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by the foundation of provincial high schools, and to establish a bank with a capital of $60,000,000 on the plan of the Bank of England-In spite of the antagonism of the British government, Chinese officials continued to oppose the opium traffic; in Changsha a woman was shot for persistence in the vice. In February it was reported that work on the Hukuang railway would be begun simultaneously by English, German and American engineers.-Lung Yii, formerly empress dowager, died in February.

PERSIA.—The shooting of Captain Eckford (see supra, p. 354) was the most serious illustration of a general condition of lawlessness among the tribesmen. Claiming that a firm hand was needed to maintain order, the reactionary element agitated strongly during the autumn for the return of Saad ed-Dowleh, desiring to place him at the head of the government. This movement was further strengthened in December by insults offered to Treasurer-General Mornard (a Belgian) by Bakhtiari, who demanded a government appropriation for their own benefit. In January the ministry was overthrown and on the 17th a coalition government came into power, with Ag-ed-Alach-Sultan as premier. A Russo-British loan (see supra, p. 354) was negotiated by the new government for the purpose of adequately policing the caravan routes.

AFRICAN STATES.-The industrial prosperity of Egypt was indicated by the harvesting of the largest cotton crop on record and was further assured by the completion of the heightened Assuan dam, by which a million acres of the Nile valley were gained for agriculture.-In Abyssinia an attempt of Lij Yassu, the heir to the throne, to dissolve the body-guard of King Menelik resulted in a two-hour conflict between the troops of the heir and the body-guard.

[For colonies in Asia and Africa, see the United States, the British Empire and the Continental European states, supra.|

CARLTON HAYES,

E. M. SAIT.

POLITICAL

SCIENCE

QUARTERLY

WHA

HAY AND HISTORY

HAT is here to be discussed concretely is the village community. This has already been considered, by actual count, in more than a thousand books and essays and written about under titles more seemly and more modest. Yet I venture to tax the patience of the reader with the old story once more; not even with the story, because all I am offering here is an interpretation.

I ask only this question: Can the reader tell me why the village community was so prevalent in Europe, regardless of race and clime? The reader, if he belong to one school, will say that the village community is a survival of an early Teutonic or even of a universal ancient custom. If he belong to another school, he will cautiously answer that wherever we meet this institution in the past it is invariably in connection with the manorial system. Thus the thousand contributions to the subject do not answer the question why. Those of one school practically say that it existed but that they do not know why; those of the other school intimate that the lords of the manor introduced it but that they do not know why. Worse yet, not only has the question why not been answered; it has not even been asked.

Hence there is after all a justification for one more essay on the subject, in which the simple question is asked and a plain answer given.

This is an interpretation, not a story, and it is possible that some kindly reader may come to the conclusion that, after all, the writer is more interested in a problem of which the village community is but a manifestation,-the problem of the life and

death of the land and of the peoples thereon possibly. economist may be, and a farmer must be, concrete. therefore talk about the village community.

But an Let us

The con

First of all, what have the discussions been about? troversy covers several problems: did or did not the early Teutons have a "Mark Association"; is or is not the village. community of to-day a survival of a system when all land was universally held in common ownership; do we find the Mark Genossenschaft, the community of free Mark associates, in England, Scandinavia and among the Slavs; is or is not the village community in Germany, Russia, France, England and elsewhere, after all, but a product of serfdom and the manorial system; is or is not the Roman villa responsible for the manorial organization of western Europe?

These are the main problems that have been discussed for many decades under the general heading of "village community." The controversies have been too often acrimonious. While they have unquestionably added to the sum total of our knowledge about miscellaneous historical subjects of importance, the real problem has been obscured rather than illuminated by the wealth of historical data.

Let us see what is the real problem that a village community presents. There are thousands of old villages in Europe where the holdings of the individual peasants have never been inclosed. The holdings of one are intermixed with the holdings of his neighbors in the open fields. Let us examine such a village.

