Szuhay Péter: A Szendrő környéki falvak paraszti gazdálkodása a kapitalizmus időszakában (Borsodi Kismonográfiák 14. Miskolc, 1982)

On the other hand we can see that they mean or they would mean the necessary class of labourers. The contradiction of history lies in the fact that a farm worker would take part in the mobility of society as an industrial labourer, but the slow development of industry keeps this process back. The industry cannot make people forget the breaking up of their traditional village. Everything that Hungarian capitalism couldn't achieve, American capitalism could, and the agricultural proletariate seizes this opportunity. At the end of the nineteenth century the impoverished and the smallholders having already lost all the opportunities for work set off by ships to cross the ocean as if they had gone to work into a farther city for a long time. The aim of these voyages was to get money for some land or a house. A lot of these people were successful enough to return with such a sum of money by which Jhey could establish a small farm. Leaving for the USA and Canada became a pressure after all, with the participation of peasants with 15—20 acres of land as well. Their ambition was to enlarge the territory of peasant farms and in this way to keep the traditional way of life in the villages. Another alternative became known as that of the industrial work, although its potential possibility had been restricted for a long time. The first great opportunity for work — although not farming — was created by opening the mines in the region of the rivers Sajó and Bódva. These opportunities were taken by a huge mass of peasants beginning from the turn of the century. This position didn't seem to be favourable for all the villages because of the difficulties in reaching these places. Working in a mine was almost unattainable for the peasants living farther than 10 kilometres from the mines. A peasant wanting to remain a peasant besides working in a mine couldn't take covering such distances upon himself. Until World War II you can find inhabitants leading a so called double life in the surroundings of the coalmines. Their profession can be characterized by the fact that they work as coal-miners (considered to be only unskilled workers) during the „dead" period of agriculture, and they are peasants again in spring and in autumn. Miner-peasants' economic condition proved to be more stable because industrial work gives steadier income than farming. The model of a village of this type can be seen in Szuhogy. The peasants leading double lives break up the traditional village and from the villages like Szuhogy there grow expanding villages in the twentieth century. 150