Mutual Aid Peter Kropotkin (ebook reader 7 inch TXT) 📖

The same custom is practised for making nut oil and crushing hemp. In the commune of L⁠⸺ the same is done for bringing in the corn crops. These days of hard work become fête days, as the owner stakes his honour on serving a good meal. No remuneration is given; all do it for each other.274

“In the commune of S⁠⸺ the common grazing-land is every year increased, so that nearly the whole of the land of the commune is now kept in common. The shepherds are elected by all owners of the cattle, including women. The bulls are communal.

“In the commune of M⁠⸺ the forty to fifty small sheep flocks of the commoners are brought together and divided into three or four flocks before being sent to the higher meadows. Each owner goes for a week to serve as shepherd.

“In the hamlet of C⁠⸺ a threshing machine has been bought in common by several households; the fifteen to twenty persons required to serve the machine being supplied by all the families. Three other threshing machines have been bought and are rented out by their owners, but the work is performed by outside helpers, invited in the usual way.

“In our commune of R⁠⸺ we had to raise the wall of the cemetery. Half of the money which was required for buying lime and for the wages of the skilled workers was supplied by the county council, and the other half by subscription. As to the work of carrying sand and water, making mortar, and serving the masons, it was done entirely by volunteers [just as in the Kabyle djemmâa]. The rural roads were repaired in the same way, by volunteer days of work given by the commoners. Other communes have built in the same way their fountains. The winepress and other smaller appliances are frequently kept by the commune.”

Two residents of the same neighbourhood, questioned by my friend, add the following:⁠—

“At O. a few years ago there was no mill. The commune has built one, levying a tax upon the commoners. As to the miller, they decided, in order to avoid frauds and partiality, that he should be paid two francs for each bread-eater, and the corn be ground free.

“At St. G⁠⸺ few peasants are insured against fire. When a conflagration has taken place⁠—so it was lately⁠—all give something to the family which has suffered from it⁠—a chaldron, a bed-cloth, a chair, and so on⁠—and a modest household is thus reconstituted. All the neighbours aid to build the house, and in the meantime the family is lodged free by the neighbours.”

Such habits of mutual support⁠—of which many more examples could be given⁠—undoubtedly account for the easiness with which the French peasants associate for using, in turn, the plough with its team of horses, the winepress, and the threshing machine, when they are kept in the village by one of them only, as well as for the performance of all sorts of rural work in common. Canals were maintained, forests were cleared, trees were planted, and marshes were drained by the village communities from time immemorial; and the same continues still. Quite lately, in La Borne of Lozère barren hills were turned into rich gardens by communal work. “The soil was brought on men’s backs; terraces were made and planted with chestnut trees, peach trees, and orchards, and water was brought for irrigation in canals two or three miles long.” Just now they have dug a new canal, eleven miles in length.275

To the same spirit is also due the remarkable success lately obtained by the syndicats agricoles, or peasants’ and farmers’ associations. It was not until 1884 that associations of more than nineteen persons were permitted in France, and I need not say that when this “dangerous experiment” was ventured upon⁠—so it was styled in the Chambers⁠—all due “precautions” which functionaries can invent were taken. Notwithstanding all that, France begins to be covered with syndicates. At the outset they were only formed for buying manures and seeds, falsification having attained colossal proportions in these two branches;276 but gradually they extended their functions in various directions, including the sale of agricultural produce and permanent improvements of the land. In South France the ravages of the phylloxera have called into existence a great number of wine-growers’ associations. Ten to thirty growers form a syndicate, buy a steam-engine for pumping water, and make the necessary arrangements for inundating their vineyards in turn.277 New associations for protecting the land from inundations, for irrigation purposes, and for maintaining canals are continually formed, and the unanimity of all peasants of a neighbourhood, which is required by law, is no obstacle. Elsewhere we have the fruitières, or dairy associations, in some of which all butter and cheese is divided in equal parts, irrespective of the yield of each cow. In the Ariège we find an association of eight separate communes for the common culture of their lands, which they have put together; syndicates for free medical aid have been formed in 172 communes out of 337 in the same department; associations of consumers arise in connection with the syndicates; and so on.278 “Quite a revolution is going on in our villages,” Alfred Baudrillart writes, “through these associations, which take in each region their own special characters.”

Very much the same must be said of Germany. Wherever the peasants could resist the plunder of their lands, they have retained them in communal ownership, which largely prevails in Württemberg, Baden, Hohenzollern, and in the Hessian province of Starkenberg.279 The communal forests are kept, as a rule, in an excellent state, and in thousands of communes timber and fuel wood are divided every year among all inhabitants; even the old custom of the Lesholztag is widely spread: at the ringing of the village bell all go to the forest to take as much fuel wood as