TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 305plying peasant masses. By virtue of hard experience, it was found that the condi-
tions in the countryside were actually deteriorating. After a brief revival in
1928-9, the rural economy fell into a decline from which it never fully recovered.
In the next decade, farm prices were halved; the cash income of peasant families
dropped to almost one-third; government subsidies to agriculture were quar-
tered. As borrowers defaulted on loans, credit was suspended. Investment in
machinery virtually stopped. The rate of parcellation slowed to a crawl. In so far
as the crisis in Poland was caused by the world recession, it was not exceptional.
But the lack of finance, both state and private, which might have ameliorated the
most acute effects, led to far greater suffering than in Western Europe. Social ills
multiplied. Peasant families could not feed their children, or, for want of the
obligatory pair of shoes, could not send them to school. Usury flourished,
together with drunkenness. The Jewish money-lender and tavern-keeper for no
fault of his own, attracted general disgust. Sequestrations of debtors' property,
violently executed, were violently resisted. Political militancy increased. The
Zwiqzek Rolnikow (Farmers' Union) founded in 1929 by members of the PSL
'Wyzwolenie' opposed the lethargy of the government-sponsored Central
Society of Agricultural Circles (CTKR). The reunited Stronnictwo Ludowe
attracted growing support, and was held responsible for the disturbances which
occurred with mounting frequency. The first strike broke out at Limanowa near
Cracow, in February 1931, and quickly spread to the Warsaw area. Peasants
refused to pay the tax levied on goods taken to market, and demanded a reduc-
tion of prices in the products of the state monopolies. Hundreds of protesters and
SL activists were arrested. At Lubla near Krosno, and at Apanow near Cracow,
the police opened fire when the peasants insisted on holding their traditional
Whitsun festival in defiance of a ban on public meetings. The first four victims of
the troubles were killed. In June, a more serious incident occurred at Berehy
Dolne, near Sanok. Here the peasants were protesting against Count Potocki's
voluntary 'Festival of Labour', where they had all been invited to give a day's free
work reconstructing the local highway. They feared the return of serfdom. Five
hundred police, a battalion of infantry, and a squadron of war-planes arrived to
restore order. Here, 6 persons were killed; 278 held, and 3 condemned to death
for incitement. In 1933, the confrontations between peasants and police assumed
the proportions of a minor guerrilla war, especially in the districts of Laricut,
Rzeszow, Lezajsk, and Przeworsk. There were scores of deaths, hundreds of
police casualties, and thousands of arrests. For three years, a breathing-space
was enforced by the Government's proscription of the SL, and by the appoint-
ment of Juliusz Poniatowski, a former member of the PSL (Wyzwolenie), to the
Ministry of Agriculture. Unfortunately, there were no quick solutions. Ponia-
towski's long-term answer to rural overpopulation was to support industrializa-
tion, and to invest in the development of 'Polska B'.^18
In 1936—7, rural disturbances recurred. As a result of earlier disillusionments,
the policies of the Peasant Movement (SL) were undergoing marked radicaliza-
tion, and the movement's militant youth sections - the Union of Rural Youth's