16 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR
seeds were an important feature in the organization of agricultural
ald to the peasahts. This business developed very rapidly and at the
beginning of the twentieth century, if the traditional wooden plow
of the Russian peasant had practically everywhere given place to
the modern iron plow and if a large number of peasant farms had
been equipped with up-to-date winnowing and threshing machines,
and grain in the south of Russia was being harvested almost univer-
sally with the aid of mowing and reaping machines, this transforma-
tion was due in a very large measure to the work of the zemstvo
stores of agricultural implements. In 1913 there were in the zemstvo
provinces 839 such stores many of which had branch offices. Their
turnover ran into scores of millions of rubles. Thus, according to
M. Veselovsky* the turnover of the agricultural stores of only four
provincial and fifty-seven district zemstvos in 1914 had been
6,895,000 rubles.
The zemstvo agricultural stores were operating in close contact
with the rural cooperative societies, which were developing very rap-
idly during the years immediately preceding the War, and it was
with their assistance that the zemstvos stores conducted their trade
in seeds, machines, and implements. Many district zemstvos also or-
ganized, through the agency of their stores, temporary loans of im-
proved agricultural machinery to the peasantry, thereby doing
much to make modern machinery popular. For the purchase of
agricultural machines and implements at home and abroad, the zem-
stvos formed special associations. The most important of these was
that of Orel, which included nine provincial and forty-one district
zemstvos; another important association of this kind was that of
Kiev, uniting two provincial and twenty-one district zemstvos in
southwestern Russia.
Among measures designed to improve agriculture, and taken also
partly in the interest of public health, we must note the hydro-tech-
nical enterprises launched by twenty-six provincial and three dis-
trict zemstvos, for digging and drilling wells, building dams, and
other works to improve the land, such as the draining of swamps
and marshes, etc.
In localities with a highly developed cottage industry the zem-
stvos succeeded in accomplishing a considerable amount of useful
t Zemstvo Yearbook for 1916.
