Or ask any director of a peasant land bank how many
thousand peasants within the area of his activity are purchasing land
outside the communal limits and farming on their own account. If you
desire any further information on this subject, ask any liberal-minded
landed proprietor who takes an interest in the prosperity of his humble
neighbors to describe to you the small credit societies and similar
associations which have recently sprung up in his neighborhood. Nor is
it only in agricultural affairs that the peasants have manifested a
progressive spirit. If you should happen to pass through the industrial
districts around Moscow, you will see many gigantic factories, which
employ thousands of hands. Incredible as it may seem, not a few of these
were founded by unlettered peasants, whose sons and grandsons have
become millionaires.
Let us now go up a step in the social scale and inquire whether those
born in the mercantile class are as progressive as the peasantry.
Formerly they were regarded, and not without reason, as extremely
conservative, and certainly they used to show little sympathy with
education or culture; but in recent years their character has been
profoundly modified by the ever-increasing influx of foreign capital and
foreign enterprise. The upper ranks at least are now being Europeanized
in the best sense of the term, not only in their methods of doing
business, but also in many other respects.
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