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 dis- 
trict 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 previ- 
ous to the era of the Great Reforms. The assemblies then chose, on 
the collegiate principle, their executive organs, known as the zem- 
stvo 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 num- 
ber of delegates to be chosen by each curia in each district was pre- 
scribed in a special schedule appended to the law. 
Since the landowners who did not belong to the peasant com- 
munes, immediately after the abolition of serfdom, were almost ex- 
clusively 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 popula- 
tion. The first curia represented the nobility ; the second, the urban 
bourgeoisie; and the third, the peasantry. But since, in most of the