156 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR
dressed to the provincial governor and he forwarded it to the immi-
gration department. The latter informed the governor that “under
the regulations concerning the employment of yellow labor in the
Empire west of the right bank of the Volga River, approved by the
Emperor on April 4 of the present year, members of the aforemen-
tioned yellow races will be admitted only in individual deserving
cases by agreement between the Ministers of War, Interior, and
Transport.” Accordingly, the provincial governor advised the Xon-
stantinograd zemstvo to obtain in the manner prescribed a permit
for the admission of Chinese and then to “apply to the information
bureau on labor in the cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, which
have the charge of hiring yellow labor.” We do not know whether
the Konstantinograd zemstvo found itself still possessed of sufficient
energy to attempt to overcome these entanglements of red tape.
Agricultural Machinery and Implements.
Closely related to the problem of labor was that of agricultural
machinery. Throughout the War the zemstvo warehouses had been
mobilizing their full stock of farming machinery, and even in 1917,
when Russian agriculture already suffered from an acute shortage
of everything, the Association of Western Zemstvos in Kiev was
still in a position to supply farmers with all kinds of indispensable
articles. It furnished altogether 11,798 plows, 941 seed drills, 868
straw cutters, 1,785 harrows, 1,480 grain cleaners and graders,
1,526 cultivators and extirpators, 26,936 scythes, 6,282 sickles, 793
threshing machines, 236 sets of thresher equipment, 5,538 pitch-
forks, 8,018 threshing flails, 823 weeders, 963 spades, 1,995 anvils
and hammers, 80,110 arshins’ of transmission belts, 86,000 puds®
of binder twine, 42,454 puds of fertilizers, 79,363 puds of forage
seeds, and 1,042 puds of garden seeds.
Of course, all this was a mere drop in the ocean, relatively to the
actual needs of the country. The supplies in the zemstvo warehouses
were very far from satisfying the requirements of the peasantry in
new farming equipment, and a number of zemstvos proceeded to set
up their own repair shops, while some of them attempted to produce
their own agricultural machines and implements, as well as ferti-
lizers and other such articles. The zemstvo of Vyatka took over the
8 One ton — 62 puds.
