THREE VILLAGES IN THE HARD
OF BADEN 67
Hecht
1. 4-14 kilometres from Karlsruhe.
workers
2,957
Hagsfeld
1,273 inhabitants

Blankenloch
1,684
”

Friedrichsthal
1,140
”

Total=4,097
3. Lumbering in winter.
7. Density of population
Hags- (Friedrichs-)
(Blankenfeld thal)
loch)
per hectare
3.2
4.5
2.8
Baden
1.04
Germany
0.68
Total land
Friedrichsthal
258 hectares
Hagsfeld

”
Blankenloch

”
Total=1,391
PMQ
!


Distribution
Friedrichs-
Hags-
Blan- of land:
thal feld kenloch hectares
—
—

p. 7: Farm
6-8
”
—

—
consists

”
—


of 5-7 per-

”
—


sons.

”
43%
?
55% under 2
”
the rest landless — 8


Freedom of division
8. Additional lease of 2-1 hectare.
9. Heavy exodus (to America) in the 1830s and 1850s
10. Today the formation of a middle estate
(in place of the former poor)
11. Extensive and subsistence farming—18th century.
to the towns
Poverty of the population, emigration and to America
12. Hagsfeld—into an industrial township
Blankenloch and Friedrichsthal—specialisation of agriculture, money economy. The farmer has become
merchant and entrepreneur.
15. In Hagsfeld, farming is a side line.
15-16. —Only nine families are engaged in farming alone.
—The Hagsfeld peasant has become a factory worker.
The wives farm: they even have their linen washed in town.
16-17. The price of land Hagsfeld
4.2-4.4 thousand marks cf. Baden
Blankenloch
4.8-5
 thousand marks Friedrichsthal
9 -10
17. Only specialisation gives an effectively high income.
Potatoes for the aristocratic board.
Seed potatoes.”
17. “Virtuosity” in developing potato grades
PNMNQ

V. I. LENIN

18. Potatoes 120 double centners 9 4 = 480 marks per
hectare
Carrots
1,300
Tobacco (takes a lot of hands)
18. Child labour in planting (stecken!) potatoes
(19) 220-230 planters of tobacco (a total of about 100 hectares)
20. Friedrichsthal income from tobacco = 147,473 marks
a year
23. Friedrichsthal leases meadows and buys hay
24. The growth of dairy farming.
24. Everyone sells 2-3 litres of milk, rich families—
10-20 litres
In Hagsfeld milk is sold, and butter (partly mar- garine) bought instead
25. Creamery in Friedrichsthal, “speculative mode of
business”, its precarious dependence on the cattledealers
26. Friedrichsthal—17,200 marks a year from the sale
of pigs.
27. Growth in the number of goats in Hagsfeld:
disintegration of the peasant estate.
28-29. Backwardness of Blankenloch with its more natural economy.
29-30. Reason: much land.
!!
{The community facilitates the struggle for existence
30. Although the disintegration of the community
pays from the standpoint of production, it is socially wasteful—maintenance of workers
(especially with Blankenloch’s tran-
N.B.
sition from agriculture to industry).
30. The people of Friedrichsthal carry manure from
Karlsruhe (20-30 cartloads).
31. There is no day-labourer category: most peasants
do without labourers few “request” help payment increases where town is near


32-33. Complete collapse of handicrafts.
35. The majority in Hagsfeld are factory workers
(300-350), most of them walking the 32 kilometres (only 100 ride)
Hagsfeld factory workers
Blankenloch

Friedrichsthal
10-12
35. Factory working day = 10 hours
36. Factory working women sometimes take work
home
38. Celebration of the fact that the Hagsfeld worker
has a patch of land: “more important sense” of property
Utilisation of spare time
4 a.m.—at 7 a.m. to the factory after 7 p.m.—1-12 more
39. The worker has better nutrition, relaxes from factory work. The women stay at home—better from
the moral standpoint.
40. Hecht is clearly making fun of the socialists
“capitalists”, “serfdom”.
40. House owners socially higher
41. Social “poetry of own house”.
58-59. The growth of Karlsruhe, market, etc.
6 . It is a sad fact that in the sale of tobacco the well-
to-do farmers sometimes cheat the poor.
63. In
Blankenloch and
Hagsfeld grain is sold in autumn and bought in spring.
65. The purchase of manure and liquid manure.
78. The richer families (3-4 hectares) have meat 5-6 times
a week the poorer—3-4 times a handful—only on Sundays.
79. The Hagsfeld worker—wife takes dinner to town
(150 out of 300 get their dinner from home, 150 have theirs in eating-houses)...

