It is well known that in factory industry since 1905 wages have risen by about twenty percent.

The first attempt to study the same question regarding the wages of rural workers was made in a recently published pamphlet by I. Drozdov: "The Wages of Agricultural Workers in Russia in Connection with the Agrarian Movement of 1905–1906" (St. Petersburg, 1914, published by M. I. Semenov, price 50 kopecks). Let us note the principal conclusions of this interesting work.

The average daily wage of a rural worker in European Russia amounted to the following in kopecks:

From these data it is evident that the greatest increase in wages falls precisely on 1906, that is, precisely on that year when the influence of the movement of the fifth year ought to have manifested itself with the greatest definiteness.

Thus, since 1905 it has been possible to move forward even the incredibly low wage of rural workers! That this forward movement is still far from sufficient is evident from a comparison of the monetary wage with the prices of bread. The author of the pamphlet made this comparison and expressed the monetary wage paid to rural workers that we have cited in bread (rye) according to average local prices. It turned out that the wage, expressed in bread, declined from 0.93 pud in 1902–1904 to 0.85 pud in 1905 and 0.91 pud in 1906.

In other words: for his daily wage the rural worker of Russia could buy 0.93 pud of rye in 1902–1904 and only 0.91 pud in 1906. Of course, had there been no impetus in the fifth and sixth years, the decline in real wages would have been even stronger.

In individual years wages fluctuate considerably depending on harvests and other causes: for example, from 1905 to 1907 wages rose, although extremely unevenly, then in 1908 (the year of the strongest reaction) wages declined, only to rise again somewhat in 1909 and 1910.

In view of wage fluctuations from year to year, one should compare not individual years but decades. Having made such a comparison, Mr. Drozdov determines the average wage of a rural worker in European Russia for the decade 1891–1900 at 55.08 kopecks, and for the subsequent decade (1901–1910) at 69.18 kopecks. The increase amounts to 25.5 percent.

This means that three million rural workers of Russia (a figure that is undoubtedly considerably understated) succeeded in obtaining an increase in wages, reckoning at least two hundred working days per year, totaling approximately 80 million rubles per year.

True, during this same period prices on consumer goods rose on average by 20.5 percent. This means that the actual increase in wages, or the increase in real wages, was very slight. Expressing the daily monetary wage in bread, the author obtains an increase over the revolutionary decade compared to the pre-revolutionary decade of only 3.9 percent. Consequently, all the efforts of the workers made it possible merely to maintain wages at their former level and to raise them only very slightly.

On the other hand, a comparison, over these same two decades, of changes in the wages of workers and in land prices shows a gigantic increase in the incomes of the lords—the landowners. The purchase of land is the purchase of the income which the land yields, the purchase of rent; the price of land is therefore capitalized rent. And so we see that the average price of one desyatina rose, over the two decades indicated above, from 69.1 rubles to 132.4 rubles, that is, almost twofold!

An increase in the wages of millions of hired workers by one quarter. An increase in the incomes of landowners by twofold. The rise in the wages of hired workers barely keeps pace with the rise in prices on consumer goods. But the landowners increase their incomes five times more than prices on products rise. Landowners and well-to-do farmers from among the peasants grow richer and richer.

One must bear in mind that the increase in the productivity of land and the increase in prices for agricultural products steadily and inevitably increase the depth of the class abyss between the rural bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat, between the proprietor (even though a "laboring" one) and the hired worker. Therefore, he who says to the "laboring" peasant: your small holding will not save you from destitution and want under capitalism, your salvation lies only in joining the hired workers, speaks the truth. And he who, like our "Narodniks," undertakes to defend the interests of "laboring" husbandry, declares small-scale farming viable under capitalism, supports the bourgeois aspirations, the bourgeois "soul" of the small proprietor, and not the proletarian one, speaks as a bourgeois.

*Put' Pravdy* no. 49, March 29, 1914. Signed: V. I.

Printed from the text of the newspaper *Put' Pravdy*