“We’ve no power over them. With whom am I going to work the system, allow me to ask?”

“There it is⁠—the labor force⁠—the chief element in agriculture,” thought Levin.

“With laborers.”

“The laborers won’t work well, and won’t work with good implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig, and when he’s drunk he ruins everything you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much water, cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as to break it. He loathes the sight of anything that’s not after his fashion. And that’s how it is the whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants, and where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the same thing had been done, but with care that.⁠ ⁠…”