Identifier: ridpathsuniversa05ridp (find matches)
Title: Ridpath's Universal history : an account of the origin, primitive condition and ethnic development of the great races of mankind, and of the principal events in the evolution and progress of the civilized life among men and nations, from recent and authentic sources with a preliminary inquiry on the time, place and manner of the beginning
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history
Publisher: Cincinnati : Jones
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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ted. In commonwith the other states of the Teutonicworld, there is a general preference forthe rural over the town life. Cities donot, as a rule, flourish, but in Lithuaniathere are large numbers of Jews, Poles,and Germans who are tradesmen andmerchants. This gives larger develop-ment to the municipal side of Lettishcivilization. The Samoghitians are ex-pert in hunting, and it has been notedby travelers that a great majority of theLithuanians are fond of bee culture, aswell as of rearing herds of cattle. It should be kept in mind, in makingup a scheme for the life of this people,that until recently the lands Land system ofwere held by chieftains and SL^^S^^^^.T=feudal lords, and only oc- estates.cupied by the peasantry. No doubt the THE SLA VS.—LITHUANIANS. 125 tillage of the country has been muchheld back by these circumstances. Thegreat Russian families held a kind of mass of the people under the old systembecame serfs, preferring foreign land-owners to natives. It was under these
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LITHUANIAN JEWS—TYPES—Drawn by V. Foulqiiier. princely authority over wide regions ofcountry that gave forth nothing, simplybecause there was nothing to give. The circumstances that the German and Pol-ish landlords made their way into alarge part of the Lithuanian countries 126 GKllAT RACES OF MAXKIXD. and reduced the working- classes to arank of great misery. Such a conditionwas antecedent to the )\:)lish insurrec-tion of 1863, and the Russian govern-ment was wise enough to discover thetrue solution. The landed propertieswere broken up by a process almost asviolent as that which characterized theproceedings of the Prench Revolution ahundred years ago, and the serfs becamelandowning peasants. Hard is that his-torical problem which thus at intervalsconfronts the student, whether the bet- ter right to the earth lies on the side ofimmemorial possession — whether thegreater wrong- is done by destroying-what the centuries have agreed to per-petuate—or whether, without regard tothe

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