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- II. The Agricultural Classes
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CHAPTER II
THE AGRICULTURAL CLASSES
In all northern countries the “bönder,” or
peasant-proprietors, form the most important class. They are
inferior in most respects to the tenant-farmers of
England and to the landowners of the United States;
but they are superior to the small peasants of Southern
and Eastern countries. This is partly due to the fact
that in the North, as well as in the mountainous
districts of Central Europe, it is impossible to make a
living by agriculture on a very small scale, whereas
with the grapes and fruit-trees of the sunny South it
requires little labour to make money out of a very
small piece of land. This superiority is, however, also
largely due to the social history and the peculiar
development of the people, which accounts, too, for the
fact that in North-Western Europe we have this
middle-class of peasant-proprietors. In Russia, on the
contrary, we find only the “moujik”; while in
Germany, east of the Elbe, as well as throughout the
Russian Baltic provinces, where the Germans have
conquered Slav lands, we find large estates, generally
occupying from a third to half of the land of the
district; and in some parts of the country (in Mecklenburg,
on the island of Rügen, and in parts of Pomerania
and North-Eastern Holstein) occupying nearly the
whole. Without doubt this middle-class is a great
source of strength; it has, for instance, enabled
northern nations to colonise in a manner entirely
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