suburbs. And here is a realm of misery; of grim factories; gaunt, tall tenements and squalid streets. From all quarters of the Empire the army of idlers come to the inner City on the hunt for pleasure. But to the outer City flock a greater army in their hunt for work and this contrast is the cause of the Russian Revolution. Never has Society presented greater contrasts. The distance from Cherry Hill to Fifth Avenue is not so great. The distance from the Faubourgs of Paris to Versailles was not so great as the distance from the Vibourg Suburb to the Winter Palace. And it was across this gulf that Father Gapon led the workmen on the ninth of January, 1905.

But before we can understand that fateful march or the people who made it we must look back a little into their history. In 1861 serfdom was abolished in Russia. Before that time there had been no factories. There were a few in certain places but in the great heart of Russia, modern capitalism, the manufacture of things for profit, was unknown. The serfs tilled the fields of their masters. Such simple things as cloth and shoes, harness and household utensils, they made in their cottages during the long winter months. Things too complicated for homemanufacture were made in "Artels." These "Artels" were voluntary groups of peasants for the making of some special product. If, for instance, the community needed cartwheels, some of the peasants banded together and made them. When the demand was supplied, they divided their earnings and disbanded The demand for some things was so constant that some of the "Artels" became permanent. Sometimes they reached the needs of their own village and supplied a larger district. In the permanent "Artels" the workmen could develop a high degree of skill but generally "Artels" were short lived and the skill was low. Although this made them a very uneconomical form of production, they are of great interest to Socialists. Although they were very crude and imperfect they were a direct experiment in cooperative production and eliminated the worst features of modern capitalism, wage-slavery and the creation of surplus value.

Emancipation caused a change but the change came slowly. All the serfs who had been farm-workers received an allotment of land. The allotment was very small and often, through the dishonesty of the landlord, smaller than the law directed. And in order to pay for it, the peasants were burdened with excessive taxation; but in spite of all these drawbacks, it kept them from becoming immediately wage-workers. The serfs, however, who had been household servants or engaged in other than agricultural work, received no land and were at once compelled to look for wages. Some stayed on as servants to their old mas

ters; some found work on the master's land, but others gravitated to the cities and as industry developed, became factory workers.

Things did not go well with the newly liberated peasants. Although the death-rate is high among them the birth-rate is higher, and the population increases faster in Russia than in any other country. And the peasant land, insufficient at first, becomes more and more inadequate as the number of peasants increases.

Add to this, the crop failures, the lack of education, the overwhelming taxation and it is not surprising to learn that the peasant wealth has constantly decreased since the emancipation. Whenever figures have been gathered the amount of food eaten by each peasant has decreased and the number of farm animals for each family has grown less. This deterioration has been constant since The Emancipation but it has been intensified in the last fifteen years by the financial policy of Count Witte. Witte is a banker; not an economist. It was his idea to establish the banking system on a gold basis. In order to collect the immense gold reserve which was needed for a gold standard it was necessary that the country should export more than it imported; the difference,-"The Balance of Trade," -would be paid in gold—and this gold would be collected by the Government for its reserve. The only thing which Russia produced in large quantities was grain. The high taxes made it necessary for the peasant to sell his grain as soon as it was harvested, and this grain was exported. As the grain exports increased famine increased. Witte collected his gold reserve by starving his countrymen. He probably learned this trick by watching England exploiting India. No other countries have so large grain exports and such frequent famines.

Another of Witte's schemes was the high tariff wall. The customs had to be paid in gold, and as these receipts swelled the reserve in the treasury, they raised prices on the already starving peasants.

Under the cumulative economic pressure of all these factors the peasantry has lost its solidarity and has broken up into three. sections. The most fortunate and the most unscrupulous have risen above the average lot. They have saved a little money which they have loaned out in the days of the tax-gatherer at most exorbitant rates. Later, they sell out their victims and so acquire land. They also deal in grain. Knowing their neighbors intimately, they can buy at the psychological moment of greatest need and they have enough capital to hold their stock until prices are high. While still peasants in the eye of the law,

they are in reality small land-holders and money-lenders. They form a very small faction of the peasant body and are cordially hated by the rest.

By far the largest mass of the peasants have remained almost as they were at the Emancipation. Their luck has been the average luck. They still keep their bit of land and are respected members of their communities. The change with them is more inward than outward. There is a little more corn husk in their bread every year. They do not laugh as often as their Fathers and the worry of ever-threatening starvation has puckered their foreheads and their hearts. Unrest grows among them. They burn the landlords' barns and kill the tax-gatherer more often every year-and the increasing bitterness in their lives points to a horrible reckoning some day.

The third sub-class among, the peasants are the landless. Their luck has not been good. Some, perhaps, owe their misfortunes to drink, more to bad harvests and sickness-but most of all to the relentless taxation. They have fallen prey to the money-lenders and their land has been swallowed up by debt. Some work as agrarian proletarians on the large estates, but most are forced into the cities.