Poor women ... carry dinner to the factory....
79-80. Cookery courses are read annually at Blankenloch
and Friedrichsthal (on the initiative of her royal
PMQ
$
!!
!!
!!

V. I. LENIN

highness the grand duchess) ... an undertaking
!
equal in importance perhaps to the founding of
80 ! a consumers’ co-operative or a savings bank.
!
(That’s Dr. Hecht, that’s him all over!)
90. The Hagsfeld man... is no longer a peasant, he
is a townsman.
91. Strict religious convictions—Social-Democrats are
ignored, except possibly by factory men, but only the 20-30-year olds.
92-93. There is no “social gulf” between the rich and the
!
poor. The “master” peasant (with 3-4 hectares) is on thee-and-thou terms with the labouring man and woman, ana calls them by their first names.—
!
They “sir” him, but eat at the same table: “patriarchal relations”.
Consequently, in “the three villages”
On the one hand, rich petty bourgeois, tobacco-planters, dairy farmers, etc. (virtuosi raising special grades of
potatoes, etc.).
Example of paying nature of tobacco-growing.
Wage labour in general. (Master and labourer)
Swindling of the small by the big.
The rich sell 10-20 litres of milk
The poor 2-3 litres
”
eat meat 5-6 times a week
”
3-4 and a very few on Sundays only.
Ontheotherhand . About one-half the total population are factory workers (4,000 inhabitants—about
1,000 working, of whom 464 are factory workers). Of the
factory workers, the greater part walk. Poor women carry
dinners to the factory.
Under-consumption (margarine)
Overwork (working at home for the manufacturers; work morning and night)
Growth in the number of goats.
Sale of grain in autumn and purchase in spring.
“Fiercely industrious” (and example)


Factory
Number of hectares workers families roughly
1 — = 9

Hagsfeld
1,273 ÷ 6= 212
6 with 7 = 42 roughly

Blankenloch
1,684 ÷ 6= 281
5 with 5 = 25 roughly

Friedrichsthal
1,140 ÷ 6= 190
10 with 4 = 40 roughly


4,097 ÷ 6= 683
2= 341
29 —

e= 273
464 factory workers
Hagsfeld

9 (without side line)
203 — 350 factory workers about 200 — 350 about
200 —


4609200 =263 families of workers in all 3 villages*&29 land- less = 292
A total of about 700 families of whom factory workers—about 300
I
25 — 30%
II
25 — 30%
III
50 — 40%


For fertilisers hectares marks perhectare
Friedrichsthal . .

28,000

28,000÷258=108
Hagsfeld
. . . .

12,000

Blankenloch . . .

8,000

* The words “of workers in all 3 villages” have been inserted according
to the meaning.—Ed.
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V. I. LENIN

Distribution of crop area in %
Inha-
Total
Cat-
Pota-
To- bitland tle toes bacco
Grain
Pigs
Goats Horses ants ha
1,140
Fried-


30%
45%
18%

—

richsthal about (51.48*) ha)
100 ha p. 19
1,684
Blanken-


17%
10.4%
47%


loch (40 ha?)
about
236 ha
1,273
Hagsfeld


42%
0.6%
—


4,097
Crop yields are much higher in Friedrichsthal (p. 29
Hecht).
To sum up:
4 rich and well-to-do only the Friedrichsthal people peasants
are well-to-do—and they are about 4
4 middle ones (those of Blankenloch—more backward economy, etc.)
2 factory workers with patches (p.t.o. for rough calculation)
Fami-
Cattle in terms lies
Cost of land of horned rough-
1 bull=1 horse l y ha
’000
’000
=4 pigs= marks marks
10 goats
Friedrichsthal . . . . . .

258 9 9.5=2,451

Blankenloch. . . . . . .

