In the light soil of the centre and the north, which would require copious manuring and works of permanent improvement,too frequent periodic partition undoubtedly hinders the progress of agriculture. Central Russia is the country whereagricultural produce is the poorest in all Europe. It is estimated that the cultivator only reaps three or four times what he hassown. It is true that the laws of Von Thunen might be called in to explain this fact. In a thinly peopled country, where thereare no great centres of consumption, there is no advantage in carrying on intensive agriculture. It is better to call into actionthe natural forces, offered by the vast space still undisposed of, than to accumulate a large capital on a small area, as one iscompelled to do when the population becomes denser. Thus it is that the English in Australia, while practising a most perfectsystem of market-gardening in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, devote themselves, in the interior ofthe country, to the pastoral system in all its primitive simplicity.
The point in the organization of the mir , which is really calculated to alarm economists, is that, contrary to the maxims ofMalthus, it removes every obstacle to the increase of population, and even offers a premium for the multiplying of offspring.
In fact, every additional head gives a right to a new share on the partition. It seems, therefore, that the population ought toincrease more rapidly than anywhere else. This is the chief objection raised by Mill to every plan of reform in a communisticsense. Yet, strange as it seems, Russia like France is one of the countries where the population increases most slowly. Theperiod required for the doubling of the population, which is about a hundred and twenty years for France, is ninety years forRussia; while in England and Prussia it is only fifty years. What is the cause of this unexpected phenomenon, which seems tocontradict all the previsions of political economy?
There are various circumstances contributing to produce the result. The first is the large mortality among young children.
The fertility of marriages is a little greater in Russia than in other European states. The eminent Russian statistician, VonBuschen, makes the number of children for each married couple 4.96 in Russia; while in Prussia it is only reckoned at 4.23;in Belgium at 4.72; and in England at 3.77. (2) According to M. Quételet, (3) the number of births is relatively nearly twice aslarge in Russia as in France. The number of children, however, is not highest among the peasants. Thus, in the province ofNovgorod, which may serve as an example for the rest, the number of children to each marriage was 5.8 for the higherclasses; 5.5 for the peasants; 5 for the bourgeois; 4.8 for the smaller class of traders; and 3.75 for the floating population.
The mortality in Russia, compared with the number of inhabitants, is in the proportion of 1 to 26; while in Prussia it is 1 to36; in France 1 to 39; in Belgium 1 to 43; and in England 1 to 49. The average length of life in Russia is, therefore, verymuch less than that given for other countries. Instead of being about thirty-five years, as in the countries of Western Europe,it is only from twenty-two to twenty-seven years. In the agricultural region of the Volga it sinks to twenty years, and in theprovinces of Viatka, Perm and Orenbourg, even to fifteen. This unsatisfactory average is due especially to the greatmortality among young children. M. Buniakovski, a member of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, states, in his workon the Laws of Mortality in Russia, that out of a thousand male children only five hundred and ninety-three attain the age offive years. Nearly half die before that time, and about one-third die within a year of their birth. There is yet another fact,which is well known, to taken into account, namely, that children dying before the are baptized are not registered at all.
Thus the great mortality among infants is the principal cause which prevents the increase of the population. It is want ofproper care that carries off so many people. According to M. Giliarovski who has made special researches as to infantmortality in Russia, the mothers, overburdened with work, are in many cases incapable of nursing their new-born children.
They give them with the bottle a kind of gruel of bitter rye-meal, which produces diarrhoea. Custom requires the mother,three days after her confinement, to take a vapour bath; and this bath, for want of proper precaution, has often evil results.
The baptism, which consists of a complete immersion, is also in winter the cause of many diseases, and of deaths. In summerthe labours of the harvest are even more fatal: 75 per cent of the children who die succumb during the months of July andAugust, because the mothers, being detained all day in the fields, are obliged to entirely abandon their nurslings.
The difference of age frequently existing between husband and wife is also a check to the increase of the population. Thisdisparity is the result of the patriarchal system of the family. The working hand is rare in Russia, and valuable in proportion.
It is, therefore, to the interest of each family to find among its members the number of hands necessary for the cultivation ofthe portion of land belonging to it. The head of the family, accordingly, is anxious to marry his sons as early as possible, thatthe young woman may discharge the duties of the servant, to whom high wages would have to be paid. In this way youngboys of eight or ten are married to women of five-and-twenty or thirty years of age.
