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Footnotes, 251 - 300

[251] A bulky literature, dealing with this formerly much neglected subject, is now growing in Germany. Keller’s works, Ein Apostel der Wiedertäufer and Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, Cornelius’s Geschichte des münsterischen Aufruhrs, and Janssen’s Geschichte des deutschen Volkes may be named as the leading sources. The first attempt at familiarizing English readers with the results of the wide researches made in Germany in this direction has been made in an excellent little work by Richard Heath — “Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Munster, 1521–1536,” London, 1895 (Baptist Manuals, vol. i.) — where the leading features of the movement are well indicated, and full bibliographical information is given. Also K. Kautsky’s Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, London, 1897.

[252] Few of our contemporaries realize both the extent of this movement and the means by which it was suppressed. But those who wrote immediately after the great peasant war estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000 men the number of peasants slaughtered after their defeat in Germany. See Zimmermann’s Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauernkrieges. For the measures taken to suppress the movement in the Netherlands see Richard Heath’s Anabaptism.

[253] “Chacun s’en est accommodé selon sa bienséance... on les a partagés... pour dé pouiller les communes, on s’est servi de dettes simulées” (Edict of Louis the Fourteenth, of 1667, quoted by several authors. Eight years before that date the communes had been taken under State management).

[254] “On a great landlord’s estate, even if he has millions of revenue, you are sure to find the land uncultivated” (Arthur Young). “One-fourth part of the soil went out of culture;” “for the last hundred years the land has returned to a savage state;” “the formerly flourishing Sologne is now a big marsh;” and so on (Théron de Montaugé, quoted by Taine in Origines de la France Contemporaine, tome i. p. 441).

[255] A. Babeau, Le Village sous l’Ancien Régime, 3e édition. Paris, 1892.

[256] In Eastern France the law only confirmed what the peasants had already done themselves; in other parts of France it usually remained a dead letter.

[257] After the triumph of the middle-class reaction the communal lands were declared (August 24, 1794) the States domains, and, together with the lands confiscated from the nobility, were put up for sale, and pilfered by the bandes noires of the small bourgeoisie. True that a stop to this pilfering was put next year (law of 2 Prairial, An V), and the preceding law was abrogated; but then the village Communities were simply abolished, and cantonal councils were introduced instead. Only seven years later (9 Prairial, An XII), i.e. in 1801, the village communities were reintroduced, but not until after having been deprived of all their rights, the mayor and syndics being nominated by the Government in the 36,000 communes of France! This system was maintained till after the revolution of 1830, when elected communal councils were reintroduced under the law of 1787. As to the communal lands, they were again seized upon by the State in 1813, plundered as such, and only partly restored to the communes in 1816. See the classical collection of French laws, by Dalloz, Répertoire de Jurisprudence; also the works of Doniol, Dareste, Bonnemère, Babeau, and many others.

[258] This procedure is so absurd that one would not believe it possible if the fifty-two different acts were not enumerated in full by a quite authoritative writer in the Journal des Economistes (1893, April, p. 94), and several similar examples were not given by the same author.

[259] Dr. Ochenkowski, Englands wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters (Jena, 1879), pp. 35 seq., where the whole question is discussed with full knowledge of the texts.

[260] Nasse, Ueber die mittelalterliche Feldgemeinschaft und die Einhegungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts in England (Bonn, 1869), pp. 4, 5; Vinogradov, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892).

[261] Seebohm, The English Village Community, 3rd edition, 1884, pp. 13–15.

[262] “An examination into the details of an Enclosure Act will make clear the point that the system as above described [communal ownership] is the system which it was the object of the Enclosure Act to remove” (Seebohm, l.c. p. 13). And further on, “They were generally drawn in the same form, commencing with the recital that the open and common fields lie dispersed in small pieces, intermixed with each other and inconveniently situated; that diverse persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights of common on them... and that it is desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a specific share being let out and allowed to each owner” (p. 14). Porter’s list contained 3867 such Acts, of which the greatest numbers fall upon the decades of 1770–1780 and 1800–1820, as in France.

[263] In Switzerland we see a number of communes, ruined by wars, which have sold part of their lands, and now endeavor to buy them back.

[264] A. Buchenberger, “Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik,” in A. Wagner’s Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie, 1892, Band i. pp. 280 seq.

[265] G.L. Gomme, “The Village Community, with special reference to its Origin and Forms of Survival in Great Britain” (Contemporary Science Series), London, 1890, pp. 141–143; also his Primitive Folkmoots (London, 1880), pp. 98 seq.

[266] “In almost all parts of the country, in the Midland and Eastern counties particularly, but also in the west — in Wiltshire, for example — in the south, as in Surrey, in the north, as in Yorkshire, — there are extensive open and common fields. Out of 316 parishes of Northamptonshire 89 are in this condition; more than 100 in Oxfordshire; about 50,000 acres in Warwickshire; in Berkshire half the county; more than half of Wiltshire; in Huntingdonshire out of a total area of 240,000 acres 130,000 were commonable meadows, commons, and fields” (Marshall, quoted in Sir Henry Maine’s Village Communities in the East and West, New York edition, 1876, pp. 88, 89).

[267] Ibid. p. 88; also Fifth Lecture. The wide extension of “commons” in Surrey, even now, is well known.