First of all, we find all the homesteads grouped together. In some localities they form one long street; in others, two streets; in still others, they are laid out in a semi-circle. Near the homesteads are the barns, stables, hovels, vegetable gardens and a few fruit trees, but never the field that belongs to the individual farmer.

The farming land presents a curious sight. It looks like a patchwork quilt. You see a number of land areas, of flats, of plots, as a rule square or oblong in shape, each of them. divided into very numerous, narrow strips of land. Sometimes the three fields of the village form three quite uniform flats, subdivided into numerous strips, long and narrow, running

in the same direction; but oftener you find that each of the three fields is made up of many such flats, each of them subdivided into strips or ribbons of land. These strips belong to different owners, but they are not fenced. They are separated from each other by balks of turf, or unploughed land. Strips in some patches are, at times, so narrow that one wonders how they could be cultivated.

The individual peasant may own ten, twenty, or more strips in each of the three farming fields, but the strips of the individual farmer, even in the same field, do not adjoin each other. They are at times quite a distance apart. They are the farmer's individual property which he has inherited and which he may sell. But in the use of his property he is necessarily restricted. First of all he is restricted in the rotation of crops, and in the type of tillage. The third field is the fallow field on which the cattle of all the villagers pasture. The cattle are also pastured on the stubble as soon as the harvest is removed. Hence it becomes necessary for all the members of the community not only to sow the same crop on the same field, but to sow at the same time and to harvest at the same time.

Besides the cultivated fields the village has as a rule some waste that serves as a permanent pasture, woods and a meadow. None of this is subdivided or fenced. It is used in common, with restrictions varying in different localities. As a rule, with a definite acreage in the cultivated fields goes a proportionate and quite definite acreage in the meadows. Let us say that a certain farmer owns two acres of meadow land. It is left, however,

to a yearly drawing of lots to determine where his two acres are to be located. He will get neither more nor less than the two acres to which he has a title, but the location of these two acres may vary from year to year. As soon as the meadow hay is mowed, the entire meadow is thrown open for common pasturage of all members of the village community. Sometimes all varieties of cattle are allowed there; oftener sheep will be restricted to the waste and fallow fields or to a special part of the meadow.

This is the organization of the village community as we find it still in numberless localities of northern, western, and south

eastern Europe, an institution that has given rise to so prodigious a literature.

It is not an idle problem, either. Agriculture was until recently the sole basis of state and society. It is, and will remain, of paramount significance. Anything so fundamentally characteristic as is the village community of European farming is of fundamental economic and historica! importance. The problem of the village community is not a new one.

closure of the commons shook the very foundations of sixteenthcentury England. Yet curiously enough it became a scientific and bookish problem only in the nineteenth century. This bookish spirit is nowhere so well expressed as in Wagner's rejoinder to Faust:

I often had myself fantastic notions,

But never have I felt the like emotions.

'Tis tiresome on green woods and fields to look,
The bird's wing crave I not in slightest measure.
How otherwise bears us the mental pleasure
From page to page, from look to book!

Then grow the winter nights so lovely fair,

A warm and blissful life all limbs pervading,

And oh! unroll'st thou e'en an ancient parchment rare,

All Heaven descends to thee that knows no fading.

Tiresome as it may be to look at green woods and fields, let us do so for a change. If we should take with us a plain American farmer and show him a European village community he could not possibly believe his eyes. First of all he would observe the homestead with the farm buildings all clustered together, far away from the farming land. This would naturally look to him just as if an American farming community should live in a city, keeping there the horses, fodder etc., but going out every morning to farm somewhere in the country. The American farmer would hardly know what to think about such a situation. True, he knows of wealthy farmers who live in the town in the winter, or even go visiting or traveling in the winter, but they can do so because during the planting and harvesting season they are on their jobs without wasting a minute of their own or of their horses' time. What are we to tell this plain American farmer? We consult all the books

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