THE POLISH GRAIN TRADE 219female staff, a dworka. The woznica (carter), parobek (ploughman), pasterz
(cowherd), owczarz (shepherd), and the milkmaids, all lived near the manor
house, and received clothing, boots, daily meals, and a small annual wage of
36-60 groszy paid at Christmas.
From these details, it must be obvious that the degree of agricultural special-
ization was very low by modern standards. The manager of the Folwark could
only think of producing a grain surplus after self-sufficiency had been achieved
in milk, meat, wool, bread, vegetables, leather, beer, and all his immediate
requirements. On the noble estates, in 1565 average cash incomes for the typical
folwark have been calculated at 239 zl. per annum in Malopolska; 142 in
Wielkopolska; 186 zl. per annum overall. On the less efficient, larger estates of
the Crown, the Church or the magnates, the folwarks were less remunerative.
But there is no comparison between the income obtained from folwarks as a
whole - 48 zl. per lan under cultivation - and the meagre 2.5 zl. per lan obtained
from peasant holdings. It is true, of course, that the folwark's income hides the
valuable item of unpaid labour which would otherwise have contributed to the
working of the peasant holdings. Notwithstanding, the discrepancy was enor-
mous. The folwark system worked on the assumption that it gave the serf a min-
imum of land and security whilst maximizing the noble owner's cash profit.^20
For reasons which are not entirely clear, the productivity of the folwark
reached a point at the end of the sixteenth century beyond which it did not
progress. Up to that point, the intensification of serfdom can be seen as part of
the response to the prospect of increased prosperity. Thereafter, it must be seen
as a means of trying to keep pace with a falling standard of living. Serfdom was
thus encouraged both by the rise of the Vistula trade, and also, paradoxically,
by its decline.
As it turned out, grain was not the best commodity on which to found the for-
tunes of state and society. The Grain Trade did not develop many skills, tech-
niques, or forms of organization that did not exist already. It did not require any
manufacturing process, except for milling, nor any raw materials whose import
would have balanced the export of the fruits of the country's labour. It fostered
the massive import of foreign currency which was promptly spent on foreign
luxuries. But it did nothing to relieve the immobility of rural agrarian society.
On the contrary, it tied the peasantry to the land more firmly than ever before,
strangulated the development of towns, and underpinned the mounting
supremacy of the landowning interest. In short, at the price of several decades
of superficial prosperity, it preserved and strengthened the worst aspects of the
medieval economy whilst preventing the growth of that variety and flexibility
which enabled stronger economies to ride adversity and to grow. How much
more fortunate was England, whose sheep nibbled their way through Feudalism
at an early date, or Sweden, whose iron girded a tiny nation with continental
pretensions!
The state, in particular, gained very little advantage from the Grain Trade.
The producers had contrived to frame the laws of property and taxation to suit