THE RUSSIAN PEASANT.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13753, 19 June 1913, Page 8

THE RUSSIAN PEASANT.

Tho Russian psasr.nt (mites Mr. Stephen Graham, in "Changing Russia") only touches meat on kolidays, and perhaps lias a chicken at Easter and Christmas. Milk is kept for tho children, who live.on Imad and milk and baranki (small water crack;iiols). All his savings go for fuel and simple- clothes. Ho cannot travel, only .'ioldom can-he get enough to eat and drink. Yet he pays taxes and unhappily sots into tli3 clutches of Jewish moneylenders, .who live upon the peasants' necessities. This and not bigotry causes much of the Jew baiting of which one hears.

Yet tho Russian peasant is neither contented nor merely revolutionary. Ho is like a sleeper waiting for the dawn. Ho needs instruction, means for farming on a less primitive scale. Happily there is a chanca of these benefits coming to him before ho begins to struggle for liberty. He is far freer than tbo factory and commerce-driven slave of Western Europe. But ho is poorer and more ignorant. Yet" the family work on their own land, and no fatltfvr would dream or" touching his daughter's savings, which go to her future married life.-

They aro.moral people, tho practico of whole families living in the same room not exercising a debasing effect, as in tho case in our city .glums.