by the rotation of crops system, we see in Russia many village communities taking the initiative of introducing the rotation of crops.  Before accepting it the peasants usually set apart a portion of the communal fields for an experiment in artificial meadows, and the commune buys the seeds.(42) If the experiment proves successful they find no difficulty whatever in re-dividing their fields, so as to suit the five or six fields system.

This system is now in use in hundreds of villages of Moscow, Tver, Smolensk, Vyatka, and Pskov.(43) And where land can be spared the communities give also a portion of their domain to allotments for fruit-growing.  Finally, the sudden extension lately taken in Russia by the little model farms, orchards, kitchen gardens, and silkworm-culture grounds—­which are started at the village school-houses, under the conduct of the school-master, or of a village volunteer—­is also due to the support they found with the village communities.

Moreover, such permanent improvements as drainage and irrigation are of frequent occurrence.  For instance, in three districts of the province of Moscow—­industrial to a great extent—­drainage works have been accomplished within the last ten years on a large scale in no less than 180 to 200 different villages—­the commoners working themselves with the spade.  At another extremity of Russia, in the dry Steppes of Novouzen, over a thousand dams for ponds were built and several hundreds of deep wells were sunk by the communes; while in a wealthy German colony of the south-east the commoners worked, men and women alike, for five weeks in succession, to erect a dam, two miles long, for irrigation purposes.  What could isolated men do in that struggle against the dry climate?  What could they obtain through individual effort when South Russia was struck with the marmot plague, and all people living on the land, rich and poor, commoners and individualists, had to work with their hands in order to conjure the plague?  To call in the policeman would have been of no use; to associate was the only possible remedy.

And now, after having said so much about mutual aid and support which are practised by the tillers of the soil in “civilized” countries, I see that I might fill an octavo volume with illustrations taken from the life of the hundreds of millions of men who also live under the tutorship of more or less centralized States, but are out of touch with modern civilization and modern ideas.  I might describe the inner life of a Turkish village and its network of admirable mutual-aid customs and habits.  On turning over my leaflets covered with illustrations from peasant life in Caucasia, I come across touching facts of mutual support.  I trace the same customs in the Arab djemmaa and the Afghan purra, in the villages of Persia, India, and Java, in the undivided family of the Chinese, in the encampments of the semi-nomads of Central Asia and the nomads of the far North.