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

duction of two hundredweight wheat is higher than the price of it on the market. These calculations cannot be considered relevant, as in spite of money economy the subsistence economy of the peasants' work hasn't got any value. Investment in farming would become much more profitable in some other territories. That is why profitability of peasant farming is ambiguous. These farms don't seem to be rivals for the large estates. In the twentieth century farming is in the danger of breaking up. State assistance saved peasants from becoming ruined and from the economic crisis of 1928—33. Let's take an example: The peasants got a plus sum of money above the commercial price for their wheat being sold. Peasants leading subsistence economy wouldn't have been influenced by the crisis to such an extent, supposing they hadn't been concerned on the market. As for the cultivation one can see that peasant farms are only on the periphery of agricultural production. They can grow hardly anything else for the market but wheat, and for a lot of them participation in the production for selling is nothing else but a pressure. Because of tax burden and paying interests, under the pressure of necessity they sell their wheat. These farms are considered to be self-supporting, growing almost only for inner using up. From this point of view peasant farming seems to be for itself. That is the cause why the peasant isn't interested in modernizing his farm. Describing the system of cultivation I mentioned the breaking up of the farms, the limits of the type of their cultivating the soil that serves the purposes of inner using up. Plants being grown, changing the appliences and working processes, and changing in the quality of stock farming brought a new period, but at the same time they didn't bring an important structural change. Harvest and threshing become faster, there appear some crops with higher manpower requirement, animals can get richer feedstuff — all these structural changes take place only inside a closed system and selling isn't effected by all these processes. Alimentation has some changes, but outsider producers of goods don't contribute to the using up. All the changes remain in the system of subsistence economy. Comparing the estates near Szendrő with other farms another alternative occurs, which is the possibility of economy (mechanized, leading a direct production of goods, living from the market, becoming richer, representative) that is developing on the example of large estates. These two alternatives raise the question of the types of the peasants. Parallels of farms near Szendrő can be found 152