Walter Nordhoff

“ I could only wonder at the temerity of a government which dares to educate a people before whom, from their childhood, lies nothing but the prospect of drudgery so constant and so stupefying. The farmers, to economize time, generally do their threshing at night, rising for this purpose at twelve or one o'clock, and working at it until it is time for their regular day's labor to begin. ”

“ Land belonging to the commune as commons can not be sold unless special authority has first been given by the state. The highest value I heard set on any land in E—— was three hundred dollars an acre for a garden-spot in the village itself. Land near E—— is not worth so much as near some of the towns around it, because it has never been verkoppelt or "married," as the process is called, by means of which a peasant obtains one compact farm in exchange for a dozen or more widely scattered, small fields. ”

“ I ought to have explained before, that the village, besides being a collection of people assembled together for protection and to afford church and school facilities, is also a commune in the sense that it is a closed corporation without the power of self-extension or contraction. The village can and does own property, and hires men to do village work, as, for instance, to take care of the cattle owned by members of the corporation. This system of land tenure is said to have originated in the following way: In the earliest times a single family held all the land around it in common. ”

“ Owing to the small land-holdings there is in E—— no distinct class of what we in this country call farm-help; but, when a man has not money enough to hire land in the ordinary way, he goes to a farmer and asks for six or eight acres of land, agreeing to pay so much rent, and giving no deposit, but binding himself to work for the farmer at rates much below those usually paid day laborers—twenty-five cents a day or thirty-five cents for cutting an acre of grain being the prices paid to such boundmen. ”

“ Electors have no rights except that of voting for village officers, while village corporators possess many valuable privileges, a list of which I have given above. Communal servants consist of a shepherd, a cowherd, who also looks after the swine, and a gooseherd, who, in addition, is town-crier, and runs on errands for the Bauermeister. All these men are elected yearly at a meeting of the corporators. ”

“ Now, when this couple die, each one of their children receives its share, not of the whole, but of each field owned by the parents. Suppose this process to go on for a century, and it will be readily understood that a peasant may own thirty or forty fields, each containing but a small fraction of an acre, and no two of which lie together. To remedy the evils of this system, Verkoppelung commissions were created for each province by the state, which also undertook the draining, irrigation, and laying out of roads through the land on which they worked. ”

“ The forest-land belonging to E—— is divided into forty parts, one of which may be cleared each year. On account of the large amount of extra labor caused by the keeping up of nurseries, but few villages plant the land cleared by them each year, most of them allowing the natural growth to spring up on the cut portions. Although the natural growth of wood on which E—— depends for its supply does away with the need for a large nursery, the corporators are yet compelled to keep up a small one, in order to plant high, wind-swept ridges where no seed has lodged. ”

“ Incomes of less than one hundred and ten dollars are exempt from taxation. Ministers and teachers pay state but not village taxes. The pastor of E—— paid a tax of nine dollars on his income of four hundred and fifty dollars, and a land-tax of twenty-four dollars on two hundred acres of land. Communal taxes vary greatly in rate according to the wealth of the commune. Some communes, which own valuable mines or forests, not only exact no tax from their citizens, but divide annually a surplus among the corporators. ”

“ When any one wishes to build a house in E——, he sends word to the village court, describing the kind of house and where it is to be constructed. Notices are then posted in the village, and, if no one sends written objections to the court before the expiration of fifteen days, the building is allowed, and can not be interfered with. It will be seen that the population of E—— consists of two classes: the few more fortunate, who possess village rights, and draw from these an income which considerably increases their comfort ”

“ When a person has land to let, he sends notice to the town crier, who then parades the streets, beating a drum and stopping at each corner to announce that such a person has so much land which will be rented on such a day. On the day mentioned, all those interested meet in the public square, and a lawyer, or the village magistrate, states to the assembly the quantity and location, and the general terms on which it will be rented. ”

“ I asked why the poor-house was not repaired, and was told that the peasants had purposely built it poorly, fearing that if it were comfortable it might encourage pauperism in the village. The poor are supplied with clothes either from the church or village treasury according to circumstances. A residence of two years in a village compels its inhabitants at the expiration of that time to support the applicant, nor can he be forced to do any work in return for his living. ”

“ A case of this sort is rare, but it is not uncommon to have most of the communal taxes paid by the sale of wood from commune forests.
Almshouse accommodations are so poor and the food and treatment so bad that but few of the inhabitants of E—— feel pauperism to be their vocation. Only one villager receives food and shelter from the village, and a second food alone. Their provisions are obtained by going from house to house in the village, each house being bound by law to provide food for the paupers so many days each year. ”

“ Teachers are not considered socially equal to nor do they associate with ministers. With the teacher ends the list of village officers, and next come those communal servants for whom we in this country have no equivalent. In what follows, the distinction between village electors and commune citizens or corporators must be borne in mind. Those that I have called electors comprise all males over thirty who live in E——, while there are only sixty-six citizens of the commune. ”

“ Each right gives its possessor the privilege of grazing a certain number of sheep, cattle, geese, and swine on the public pasture; of mowing a certain amount of meadow-land, and of getting stone and clay for building from the village pits, besides a considerable amount of wood each year from the communal forest. Village rights have thus a considerable value, and are sold at prices ranging from two hundred and twenty-five to three hundred dollars each. ”

