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eighties under Alexander III, when the powers of thepolice and the ministry of the interior were reinforced(cf.PP.77-78). .Despite emancipation, the authorities continued invarious ways to treat the peasantry as it always had asa class apart: an attitude denounced by progressives andthe left as responsible for widening the gulf between thetown and the country, between enlightening influencesand the dark, unlettered peasant mass, and as responsiblefor keeping Russia unknit together as one communityand split between different classes with a minimum ofinterlacing ties.(v) Industrialists and others needing new hands hadsupported emancipation as a long step towards mobilityof labour. This proved to be a very important result of1861 and there was a large outflow, in part seasonal, inpart permanent, from the land to the new transport,mining, and industrial concerns that were changing thebalance of Russian economy. Such permanent outflow,as well as that to new agricultural land in the south orthe east, was, however, much hampered by the expenseand difficulties of the passport system and by the tiesof the commune, particularly as regards its joint responsibilityfor taxation which was not completelyabolished until 1906.(vi) The outflow from the land was far smaller thanthe natural increase of the peasants. Nor was theexcess of peasant mouths sated by the steady passage ofmore land into peasant hands. The new holdings wentchiefly to those who were already relatively better off".(vii) By about 1900 the problem of the peasantry,especially in 'the producing provinces,' the so-calledgranary of Russia, was still more acute owing to thispressure of population, to the low standard of peasantfarming, to the collapse of grain prices in the seventiesand eighties, and to the great famine of 1891-92 (on ascale comparable to the worst Indian famines of 1876-78and 1899-1900), followed by more local famines in1898 and 1901. The salt tax went in 1880, the poll taxin 1886; yet arrears of other charges mounted. Theredemption annuities had to be twice reduced, then139