s. out of 25s., means much more than £9 out of a £300 income: it is mostly taken upon food; and the levy is soon doubled when a strike is declared in a brother union. The graphic description of trade-union life, by a skilled craftsman, published by Mr. and Mrs. Webb (pp. 431 seq.), gives an excellent idea of the amount of work required from a unionist. ↩

See the debates upon the strikes of Falkenau in Austria before the Austrian Reichstag on the 10th of May, 1894, in which