[268] In quite a number of books dealing with English country life which I have consulted I have found charming descriptions of country scenery and the like, but almost nothing about the daily life and customs of the laborers.

[269] In Switzerland the peasants in the open land also fell under the dominion of lords, and large parts of their estates were appropriated by the lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (See, for instance, Dr. A. Miaskowski, in Schmoller’s Forschungen, Bd. ii. 1879, Pp. 12 seq.) But the peasant war in Switzerland did not end in such a crushing defeat of the peasants as it did in other countries, and a great deal of the communal rights and lands was retained. The self-government of the communes is, in fact, the very foundation of the Swiss liberties.

[270] Miaskowski, in Schmoller’s Forschungen, Bd. ii. 1879, p. 15.

[271] See on this subject a series of works, summed up in one of the excellent and suggestive chapters (not yet translated into English) which K. Bücher has added to the German translation of Laveleye’s Primitive Ownership. Also Meitzen, “Das Agrar- und Forst-Wesen, die Allmenden und die Landgemeinden der Deutschen Schweiz,” in Jahrbuch für Staatswissenschaft, 1880, iv. (analysis of Miaskowsky’s works); O’Brien, “ in a Swiss village,” in Macmillan’s Magazine, October 1885.

[272] The wedding gifts, which often substantially contribute in this country to the comfort of the young households, are evidently a remainder of the communal habits.

[273] The communes own, 4,554,100 acres of woods out of 24,813,000 in the whole territory, and 6,936,300 acres of natural meadows out of 11,394,000 acres in France. The remaining 2,000,000 acres are fields, orchards, and so on.

[274] In Caucasia they even do better among the Georgians. As the meal costs, and a poor man cannot afford to give it, a sheep is bought by those same neighbors who come to aid in the work.

[275] Alfred Baudrillart, in H. Baudrillart’s Les Populations Rurales de la France, 3rd series (Paris, 1893), p. 479.

[276] The Journal des Économistes (August 1892, May and August 1893) has lately given some of the results of analyzes made at the agricultural laboratories at Ghent and at Paris. The extent of falsification is simply incredible; so also the devices of the “honest traders.” In certain seeds of grass there was 32 percent of gains of sand, colored so as to Receive even an experienced eye; other samples contained from 52 to 22 percent only of pure seed, the remainder being weeds. Seeds of vetch contained 11 percent of a poisonous grass (nielle); a flour for cattle-fattening contained 36 percent of sulfates; and so on ad infinitum.

[277] A. Baudrillart, l.c. p. 309. Originally one grower would undertake to supply water, and several others would agee to make use of it. “What especially characterizes such associations,” A. Baudrillart remarks, “is that no sort of written agreement is concluded. All is arranged in words. There was, however, not one single case of difficulties having arisen between the parties.”

[278] A. Baudrillart, l.c. pp. 300, 341, etc. M. Terssac, president of the St. Gironnais syndicate (Ariège), wrote to my friend in substance as follows: — “For the exhibition of Toulouse our association has grouped the owners of cattle which seemed to us worth exhibiting. The society undertook to pay one-half of the traveling and exhibition expenses; one-fourth was paid by each owner, and the remaining fourth by those exhibitors who had got prizes. The result was that many took part in the exhibition who never would have done it otherwise. Those who got the highest awards (350 francs) have contributed 10 percent of their prizes, while those who have got no prize have only spent 6 to 7 francs each.”

[279] In W¸rttemberg 1,629 communes out of 1,910 have communal property. They owned in 1863 over 1,000,000 acres of land. In Baden 1,256 communes out of 1,582 have communal land; in 1884–1888 they held 121,500 acres of fields in communal culture, and 675,000 acres of forests, i.e. 46 percent of the total area under woods. In Saxony 39 percent of the total area is in communal ownership (Schmoller’s Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 359). In Hohenzollern nearly two-thirds of all meadow land, and in Hohenzollern-Hechingen 41 percent of all landed property, are owned by the village communities (Buchenberger, Agrarwesen, vol. i. p. 300).

[280] See K. Bücher, who, in a special chapter added to Laveleye’s Ureigenthum, has collected all information relative to the village community in Germany.

[281] K. Bücher, ibid. pp. 89, 90.

[282] For this legislation and the numerous obstacles which were put in the way, in the shape of red-tapeism and supervision, see Buchenberger’s Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, Bd. ii. pp. 342–363, and p. 506, note.

[283] Buchenberger, l.c. Bd. ii. p. 510. The General Union of Agricultural Cooperation comprises an aggregate of 1,679 societies. In Silesia an aggregate of 32,000 acres of land has been lately drained by 73 associations; 454,800 acres in Prussia by 516 associations; in Bavaria there are 1,715 drainage and irrigation unions.

[284] See Appendix XII.

[285] For the Balkan peninsula see Laveleye’s Propriété Primitive.

[286] The facts concerning the village community, contained in nearly a hundred volumes (out of 450) of these inquests, have been classified and summed up in an excellent Russian work by “V.V.” The 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.

[287] 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.

[288] 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).

[289] 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.

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

[291] 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.

[292] 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.

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

[294] 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 any one 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 has grown out of their endeavors.

[295] Toulmin Smith, English Guilds, London, 1870, Introd. p. xliii.

[296] The Act of Edward the Sixth — 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.

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

[298] 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.

[299] The National Association for the Protection of Labor 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, l.c. p. 107).

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

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