Note 85 — Chapter VII · THE WAGES IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS.
Reading edition
Twelve communities were found by the statisticians in which a considerable part of the membership consisted of regular beggars. As an example may be quoted the village Bratovka, bailiwick Naryshkinskaya, Ranenburg: “A good many go a-begging even when crops are good; in years of failure over half the village takes to begging.” (Loc. cit., p. 283.) Professional beggary has been of late very comprehensively described by some of the observers of peasant life. Late in the fall the huts are nailed up, and caravans of peasants—man, wife and child—start on a journey “for crumbs.” We read in the Statistical Reports for the Gubernia of Tamboff:
“Everywhere the peasants report a great number of beggars; generally they are peasants from a strange district. It is only in a case of extreme necessity that a man able to work would force himself to ask alms in his own village. Usually, the needy families are supported through loans of bread from their neighbors, who divide with them their last provisions. The peasants of the district of Morshansk report, moreover, that they are haunted by a good many beggars from the district of Shatzk, as well as from the gubernias of Vladimir and Ryazañ.” (Vol. III., p. 277.)
Does it not exactly remind one of the historical picture drawn by Vauban, who reported that “one-tenth of the French peasants are beggars, and the remaining nine-tenths have nothing to give them?”