What difference will it make if I wear my shirt for a week instead of a day and make my cigarettes myself, or do not smoke at all?
This difference, that some washerwoman and some cigarette-maker will strain her strength less, and the money I should have paid for the washing and cigarette-making I shall be able to give to that washerwoman, or even to quite other washerwomen and workers who are weary of work, and who, instead of working beyond their strength, may then rest and drink tea. But to this I hear a reply (so reluctant are the rich, luxurious people to understand their position). They reply: ‘Even if I wear dirty linen and stop smoking and give this money to the poor instead, all the same the poor will have everything taken from them, and my drop in the ocean will not help matters.’
One feels still more ashamed to reply to this retort, but it must be answered. It is such a common rejoinder and the answer is so simple.
If I visit savages and they treat me to tasty cutlets, and next day I learn (or perhaps see) that these tasty cutlets are made of a prisoner whom they have killed to make them; then if I do not think it right to eat people, however tasty the cutlets may be and however general the practice of eating men may be among those I am living with, and however little the prisoners who are kept to serve as food may gain by my refusal to eat the cutlets, still I shall not and cannot eat them again. Perhaps I might even eat human flesh if compelled by hunger, but I should not entertain others at, or take part in, feasts where human flesh was eaten, and should not seek such feasts or feel proud of taking part in them.
CHAPTER XXV
‘WELL, what must we do? We didn’t make things so.’ But if not we, who did? We say: we did not do it, it has just done itself, as children when they have broken something say it broke itself. We say that once the towns exist we, living in them, support people by buying their labour .
But it is not true, and we need only consider how we live in the country and support people there.
The winter is past in town, and Easter Week comes. In town that same orgy of the rich continues; on the boulevards, in the gardens, in the parks and on the river, are music, theatres, rides, promenades, all kinds of illuminations and fireworks, but in the country there are still better things-the air is better, the trees, the meadows, and the flowers are fresher. We must go where all this is budding and flowering. And so most rich people, utilizing the labour of others, go to the country to breathe this better air and to see these still better meadows and woods.
And so the rich people settle down in the country amid the rough peasants who live on rye bread and onion, work eighteen hours a day, do not get enough sleep at night, and wear tattered clothes. Here at least no one has tempted these people: there are no mills or factories here, and no idle hands of whom there are so many in town, and whom we are supposed to feed by giving them work. Here during the whole summer the people are unable to keep up with their work, and not only are there no unemployed hands but quantities of things perish for lack of labour, and many people, children, old men, and women with child, perish by overstraining themselves. How do the rich folk arrange their lives here?
Why… in this way. If there is an old house built in the days of serfdom, it is renovated and ornamented; or if there is none, a new one is built-two or three stories high, with from twelve to twenty or more rooms all about fourteen feet high.
Parquet floors are laid, the windows have large glass panes, there are costly carpets, expensive furniture, with a sideboard costing from two hundred to six hundred rubles.
The paths near the house are made of gravel, the ground is levelled, flower-beds are set out, a croquet-ground is arranged, a giant-stride is put up, reflecting globes are set up, and often conservatories, hot-houses, and high stables, always with ornamented ridge-pieces. It is all painted with oil-colours-made with the oil the old peasants and their children do not get in their porridge. If the rich man is able he settles down in such a house, or if he cannot afford that, he hires such a house; but however poor and liberal minded a man of our circle may be, when he settles in the country he settles in a house for the building and cleaning of which dozens of working people have to be taken from the village where they are unable to cope with the work needed for growing grain for their own sustenance.
There at least one cannot say that factories exist and it will be all the same whether I do or do not make use of them; here it cannot be said that I feed idle hands; here we directly introduce the manufacture of things we want and directly exploit the needs of those around us, tearing them away from work necessary for them, for us, and for everybody, and we thus pervert some and ruin the life and the health of others.
An educated and honourable family let us say, of the gentry or official class, is living in the country.
All the members of the family and their guests gather there in the middle of June, for till then they have been studying and passing their examinations-that is, they arrive at the beginning of the mowing and stay there till September, that is, till the harvest and the sowing of the winter corn. The members of this family (like almost all people of that circle) remain in the country from the beginning of the busy season of urgent work-not to the end of it, for in September the sowing of the winter corn and the stacking of potatoes is still in progress, but-till the work is slackening.
All the time they are in the country the peasants’ summer work goes on around them and beside them, of the intensity of which, however much we may have heard or read or witnessed it, we can form no conception unless we try it ourselves.
And the members of the family, some ten people, live just as they did in town or worse if possible than in town, for here in the country it is considered that the family are resting
(from doing nothing), and so they have no longer any semblance of work or any excuse for their idleness.
During the Petrov fast1-the strict fast, when the peasants’ food is kvas, rye-bread, and onions-mowing begins. The gentlefolk living in the country see this work, to some extent they give orders for it, to some extent admire it, are pleased by the odour of the wilting hay, the sound of the women’s songs, the clanging of the scythes, and the sight of the rows of mowers and the women raking the hay.
They see this near the house, and then the young people and children, having done nothing all day, have to be driven half a verst for their bathe.
The work done at hay-making is one of the most important undertakings in the world. Almost every year, from lack of labourers and time, the meadows may be drenched with rain before the mowing is completed, and the greater or lesser intensity of the work decides whether twenty or more per cent. of hay shall be added to the peoples’ wealth or shall rot and perish on its roots. If more hay is gathered there will be more meat for the old men and more milk for the children. So it is in general; but for each of the mowers in particular the question of bread and of milk for himself and his children for the winter is here being decided. Each of the men and women knows this and even the children know that this work is important and that one must work to the limit of one’s strength, carrying the jug of kvas to father in the field and, changing the heavy jug from hand to hand, running barefoot as fast as possible a mile and a half from the village to be in time for his dinner and that daddy may not scold. Everyone knows that from hay-time till harvest there will be no break in the work and no time for resting.
It is not the hay-making alone; everyone has work to do besides the mowing: there is land to turn up and harrow, the women have to bleach the linen and attend to the bread and the washing, and the men have to drive to the mill and to town, look after the village communal affairs, attend
