The number of members of the town councils elected by this indirect system varies from twenty-one in the City of Mexico to seven in the smaller municipalities. These local representative assemblies are reduced to the condition of consulting bodies, with power to suggest improvements in municipal services to the President of the Republic, to the Secretary of Government, to the Governing Board and to the heads of executive departments. In a few cases specified in the law the negative recommendation of the town council on a question of local policy carries with it greater force. These cases are as follows:

Ist. Whenever a contract for public work covers a period of five years or more in its performance and when the amount involved exceeds one hundred thousand pesos (about $41,600 gold).

2d. Or when such contract provides for annual payments exceeding twenty-five thousand pesos (about $10,400 gold).

The effect of a negative recommendation on such contracts is to recommit the matter to the executive authority proposing the contract. If after submitting a new contract or resubmitting the old, no agreement is reached, a period of four months is permitted to elapse with a view to securing agreement. If no agreement can be reached, the town council can only suspend the execution of the contract by a three-fourths vote. If such a majority is secured, the whole matter is submitted to the President of the Republic for final decision.

In order to add somewhat to the appearance of power, the Governing Board and the heads of executive departments are required, before taking final action in certain specified cases, to secure the opinion of the town councils concerned. But in no case is such opinion binding.

The provisions of the new law with reference to the granting of franchises are worthy of attention. All such grants are placed under the control of the Secretary of Communication and Public Works a Federal Cabinet officer. Before making such grant the Secretary is compelled to secure the opinion of the Governing Board and of the local representative assemblies of the towns interested. If any of these bodies express themselves as opposed to the franchise grant, the matter is referred to the President of the Republic for final decision.

In spite of the revolutionary change worked by the new law, there was little or no evidence of any organized opposition on the part of the inhabitants of the Federal District. In any other great metropolitan center such a destruction of every vestige of local self-government would have furnished ample material for political agitation. The fact that the change was made almost without the slightest indication of interest on the part of the people is an indication of the tremendous hold that President Diaz has acquired on the people and the implicit confidence inspired by all his acts. Viewed from another standpoint, the new municipal law may be regarded as an indication of the fact that popular institutions have not as yet taken deep root in Mexico, and that changes in the direction of extreme centralization can still be made without arousing popular feeling in favor of the preservation of popular government.

Mexico City.

L. S. ROWE.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF RUSSIA.

II.

MUCH of the internal financial disorder of Russia may be

traced to its land tenures. In round numbers, of

890,000,000 acres considered fit for culture in European Russia, 290,000,000 belong to the state, or to the imperial family, 260,000,000 to private owners, and 340,000,000 to village communities. This last makes the bulk of the land under cultivation, for much of the land belonging to the government and to private owners is not tilled because, as is largely the case with government holdings, it lies in regions scantily populated because either semiarid or semi-arctic; or, on the other hand, as is the case with much of the land of the nobility, because Russian laborers are as a rule so time-serving that except in the most fertile districts. it is difficult to pay even Russian wages for field hands and make both ends meet. In the Black Earth Belt, the most fertile part of Russia, much of the land of the nobility is leased to peasants, but outside of this it is difficult to find tenants who will pay, although all over Russia a cry goes up from the peasantry for more land. At the time of the emancipation they felt aggrieved that all the lands of the nobility were not given to them. By their tradition, the lands belonged to them collectively, and the nobility were only the task-masters set over them by the Czar. Now this old idea seems to be cropping out again in the recent threats of the peasants to seize the unoccupied lands in Simbirsk, and the neighboring provinces along the Volga. Some little progress has been achieved in the way of putting more land into the hands of the peasantry, by loans advanced to them by the Peasant's Bank, a government institution, to enable them to buy land from individual owners or from the government; but very few of them care enough for the future to induce them to make the attempt, and in many instances, especially of late, peasant buyers have been unable to meet their obligations, and the authorities are reduced to the dilemma of letting them keep their land without paying for it or depriving them of what they have paid, with

consequent discouragement of others. For five years back, the budgets estimate on the average only about $300,000 a year for gross receipts on sales of government lands. Of the enormous amounts of lands of the nobility which have been foreclosed on in the last few years, it is said that almost all has gone at nominal prices to wealthier members of the merchant class who have been bitten with the idea of becoming great landholders, and have endeavored to succeed by introducing American agricultural machinery, and by working on a larger scale. This offers a possibility of better success, but it is said that the constant blackmail by officials on one hand, and, on the other, ruin of machinery by illwill or lack of care on the part of the laborers, have often caused these attempts to fail also. In Siberia, where land is plenty and the peasant buys machinery to lighten his own labor, it is different; but in European Russia, with which alone this article deals except for specific instances, it does not seem as if much improvement could take place without so complete a change from the present order as would amount to a revolution, and could probably only be produced by one. The distress among land-holders is so great that since the first part of this article was written, Minister Witte has been compelled to advance about $36,000,000 to the Bank of the Nobility to prevent wholesale bankruptcy.

When the serfs were emancipated in 1861, to provide them a livelihood, the Czar took from the nobility about half their land holdings, with equivalent amounts from the imperial domains. To prevent the serfs from being swindled out of all their property, he then gave this land, not to individuals, but to the communes, of which there are about 108,000, thus establishing on a stupendous scale the system that so many theorists have been urging without a notion that it was being tried by one-fifth of the population of Europe. This had the advantage of being the traditional tenure among the peasantry. As if to comply with the demands of Henry George, these communities were then charged with taxes considered equivalent to the full value of their lands, to pay the bonds given to the nobility in payment for their lands (amounting on the average to about $3.50 per acre less the amounts of mortgages to government institutions,

which averaged about $1.25), on the basis that 6 per cent. per annum would cover principal and interest of the 5 per cent. bonds in fifty years. The land taken from government domains was valued lower as a rule, but similar charges were made to compensate the government. The quantity of land thus held by the communes has varied little from what it was forty years ago. The communes seem to have been at liberty to divide their land permanently among the individual members of the commune, but very few have done so, probably owing to the peasant's innate suspicion of any new proposal from any quarter. In the meantime, the population of European Russia has increased nearly 90 per cent. An official estimate made in December, 1902, places it at 116,000,000. In 1876, according to Wallace, less than 5,000,000 lived in towns exceeding 10,000 inhabitants. Moscow and St. Petersburg have each gained about 50 per cent. since then, and some of the smaller manufacturing towns have gained more rapidly, but even so probably we shall not exaggerate in calling the rural population 100,000,000. This leaves at present in the hands of the communes only about three and one-half acres per head of rural population, or say twenty acres per family. In much of the country, methods of cultivation show little improvement over those described by Wallace twentyseven years ago, though it is better near Moscow, and much of the land is being exhausted by almost continuous cultivation without fertilizers.

Except as the herds are pastured together, and except as in a few instances the hay crop is cured in common and then divided, the communal lands seem everywhere to be distributed to individuals for working. Methods of distribution vary greatly, however, from place to place, being regulated by the communes among themselves. In the south, where the fields are not manured, tenures are generally short, and, in many places at least, it would be a violation of custom for the same land to be allotted twice in succession to one member of the commune. In fact, I have been assured by Russians that this is law, but I think that I have good grounds for stating that it is only local custom. The hardships of constant changes are much less in Russia than they would be with us, for it is only the agricultural