A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1975 (Debrecen, 1976)

Néprajz - Dankó Imre: Changes in the Hungarian peasantry’s way of life and culture, with special regard to the Plain of Southern Bihar

gradually turned into agricultural labourers (virtually workers). In as much as they worked with their own tools, these were primitive and home-made, of small driving power - or they had no implements but used those of their employers. By the middle of a XIX. th century several large estates existed in southern Bihar plains. Their production was, in an ever increasing measure, effected by agricultural labourers. Their wage-system varied largely. Survival of feudalism showed in a special wagesystem, where agricultural workers were hired for a whole year and were paid partly in kind: clothing, food, lodgings, a certain quantity of agricultural produces and some money paid in cash. Survival of feudalism also showed in the fact that these hired workers seldom were hired alone: as a rule they worked with their whole family. In such cases a long existing labour division prevailed. With serfdom's liberation the differentiation which already began earlier, continued. Smallholder serfs were granted land, cotters became landless peasants, farmhands, agricultural labourers. The pauperism and helplesness of the latter resulted in revolutionary forces, manifesting themselves at the turn of the century in agrarian socialist movements. It was quite a characteristic feature of these times that in order to break down harvesters' strikes, landowners as well as some rich peasants hired seasonal workers from faraway districts, wantless and laiming low wages. This had the interesting result that these seasonal workers, while working on large estates, acquired the more developed labour techniques, learned how to use better implements and returning to their homes propagated the use of same. The treatise presents in its annotations detailed data concerning every single settlement of southern Bihar as to ownership conditions, economic and social changes. 477