Leo Tolstoy

“ The condition of physical idleness is misery for the muzhik. If there is not work enough for all the members of the muzhik's family, if he him- self and his people are eating, but not working, he considers that he has reached absolute poverty, just as if from a shrunken keg the wine leaks, and generally by all possible means he seeks and always finds some way of warding off this poverty he finds work. In a muzhik's family all the members work from childhood to old age, and support themselves by work. A lad of twelve already earns something as a shepherd-boy or in the care of horses ”

“ If it is granted that the distribution will be promoted in such a way as not to enfeeble the self-reliance of the people, then there is no possibility of regularly determining the assistance, and those that do not need will grasp the share of those that do need, so that the majority of them will still remain without help and will perish. The activity, however, which has the internal aim for the soul, and always united with sacrifice, avoids these obstacles, and attains enormous results not allowed by the other form of activity. ”

“ The main thing is that the more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase. ”

“ To think that the peasant household receives only what it gets from the allotted land, and spends only on what it eats, is a great mistake. In the majority of cases what is got from the allotted land constitutes only a small part of what it receives. The peasant's chief wealth is what he and his household earn by working
whether they earn it on hired land, or by laboring for some proprietor, or by living out at service, or by various vocations. Why, the muzhik and his family all are working always. ”

“ The shkalik lasts a peasant's establishment about a week, so that his fuel for the winter, if he has to buy it, will stand him about twenty-five rubles.
The poverty is beyond question : the bread is unwholesome mixed with lebeda-weed, and they have no fuel. But if you look at the people and judge from externals, their faces look healthy, cheerful, and contented. All are at work ; no one is at home. One is threshing, another teaming. The proprietors complain because they cannot get people to work for them. When I was there, the digging of potatoes and threshing was going on. ”

“ And it is a fact, which all the old inhabitants of Samara can substantiate, that the majority of the emigrants who were assisted as they came along the main traveled roads went to ruin and poverty, while the majority of the deserters reached their journey's end, and settled down successfully, and became rich. But how about landless peasants, household servants, soldiers' children ? All have been supported, and are supported, even in years when bread was higher than it is now. They say there is no work. But here are others who keep saying that they have work to offer, but there are no workmen. ”

“ Love cannot be defined in a word, but is always expressed in deeds. The deeds of love in relation to the starving consists in shar- ing one's morsel with them.
And therefore I think that the best thing that can be done now for the help of the destitute consists in settling in the midst of the starving, and living with them.
I do not say that every one who wishes to help the starving must immediately go and settle in an unwarmed izba, feed on bread made with lebeda-weed, and die within two months or two weeks, or that every one who does not do this does not do anything helpful. ”

“ I imagine to myself such a person man or woman or a family with moderate means, let us say with a thousand rubles a year coming in this way to a locality where the crops had failed. This person or family hires or buys from some proprietor of his acquaintance a habitation, or selects and hires an izba, settles down in it according to his circumstances and demands, with the intention of bearing the inconveniences of life, lays in fuel, provisions, provides himself with horses, fodder, and the like. ”

“ External activity, setting for its object the feeding and maintaining the prosperity of forty millions of men, as we have seen, meets in its way certain obstacles with difficulty overcome :
To determine the degree of the actual need for the population, able to manifest in this supporting of themselves the greatest energy and absolute apathy, is out of the bounds of possibility. If it is granted that this determination is possible, then the amount of the money required and of the grain is so great that there is no likelihood of obtaining them. ”

“ The main thing is that no one appoints me superintendent of the task of feeding forty millions of the people living in such extremes, and I evidently cannot attain the external aim of feeding all these people and safeguard- ing them from misfortunes ; but am appointed over my own soul in order to lead my life as near as possible to what my conscience inculcates, and I can do only one thing as long as I live, I can employ my powers for the service of my brethren, considering as my brethren all without exception. ”

“ Now, if you feed every average muzhik, not in a famine year, but in an ordinary year, when as in our localities, in these very localities where there is famine, often the grain from the allotted land will not last till Christmas, you will see that in ordinary years, according to the returns of the harvest, he will have nothing to live upon, and the deficit will be such that he will infallibly have to kill his cattle and have only one meal a day himself. ”

“ The cook regrets that the bread is mostly gone. She must either refuse them their crusts, or bake new loaves. An extra supply of bread is baked ; more people begin to come. From families where the bread is gone and there is nothing to eat, they come asking for help ; here again they must give. Their own cook proves not to be able to do the work. And the oven is small. They have to hire an izba for baking, and hire a special cook. This costs money. They have no money. But the family settling there have friends or acquaintances who know that they have settled in a destitute locality. ”

“ If we give to all as the peasants everywhere demand, claiming, with reason, that they must be answered by a reciprocal bond, then it is necessary at least to give to all in equal shares, so that there may be something to answer for. If we give to all in equal shares and enough so as to furnish all the destitute with sustenance, of course it would require not far from a milliard of rubles, a sum which evidently it is impossible to find. If it was distributed to all, a little at a time, then for the rich it would be an unnecessary addition, and for the poor not enough to save them from ruin. ”