736 9 4.9=3,606

Hagsfeld . . . . . . . .

397 9 4.3= 1,707


7,764
1,765
Friedrichsthal:
100 ha of tobacco
45%
258.0÷1.8=143 69 about 50 ha of grain
18%
736.0 ÷2.5=294 about 65 ha of potatoes
30%

÷2 =196 (q of tobacco)
93%
143&294&196=633 families
*) 143 Morgen=51.48 ha. (Hecht, 28) 2589=46.44 ha68 hence 678 Morgen=consequently 236.6 ha.


“The little man” (in Friedrichsthal) obtains 30 kilogrammes of tobacco from 4 Morgen (9 ares)—“the rich one”
(with 3-32 hectares)—only 25 kilogrammes. The poor one is more diligent (p. 71).
Twenty-four years ago one had 110 ares. Now he has
32 hectares—made additional purchases. And all that due only to being “fiercely industrious” (71). “There are
many more such examples.”
Then there is also the “sober marriage policy”.
The well-known peasant saying: “We work not so much for our mouth as for our pockets” (71).
Hagsfeld—the cause of progress is not only the entry into
market relations, not only the free division of land, but
also education in the spirit of a higher morality, endeavour
and self-help (71).
The virtues: diligence, thrift, temperance, which now mark the Hard peasant, are not innate but acquired (72).
And Hecht extols education by state, church, and school:
in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread! Why does one
get 4 centners of tobacco from 9 ares, and the other, 1?
Why does one raise tobacco and the other rye? Lasiness.
Why do neighbours (say, in the Bruchsal district) live worse, despite similar market conditions?—In our opinion
the major cause of the better economic condition of our
3 villages is the more pronounced existence and development
of moral factors. But the education of the Hard peasant
is revealed not only in his greater industry, hardiness, the
truly remarkable thrift and temperance (73)—but also in self-help.
pota-
Car-
Tobacco cereals
Sale:
toes rots annuannu-
Milk
Pigs
Tobacco annually ally ally
Fried-

17,200
147,473 richslitres marks marks thal a week a year a year
Blanken-
4,000
1,750
3,500

4,700
?(p. 26)
?
 loch double double double double centcent- centcent- ners
ners ners ners
Hagsfeld
1,400
?
?
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!

V. I. LENIN

(marks)
Purchase
Friedrichsthal
Blankenloch
Hagsfeld
Manure . . . . . . . . . .
25,000
5,000
&3,000
Liquid manure . . . . . . .
—
—
8,000
Artificial fertilisers . . . . .
3,000
3,000
1,000
Concentrated feed . . . . . .
40,000
Hay
. . . . . . . . . . .
10,000
20,000
10,000
Grain . . . . . . . . . . .
23,100
12,510
Sugar . . . . . . . . . . .
45-50 thousand marks
Coffee
. . . . . . . . . .
60,000 marks ha marks
100 tobacco
100 ha
147,473
?
65 potatoes
65 ha about 600 marks per ha about 36,000 (q of (p. 18 : 150 double centners
tobacco at 4 marks)
30% and 45%)
?
50 grain 50 ha at 26 double centners (p. 22) = 1,300 double
centners
p. 22 = 6%
?
15 beetroot about 15 ha
= 7 of 100 = 18,000 = about 18,000
230 at 1,200 (cf. p. 18)
= 45% milk 750 litres 8 50 = 37,500 at 15 pfennigs = about 5,625
(p. 64)
pigs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17,200
224,298
How big is the average gross income of a Friedrichsthal man? 1.8 ha.
224,000 marks is, of course, notall; taking the round figure of 258,000 marks, this gives 1,000 marks per hectare
and 1,800 marks for 1.8 hectares.
The peasant of the 18th century, with his eight to ten hectares of land, was a peasant and a manual labourer;
the dwarf peasant of the 19th century, with his one or two
hectares of land, is a brainworker, an entrepreneur, and
a merchant (p. 69).*
* See present edition, Vol. 5, p. 163.—Ed.
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Concluding words: The dwarf peasant and the factory worker have both raised themselves to the position of the
middle class.... “The three villages in the Hard of Baden”
now belong to one great, broad middle class (94).*
Amen!