"Then what do you think?" he asked; "what system is one to adopt nowadays?" "Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do--only that's just how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined.

Where the land with serf-labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the half-crop system it yields three to one.

Russia has been ruined by the emancipation!" Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner's words absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky.