Page 69 - Changing Living Spaces

Peasants, Land, and Work

Table 7 Employment in Agriculture and Forestry
Types of employment Number of employees
Permanently employed at farms 50,000
Wage labour on farms 50,000–60,000
Wage labour in vineyards 14,000
Wage labour in forests 7,000
Total 121,000–131,000
Source Uratnik 1938, 12.

Wage Labour
Wage labour was by far the most important category for earning addi-
tional income on small farms. There were many opportunities, but even
contemporaries emphasized that the supply of labour exceeded the de-
mand. On the one hand, farms larger than ten hectares already need-
ed additional labour during the peak season, as family members could
not do everything on their own. On the other hand, smaller farms also
had a surplus of labour available due to the problem of agricultural
overpopulation.
As for employment in agriculture and forestry, we should distinguish
between two categories. The first was permanent employment, where
people did all the work in agriculture, forestry or the household. As a
rule, permanent employees were not married. They belonged to peasant
households and lived on the farms where they worked. They were paid
in kind – with food, clothing and shelter. Only occasionally did they re-
ceive modest monetary payments. The second type of employment was
not permanent, but rather temporary, when seasonal work in the agri-
cultural sectors required a larger number of workers. In the interwar pe-
riod, this type of work was paid almost exclusively in the form of mon-
ey. These workers, paid according to working days, were mostly hired by
the owners of the larger farms, i.e. those that owned more than ten hec-
tares of land. According to the calculations, the hours spent by farmers
and their families on farms smaller than five hectares working and se-
curing resources for survival represented only 40 percent of their total
available working time. To secure additional resources for survival or
for investment in economic and social modernization, they had to re-
sort to off-farm labour. For a significant portion of the rural population,
wage labour was therefore crucial. According to the 1938 study by Filip
Uratnik – the only researcher to address these issues – between 121,000
and 131,000 people were said to have earned additional income by work-

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