SICK AND WOUNDED 
101 
it was possible to turn them into accommodation for the wounded. 
Many societies, cooperative organizations, etc., as well as private 
individuals, declared themselves ready to furnish the zemstvos not 
only with hospital buildings, but even to equip them completely and 
sometimes even to defray all costs of maintenance. Everywhere we 
find women’s organizations springing up spontaneously to sew bed 
linen and underwear and serve in the hospitals. 
The feeling of sympathy with the sick and wounded was mani- 
fested not only by the educated classes, who might naturally be ex- 
pected to respond quickly, but also by the peasantry. 
In the province of Moscow instances were noted of peasants bring- 
ing to the hospitals cart loads of cabbages, potatoes, and other 
vegetables, as their contribution to the welfare of the wounded. In 
the province of Kaluga the peasants collected among themselves and 
presented for the benefit of the wounded thousands of yards of 
homespun linen. In the province of Novgorod the hospitals re- 
ceived from the peasants gifts for the wounded consisting of various 
articles, down to soap, buttons, thread, needles, etc. In the prov- 
ince of Orel, the peasants of the village of Lavrovo subscribed the 
sum of 6,000 rubles for a hospital to be maintained in their own 
name. In the volost of Tregubovo (district of Dukhovschinsk, 
province of Smolensk) there was opened at the outbreak of the 
War a hospital with twenty-two beds, equipped and maintained 
at the expense of the taxpayers of that volost, who for this purpose 
assessed themselves to a special tax, on the basis that landlords were 
to pay 2%4 copecks a month on each deciatine of land, while the 
peasants were taxed 2 copecks. In the provinces in which the manu- 
facturing industries were represented, for example, Kostroma, 
Vladimir, Yaroslav, and Moscow, one would often come across 
hospitals organized by the combined efforts of the workers and 
manufacturers. In the provinces of Ekaterinoslav and Kharkov a 
ma jority of the private hospitals were equipped at the expense of the 
owners, employees, and miners in the mining industry. One-third of 
all the hospitals opened under the zemstvo auspices were created 
exclusively at private expense. Most of these were only small hos- 
pitals, averaging twenty-five beds, in rural localities, and less fre- 
quently in the cities. The remaining two-thirds of such hospitals 
were larger. They were opened and maintained with funds provided