The relief dining-rooms were entirely inadequate to cope with the situation, so that in many places I found that meals were given only to the young and the very old, while the middle-aged men and women, that is to [Illustration: Everything eaten up Two families live in one cottage, using the other house for fuel. The thatch has been fed to the cattle] say, the workers, were left to shift for themselves. The theory of this is that the strong ones can best endure suffering and hardship, but, of course, this method is open to question since such a policy tends to weaken the only ones in the village who might serve the rest of the village with their labor. It is very like discriminating in favor of the unfit. At the relief stations the feeding of the inhabitants begins at an early hour in the morning, and continues through a greater part of the day since the dining-rooms are rarely large and sometimes fifteen hundred, two thousand, or an even greater number must be fed during the days. There were three dining-rooms in one village where I stayed over night and every day upward of fifteen hundred meals were dispensed--the total population of the village was under two thousand. Without these meals there would have been absolute, literal starvation. From four to six months each year these dining-rooms were open, this being in the region of annual famine. When the paltry crops begin to ripen, the village becomes self-sustaining--it’s a niggardly sustenance, but it keeps soul and body together. From their tiny parcels of land, and with their very primitive methods of agriculture, it is impossible for the peasants to store enough food to last till the next harvest. Those who can find employment in the summer-time on the estates of the large landowners. The price of labor is appalling. In this village from three to eight rubles a month--from one dollar and a half to four dollars a month! This means from twenty-four to twenty-six days of toil in the fields during long days, for in this northern land summer nights are brief, and summer days very long. It was nine o’clock in the morning when I visited the first of the three dining-rooms. An ordinary village house had been renovated and fitted with tables and benches, and a small kitchen built in extension. The group who were eating when we entered suggested a salvation-army Christmas dinner. Ordinary muzhiks, with their wives and families, all poorly clad. The clothes they wore were largely made at home. The coats were of sheepskins, the wool worn inside, and the sun-cured skins out. The stockings and boots are of a kind of burlap, usually held to the feet and legs by cords. This footwear is common among both women and men.