“ For a miserable workman there is never any work, but for a good workman there is always work. It is true this year there is less work than usual, and there- fore more poor workmen remain without work ; but still, whether a man has work or not depends, not on any external causes, but on the workman's energy on whether he seeks work wisely, is eager for work, and works well. ”

“ Here in the country, where there is no grain till next November, and where, through laziness, errors of judgment, or what not, the muzhiks declare there is no work and they are not working; within a week's time unquestionably actual starvation confronts the women, the aged, and the young, and possibly the laziest and most mistaken, but actually living people. ”

“ I say all this, not for the purpose of proving that we ought not to help miserable workmen and their families,
on the contrary, they need help most of all, but only to show how impossible it is to reckon the budget of a peasant's home, the income of which may be stretched from three to thirty and more rubles a month, according to the peasant's energy in seeking and satisfying emplo ment, while the outgo may be curtailed to two pounds of meal a day with bran for each person, and wasted in a luxury capable of ruining the richest muzhik in a year's time. ”

“ And, wonderful to relate, a man has only to turn from the task of solving these external problems, and put to himself the only true internal question peculiar to man how best to live during this year of painful experience and all these questions receive their very wisest solution. ”

“ In the first place, for the ox and all kinds of cattle, the minimum and maximum of indispensable food are not very far separate from each other. Having eaten their necessary amount of feed, cattle cease to eat, and that is all that is required for them ; but if they do not have all they need, they soon sicken and die. ”

“ Why, the fact that the people of this Yef removsky village can- not live through the winter unless they undertake some- thing, is as palpable as that a hive of bees without honey, left for the winter, will die before spring. ”

“ However well concealed may seem to us the cup of wine from before the working-people, however clever, long-established, and universally accepted the arguments whereby we justify our luxurious life amid the working- people, tormented with labor, and half fed, and servants to this luxury of ours, the world will more and more penetrate our relationship to the people, and we shall speedily appear in that disgraceful and dangerous posi- tion in which the criminal finds himself when the morn- ing light, unexpectedly to him, overtakes him on the scene of his crime. ”

“ It is impossible to strive for power, for the necessity of ruling over the people, for science, for art, supposed to be indispensable for the people, for the sacred rights of personal property, for the necessity of upholding tradition, and the like. ”

“ All the columns in which the possessions of the peasants are entered give no answer, and can give no answer, to these questions.
Many represent to themselves the task of feeding the starving people exactly as they will represent to them- selves the same task of feeding a given number of cattle. For so many oxen they need for two hundred winter days so many puds of hay, straw, malt, grain. They get ready this amount of feed, furnish it for the herd of cattle, and have the assurance that the creatures will weather the winter. With human beings the calcula- tion is entirely different. ”

“ The essence of the matter is such that it cannot be done. To distribute gratuitous help among the needy only is impossible because there are no external marks whereby one could determine the needy, and the distribution of gratuities itself elicits the most evil passions, so that even those signs which were, are annihilated. ”

“ In almost all families bread adulterated with lebeda- weed was used. The lebeda here failed to ripen, it was green. Of that white substance which is generally found in it, there was not a trace, and therefore it is not fit to eat. Bread of lebeda-weed it is impossible to eat alone. If it is eaten on an empty stomach it causes vomiting. People grow crazy from the kvas made from flour mixed with lebeda-weed.
Here there are poverty-stricken dvors which, having been greatly reduced in previous years, have eaten up everything. ”

“ This form more than all calls forth the direct activity of the helper, more than all unites him to the population, less than anything else brings about abuses, and gives the opportunity with the smallest means of feeding the greatest number of people. ”

“ Neither does the second obstacle exist the enormous multitude of the needy. The needy always have been and still are. The question is merely how much of my own resources I can give to them. The mistress of a house giving alms does not need to reckon how many millions are starving in Russia, or what is the price of wheat in America, how much at our ports and at our grain elevator, and how much may be taken under war- rant. ”

“ In the second place, the ox in the stall cannot earn its own feed; while a man does earn his food, and that man whom we are proposing to feed is the chief earner of food, the very one who in the most difficult conditions earns what we are preparing to feed him with. ”

“ All muzhiks, even those that are not at all destitute, know- ing that there is going to be a gratuitous distribution, try to seem destitute, and even make themselves so, in order to get help without working for it. All are aware that to gain by means of labor is good and praise- worthy without labor is bad and shameful. ”

“ Then besides, there are extraordinary cases : a lad leads the blind, a girl gets a place as a nurse with some rich muzhik, a boy is taken to learn a trade, the mu- zhik presses bricks or makes seed baskets, the woman practises as a midwife or as a doctor, a blind brother begs, one who has got learning reads the psalter for the dead, the old man rubs tobacco, some widow sells vodka. Moreover a peasant's son may get a place as a coachman, a conductor, an uryadnik, or village police- man ”