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the poverty of the land led to the occupation of
entirely isolated farms. This has occurred in large
districts of Scandinavia and Finland, at some distance
from the coast or on the hilly watersheds between the
rivers, where the bönder were obliged to settle down
each man by himself, a situation which has contributed
largely to their strong and independent character.
Certainly there is a great deal of poverty in Finland.
This is the case especially in remote districts far away
from civilisation, where the forests are as yet untouched
and valueless. It is also the case in the eastern parts,
including the south-east, where the peasants have been
unluckily bound to the large domains given away by
Russian rulers when these lands were taken from
Sweden at a period before modern reforms had begun
to take effect. The manner in which some of these
peasants live, in miserable houses, with a pig in the
same room as the family, is sometimes compared to
the style of living of the Russian peasants. But even
in this part of Finland the peasants cannot be
compared to the Russian “moujiks”; nowhere in Finland
is there anything like the class of poverty-stricken
moujiks which we find in large parts of the interior
of Russia. The Finns always live much better,
demand much more from life, and have not the habits
of the miserable Russian peasants, who spend most of
the winter asleep on their great ovens, so that they
may still further reduce their already small
consumption of food. Nor do we find in this eastern part of
Finland an unusual number of paupers in receipt of
relief, a fact which is partly due to the facilities for
earning money afforded by the neighbourhood of St.
Petersburg. A relatively large amount of pauperism
is found in the remote country districts, where the
peasant proprietors themselves in bad years live on
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