On the whole, the existence of the nobility as an agricultural class is closely dependent upon the continued vegetation of a class of peasants, who are farmers and laborers at once, or who, to express it more accurately, are neither farmers nor laborers. We have seen what is the trend of the times with regard to this class of peasantry. The former masters will inevitably share the fate of their former serfs. CHAPTER XIV. CONCLUSION: THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FAMINE. The conclusions drawn from the previous discussion of the economic structure of the Russian village must be taken with a threefold limitation. In the first place, the science of statistics is essentially a science of large numbers. There are many questions, by no means unimportant, which it has been impossible even to touch upon, their discussion being feasible only where large agricultural areas are concerned. In the second place, inasmuch as the facts and deductions have only a local basis, the question arises whether the conclusions drawn would also hold good when applied upon a larger scale. In the third place, the conditions prevailing some five or ten years ago must inevitably have undergone by this time great modifications. It is no exaggeration to say that the round thousand[176] communities in the section submitted to examination represent an equal number of varying combinations of the fundamental agencies of rural economy. Nevertheless, we observe a certain regularity as soon as a complex, sufficient and necessary, of units is taken as a basis for examination. Thus we notice that all the figures relating to the district of Ranenburg are copied with a remarkable constancy in the district of Dankoff in the _gubernia_ of Ryazañ. The same similitude is observed between the districts of Korotoyak and Nizhnedevitzk in the _gubernia_ of Voronezh. It points to a certain uniformity of economic constitution as prevailing under like conditions over a still wider area. In a region confined mainly to agriculture, landholding is the determining factor of economic life. Should we find the same condition of landholding amidst similar surroundings, physical, geographical and legal, we might be justly entitled to assume throughout identity of economic structure. Such is virtually the case as regards the “central black soil, prairieless zone,” which has been the main seat of famine.