Page 728 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

bound to sink to the most savage primitive condition.
That’s how I see it.’
‘But why so? If it’s rational, you’ll be able to keep up
the same system with hired labor,’ said Sviazhsky.

‘We’ve no power over them. With whom am I going
to work the system, allow me to ask?’
‘There it is—the labor force—the chief element in
agriculture,’ thought Levin.
‘With laborers.’
‘The laborers won’t work well, and won’t work with
good implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get
drunk like a pig, and when he’s drunk he ruins everything
you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much
water, cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for
drink, drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as
to break it. He loathes the sight of anything that’s not after
his fashion. And that’s how it is the whole level of
husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of cultivation,
overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants,
and where millions of bushels were raised you get a
hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has
decreased. If the same thing had been done, but with care
that..’

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