According to the “Règlement organique,” as this code of
 the corvée is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called
 landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 12 days
 of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), one
 day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With deep insight into
 Political Economy, however, the working-day is not taken in its ordinary
 sense, but as the working-day necessary to the production of an average
 daily product; and that average daily product is determined in so crafty
 a way that no Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words,
 the Réglement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12
 working-days one must understand the product of the manual labour of 36
 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day of wood carrying in
 like manner three times as much. In all, 42 corvée days. To this
 had to be added the so-called jobagie, service due to the lord for extraordinary
 occasions. In proportion to the size of its population, every village has
 to furnish annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional
 corvée is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant. Thus
 the prescribed corvée amounts to 56 working-days yearly. But the
 agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence of the severe climate
 only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays and holidays, 30 on an average for
 bad weather, together 70 days, do not count. 140 working-days remain. The
 ratio of the corvée to the necessary labour 56/84 or 66 2/3 % gives
 a much smaller rate of surplus-value than that which regulates the labour
 of the English agricultural or factory labourer. This is, however, only
 the legally prescribed corvée. And in a spirit yet more “liberal” 
 than the English Factory Acts, the “Règlement organique” 
 has known how to facilitate its own evasion. After it has made 56 days
 out of 12, the nominal day’s work of each of the 56 corvée days
 is again so arranged that a portion of it must fall on the ensuing day.
 In one day, e.g., must be weeded an extent of land, which, for this work,
 especially in maize plantations, needs twice as much time. The legal day’s
 work for some kinds of agricultural labour is interpretable in such a way
 that the day begins in May and ends in October. In Moldavia conditions
 are still harder.