Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

In Switzerland the peasants in the open land also fell under the dominion of lords, and large parts of their estates were appropriated by the lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (cf. A. Miaskowski, in Schmoller’s Forschungen, Bd. ii, 1879, pp. 12 seq.) But the peasant war in Switzerland did not end in such a crushing defeat of the peasants as it did in other countries, and a great deal of the communal rights and lands was retained. The self-government of the communes is, in fact, the very foundation of the Swiss liberties. (cf. K. Burtli, Der Ursprung der Eidgenossenschaft aus der Markgenossenschaft, Zürich, 1891.) ↩

Miakowski in Schmoller’s Forschungen, Bd. ii, 1879, p. 15. ↩

See on this subject a series of works, summed up in one of the excellent and suggestive chapters (not yet translated into English) which K. Bücher has added to the German translation of Laveleye’s Primitive Ownership. Also Meitzen, “Das Agrar- und Forst-Wesen, die Allmenden und die Landgemeinden der Deutschen Schweiz,” in Jahrbuch für Staatswissenschaft, 1880, iv, (analysis of Miaskowsky’s works); O’Brien, “Notes in a Swiss village,” in Macmillan’s Magazine, October 1885. ↩

The wedding gifts, which often substantially contribute in this country to the comfort of the young households, are evidently a remainder of the communal habits. ↩

The communes own, 4,554,100 acres of woods out of 24,813,000 in the whole territory, and 6,936,300 acres of natural meadows out of 11,394,000 acres in France. The remaining 2,000,000 acres are fields, orchards, and so on. ↩

In Caucasia they even do better among the Georgians. As the meal costs, and a poor man cannot afford to give it, a sheep is bought by those same neighbours who come to aid in the work. ↩

Alfred Baudrillart, in H. Baudrillart’s Les Populations Rurales de la France, 3rd series (Paris, 1893), p. 479. ↩

The Journal des Économistes (August 1892, May and August 1893) has lately given some of the results of analyses made at the agricultural laboratories at Ghent and at Paris. The extent of falsification is simply incredible; so also the devices of the “honest traders.” In certain seeds of grass there was 32 percent of gains of sand, coloured so as to deceive even an experienced eye; other samples contained from 52 to 22 percent only of pure seed, the remainder being weeds. Seeds of vetch contained 11 percent of a poisonous grass (nielle); a flour for cattle-fattening contained 36 percent of sulphates; and so on ad infinitum. ↩

A. Baudrillart, Les Populations Rurales de la France, 3rd series (Paris, 1893), p. 309. Originally one grower would undertake to supply water, and several others would agee to make use of it. “What especially characterises such associations,” A. Baudrillart remarks, “is that no sort of written agreement is concluded. All is arranged in words. There was, however, not one single case of difficulties having arisen between the parties.” ↩

A. Baudrillart, Les Populations Rurales de la France, 3rd series (Paris, 1893), pp. 300, 341, etc. M. Terssac, president of the St. Gironnais syndicate (Ariège), wrote to my friend in substance as follows:⁠—“For the exhibition of Toulouse our association has grouped the owners of cattle which seemed to us worth exhibiting. The society undertook to pay one-half of the travelling and exhibition expenses; one-fourth was paid by each owner, and the remaining fourth by those exhibitors who had got prizes. The result was that many took part in the exhibition who never would have done it otherwise. Those who got the highest awards (350 francs) have contributed 10 percent of their prizes, while those who have got no prize have only spent 6 to 7 francs each.” ↩

In Württemberg 1,629 communes out of 1,910 have communal property. They owned in 1863 over 1,000,000 acres of land. In Baden 1,256 communes out of 1,582 have communal land; in 1884⁠–⁠1888 they held 121,500 acres of fields in communal culture, and 675,000 acres of forests, i.e. 46 percent of the total area under woods. In Saxony 39 percent of the total area is in communal ownership (Schmoller’s Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 359). In Hohenzollern nearly two-thirds of all meadow land, and in Hohenzollern-Hechingen 41 percent of all landed property, are owned by the village communities (Buchenberger, Agrarwesen, vol. i, p. 300). ↩

See K. Bücher, who, in a special chapter added to Laveleye’s Ureigenthum, has collected all information relative to the village community in Germany. ↩

K. Bücher, ibid. pp. 89, 90. ↩

For this legislation and the numerous obstacles which were put in the way, in the shape of red-tapeism and supervision, see Buchenberger’s Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, Bd. ii, pp. 342⁠–⁠363, and p. 506, note. ↩

Buchenberger, Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, Bd. ii, p. 510. The General Union of Agricultural Cooperation comprises an aggregate of 1,679 societies. In Silesia an aggregate of 32,000 acres of land has been lately drained by 73 associations; 454,800 acres in Prussia by 516 associations; in Bavaria there are 1,715 drainage and irrigation unions. ↩

See Appendix XII. ↩

For the Balkan peninsula see Laveleye’s Propriété Primitive. ↩

The facts concerning the village community, contained in nearly a hundred volumes (out of 450) of these inquests, have been classified and summed up in an excellent Russian work by “V. V.” The