“ Any landholder in a village may, by merely notifying the district magistrate, call a meeting of the farmers to consider whether the land of the village shall be verkoppelt, but, if less than half the landowners respond to the call, or if a majority are against the measure, the caller of the meeting has to pay its legal expenses. If half the landowners respond, and the question is favorably decided, notice is at once sent by the magistrate to the general Verkoppelung commission. ”

“ Twenty acres is the least amount of land that a peasant, who lives on the produce of his farm alone, can cultivate profitably in this region, and the living thus obtained is so miserable that those who own so little generally eke out their subsistence by renting land from richer farmers. Sixty acres of the land around E—— have been set apart, by old usage, as common, on which those of the villagers who own "village rights" graze their animals, and from which they get clay and stone for building and a certain amount of hay for winter use. ”

“ Whenever there is pasture-land among that belonging to the village, each farmer receives, after the Verkoppelung, a certain amount of it; in which case his farm lies in two parts. The average cost per acre of the whole process is about five dollars, and this is assessed on each peasant according to the value of the land he receives. In case any farmer can not pay his share of the expenses, his land is sold, just as it would be for unpaid taxes. ”

“ Grains of different sorts and leguminous plants are the main crops grown around E——, to which each farmer adds whatever he needs for his own use. In most cases, also, they do a little market-gardening for the neighboring city market. According to the method by which all the land belonging to the community of E—— is cultivated, the whole arable soil of the village is divided without regard to private ownership into three parts, called Winter, Sommer, and Brachfeld, or fallow. ”

“ For their labor the herders receive very little ready money, most of their salary being paid in agricultural products. Each of the herders receives a house and a quarter of an acre of land from the commune. In addition, the shepherd has the privilege of pasturing fifty sheep of his own, and receives seven dollars and a half a year from the commune and about fifty dollars yearly in grain from the citizens. ”

“ The amount of ready money thus required is so great that farmers can seldom afford to rent more than a few acres of land. Owing in part to the excessively high rent paid for land, and in part to this deposit, farmers can make little more than their living expenses from rented land. In fact, even those who own their land are glad to get through the year without having to run in debt or to deny themselves some of the necessaries of life. ”

“ Each full corporator may send out daily with these herders four cows, six sheep without lambs, four pigs without shoats, and twelve geese. The animals are collected every morning at stated hours by the herders, who go through the streets playing peculiar airs on their horns, at the sound of which those corporators who wish to send their animals out turn them into the street to be collected. In the evening the animals are brought back from the pasture by their herders, and turned loose in the village to find their own way home. ”

“ Village ministers are appointed by the church consistory, and hold their places for life, unless they break some church rule or preach false doctrine. They are always university men, and are generally well-read, but their views are apt to be narrow—Darwin being looked upon as an arch-fiend, and science, in so far as it does not agree with literal translations of the Bible, as "science falsely so called." ”

“ Teachers earn from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and twenty-five dollars a year. In E—— the teacher received eighty-seven cents a year from each of his one hundred pupils, fifteen dollars a year from the church for his services as sexton, besides fifty cents for each adult's and twenty-five cents for each child's grave dug by him. From the state he got eighty-two dollars, and from the village seven dollars and fifty cents a year, with six acres of good farming-land and a house. ”

“ These are then divided and cut like the rest, with the exceptions that the oaks are first stripped of their bark to be sold to tanners for the benefit of the commune, and that the teacher and minister get none of this large wood because, the peasants say that, when a parsonage or a schoolhouse must be built, it is done, not by the minister or teacher, but by the people. The oak-bark is often worth more than all the rest of the wood of a forest. ”

“ The pastor of E—— is supported by the rental of two hundred and eighty acres of land, belonging to the church, and his income is also slightly increased by marriage, burial, and other fees. Since the minister is the only cultivated man in the village, he has of course great influence over all village affairs, and acts as peacemaker in all disputes or quarrels. ”

“ Children do not work in the fields until about ten years of age, nor is much work done by them for five or six years later, as from six to fifteen or sixteen years of age they are compelled to attend school. In summer, from June 24th to September 29th, there is no afternoon session of the school, and the children then help in the harvest. The toil of a peasant being so constant, is also done slowly and poorly. ”

“ The commune or village of E—— has about six hundred inhabitants. It has no manufactures, and all its people, even its officials except the clergymen, live either partly or entirely upon the produce of the soil tilled by themselves. ”

“ House-servants are employed in E—— only by the minister. They are hired at Easter, or on the 16th of November, and one year is the usual length of the term for which they engage. Housemaids receive from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a year, and a present of twenty yards of linen and a pair of shoes; it is also customary to give them small money fees once or twice a year if they have done their work well. ”

“ The cow-herder makes about forty dollars a year, and the goose-herder receives a hundred loaves of bread from the citizens and twenty-two dollars in money from the commune, for which he must do all the town-crying and go daily for the orders of the Bauermeister. ”

“ Each male in E—— who has attained the age of thirty years, and who is not a pauper or criminal, has a single vote in the election of, those officers who are to govern his village. These officials are, first, a Bauermeister, having the combined powers of sheriff and town clerk ”

“ The church lands are two hundred and eighty acres, and there are also two hundred and ten acres owned by a noble family, non-resident. The tillable church-lands are let to factory and railroad laborers in small plots, and the women of these tenants form a part of the general laboring force in the harvest-season. ”