Attempts to improve the condition of peasants were numerous and in some respects successful, but found an obstacle on the one hand in the attitude of the Government and on the other in the conservatism and suspicion of the peasants themselves. Fire insurance and cooperative enterprises helped to a certain degree, but an almost complete absence of expert agriculturists in the ranks of the landowners prevented them from demonstrating on their own estates the value of applied knowledge as well as from teaching the peasants how to increase the productivity of the land through intensive farming. Thus it came to pass that the vast majority of landowners, both conservative and liberal, remained strangers to the people among whom they lived, whose labor they employed, and for whose welfare many were in earnest concerned. The Constitutional Democratic party is strong in the cities. In the country it has no followers and in the sweeping incendiary fires of 1905-06 estates were burned which belonged in several cases to men who spent their life in fighting for freedom against the tsar's government. No less unfortunate is the party in its relation to the class of factory workers. That part of its program which relates to the labor question embraces a number of important reforms meeting almost all demands of the working class. The barrier between them is the capitalistic principle. A perusal of the lists of Constitutional Democrats who have subscribed large sums for the Russian liberty loan will show why workmen speak of them as capitalists even though the party has accepted the principle of progressive income taxation. There is a feeling of intense hatred toward all Constitutional Democrats on the part of all workmen.