ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION 19
commercial character, requiring the employment of a large amount
of working capital; among these may be mentioned warehouses for
iron and steel products and fireproof building materials, stores for
agricultural machinery and implements, bookstores, and other such
enterprises.
The district zemstvos were engaged principally in the work of
directly managing and supervising the schools, libraries, hospitals,
and roads, and organizing agronomic and veterinary services.
The general guidance of zemstvo activities and the preparation
of the annual budgets was in the hands of the zemstvo assemblies.
These were collegiate bodies ‘composed of delegates, or deputies,
elected by the population. The latter chose the delegates to the district
 zemstvo assemblies, and these, in turn, would elect among their
own members the delegates to the provincial zemstvo assemblies.
These were presided over by the marshals of the local nobility
elected by the members of their own corporation. An arrangement
of this kind was necessary as some concession to the class principle
prevailing in the social organization of the Russian Empire previous
 to the era of the Great Reforms. The assemblies then chose, on
the collegiate principle, their executive organs, known as the zemstvo
 boards, but the appointment of the presiding officers of these
boards, after they had been elected to office, required the approval of
the Government.
Delegates to the several zemstvo organs were elected on a basis of
property qualification, on the “curial” system. The first curia was
composed of private individuals possessing real estate outside the
cities ; the second, of those owning real estate within the city limits;
and the third was represented by the peasant communes. The number
 of delegates to be chosen by each curia in each district was prescribed
 in a special schedule appended to the law.
Since the landowners who did not belong to the peasant communes,
 immediately after the abolition of serfdom, were almost exclusively
 members of the nobility, it was inevitable that the curial
election system should impart more or less of a class character to
the zemstvos. This happened in spite of the fact that the zemstvo
was in principle an institution embracing all classes of the population.
 The first curia represented the nobility ; the second, the urban
bourgeoisie; and the third, the peasantry. But since, in most of the