The movement of population away from the rural districts, which is an economic law in capitalistic countries, plays a very conspicuous part in modern Russian economy.

Colonization of the border districts and periodical migration in quest of work, are tending to absorb the natural increase of the peasant population:

There is thus but a minor fraction of the surplus population that has forever left the native village with the chance of settling somewhere else as farmers.[86] It is still to agriculture that most of the wandering peasantry are looking, not as farmers, however, but as wage laborers, while a vast minority flock to the cities.[87]

As to this class of the peasantry, it is commonly regarded by the Russian press as standing on the lowest round of the ladder of village life. It does not seem generally to occur to the public mind that a regular movement of the working population, like the movement of mercury in the barometrical tube, has to select the line of least resistance. Indeed, it is distinctly shown by comparison that the wages are higher outside than within the village.

Difference of wages stimulates the movement, which when once started in a village, goes on at an ever increasing rate.[88]

This rural surplus population, nominally counted as peasant proprietors, is in reality even now severing the bond that has hitherto linked it to its birthplace. Those who year after year spend the summers as farm-laborers in the South or in the East have already said farewell to farming.[89] The case of artisans who leave the village for the summer season is similar. A peasant who has given up his farming for the sake of working outside has very little to gain by returning for the winter, when the supply of labor in the village far exceeds the demand. After a time some of them move their families to the place in which they have found employment, and part with the old homestead forever.

Those who are employed in factories, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, in coal mines and in railroad service, may have started by spending only their winter leisure in town. But imagine the position of the peasant who manages to put aside, out of his four rubles a week, from 50 to 70 rubles a year to send home.[90] To such a man the attraction of a large capitalistic concern running winter and summer, is one that will hold him captive for years.

How far this estrangement of the peasant from his native village has gone, can be learned from the following figures:[91]

The ownership of a home holds the peasant fast to his village even after he has already abandoned farming.[92] The peasant however, who is year by year employed far away from home, has settled, through the sale of his house, his account with the old village.[93]

We have here consequently an indication of the recent growth of Russia’s town proletariat.