Normal size of a farm required by the present state of agriculture--Actual size of peasant farms--Legal discrimination--Want of fodder--Depressed condition of stock breeding--Want of fuel--Manure used as fuel--The land not fertilized--Exhaustion of the soil--Improper situation of the lots--Yields of cereals--Balance of peasant agriculture--Review of real peasant budgets--Development of money economy in peasant farming. CHAPTER IV. TAXATION OF THE PEASANT 59 The taxes in inverse ratio to the income--The redemption tax paid by the former serf--Assessment _per capita_--Arrears in taxes--Bearing upon the peasant’s live stock--The fiscal system lived down by economic development. CHAPTER V. COMMUNAL TENURE AND SMALL HOLDINGS 67 Economic relations arising from the lack of land--Tenure at will--Community as party to the agreement--Easements--Pasture--Tendency toward individualism produced by inequality of wealth and money economy--Arable land and grass land--Individualism prevailing--Communal agreements--Influence of divergent interests within the community--Rental partnerships, a step toward individualism. CHAPTER VI. THE EVOLUTION OF THE FARMER INTO THE AGRICULTURAL LABORER 75 Relations between landlord and tenant--Division of crops--Labor in payment for rent--Tendency towards money agreements--Rise of rent--Rate of rent to wages--Differentiation of tenant and farm laborer. CHAPTER VII. THE WAGES IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS 80 Farmer as wage-worker--Farm work prevailing--Indebtedness of the farmer--Wages in rural districts cut down by the farmer-workingman--Low wages a drawback to the development of industry--Pauperism. CHAPTER VIII. THE RURAL SURPLUS POPULATION 85 Increasing movement away from the rural districts--Wages higher abroad--The bonds to the village severed--Growth of the proletariat. CHAPTER IX. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY 90 The position of the peasantists and of the government in the question--Opinions of students of peasant life on the dissolution of the patriarchal family--The typical family of to-day--Influence of outside jobs--Parcellation of the soil--Landless--Ruin of the farmer occasioned by the decay of family co-operation--The employing farmer. CHAPTER X. THE MODERN AGRICULTURAL CLASSES 104