And this constantly growing section of the peasantry is the basis of Russia's Industrial Proletariat. They come to the cities-not as in other countries, to seek a fortune, but to avoid actual starvation. They are loath to admit even to themselves that the change is permanent, and the hope which springs eternal in their hearts is that somehow, luck will look up and they may return to the land. Most Russian peasants look upon agriculture as the only uncursed existence. Their attachment to the soil and their almost universal belief in some form of nationalization are the most distinctive characteristics of the Russian peasants.

These things; the low standard of living brought from the famine-stricken homes, and the lack of realization of the permanence of the change,-make the Russian workmen an easy prey to exploiting employers.

The English economists of the last century developed the so-called "Iron Law of Wages," i. e. that wages normally amount to enough for the sustenance of the worker and his children. This law is ignored in Russia. The rapid decay of agriculture and eighty million peasants to fall back on,-relieves the capitalist of any fear about the labor supply-despite the frightful debasement of factory life, the army of the unemployed is on the increase and the wages sink far below the economic mini

mum.

At least forty per cent and probably fifty per cent of the workmen in St. Petersburg were born in the villages and are still peasants at heart. In other and newer industrial centers, the percentage is higher.

However, the concentration of so many workmen in the same city inevitably resulted in organization. There were two distinct labor movements. For many years the Socialists have been at work. Their success, considering the ignorance of the workmen and the watchfulness of the police, has been considerable. Gradually, the ideas of organizing and of striking for better conditions was growing. Trade unionism was a crime but as the magnetic idea of organized action triumphed over the oppressive laws in England, so it was doing in Russia.

About three years ago a Chief of the Secret Police conceived the idea of starting a rival movement. His idea was "The Simon-Pure Unionism," such as we know in America. His unions were purely economic and avoided all the political ideas of the Socialists. As long as the union strove simply to better its economic condition, it was fostered by the police. The Socialist idea of the workmen gaining the political power and so moulding their own fortunes was persecuted as much as ever. These police unions throve. They offered the workmen as much as our American unions do- a chance to add a few cents to their day's wages or to cut a few minutes off of the day's work. Whenever they struck they found the police friendly. When a Socialist union struck, their leaders were thrown into prison or sent to Siberia. Large numbers of the more ignorant workmen joined the police union.

And it was among these Police Unions that Father Gapon first came into prominence.

His character was wrapped in so much mystery that is is impossible to write of him with certainty. There are some few who still believe in his integrity and others who believe that he was always and consistently a police spy. It is my own opinion, based on personal acquaintance and much investigation that he oscillated between these two extremes. He was born in South Russia of a simple peasant family. He became a priest and it is said, quarreled with his Superior and was disfrocked. Later he was reinstated and in the last month of 1904 we find him, in the pay of the police, working among the factory population of Petersburg. He was very popular. A priest who takes the side of the people, even apparently, is so unusual in Russia that he is sure to have an immediate following.

Just how the idea of making a petition to the Tsar started,

nobody knows, but when one is familiar with the customs of the peasants it is easily explained.

From time immemorial, the peasants have believed that the Tsar was their friend, and they have attributed all their misfortunes to their landlords and the officials. When famine fell on their villages it was their custom to select some of the old men of the community to go to the "Little Father" and tell him of their woes. These deputations never reached the Tsar, but every one knew that they were stopped by the officials. When they returned to the villages, their backs scarred by flogging, the peasants' hatred for the officials increased, but their faith in the goodness of the Tsar never weakened. I saw two old peasants in a village near the Volga, who had three times started in such a mission and had, each time, been flogged and sent back.

But here in Petersburg, the proverb that "God is far above and the Tsar is far away" did not hold good. He lived just across the river in the Winter Palace. Somehow the idea sprang up and it spread like a living thing through the grim streets of the suburbs; from one squalid room to another, whipped on by hunger and gaunt cold. "If we send a small deputation, it will do no good", they said. "The officials will flog them; but if we all go together they can't flog us. We will all call out in a loud voice and "The little Father" will hear and come out on the balcony and we will talk to him and he will help us."

Gapon opposed the idea at first but it was too strong for him. A few days before "Bloody Sunday" he threw in his lot with it. It is possible that he was touched with the misery in which he daily moved. It is possible that the enthusiasm of the idea caught him up as it did others to that high point where martyrdom loses its horror. It is more probable that he saw he could not suppress the movement; that if he opposed it longer he would lose influence, that if he led it even to defeat-he would be as god among the men.

Certain it is that on the Friday and Saturday before the fatal Sunday, he made fiery speeches in which he said that it is better to die than to live as they were living.

There was no secrecy about the movement. Every one knew. The Tsar fled to Tsarsky Celo, and his uncle, the Grand Duke Vladimir, was put in command of the city.

The sun rose that Sunday morning as though it was not the greatest day that Russia had known the beginning of the Revolution-the new life. It touched the gilt domes of the churches and awoke the snow-covered avenues into a dazzling glare and penetrated even into the dim streets of the suburbs.