Since the founding of the colonies and until resettlement in 1940, land ownership was the decisive economic factor in Krasna. People without land were reduced to a poor existence, condemned to poverty.

Beginning around 1850, people left the mother colonies because of lack of available land. The colonists’ strong increase in population and the desire to leave land to all of their sons led to a regular “land hunger”. A broad segment of the colonists also wanted to increase their land holdings and people leased or purchased as much land as possible. This attitude was also characteristic for Krasna farmers. Already in 1852 Krasna petitioned the president of the Welfare Committee for additional land. ¹⁾ This probably was not granted since the amount of land owned by the village did not increase after this time, and there is no indication that Krasna obtained more land esewhere.

The lack of land existent since about 1860 demanded solutions. We can differentiate two ways. One was to leave Krasna, the other one to remain. Many Krasna people opted for the first solution, they purchased or leased land at other places.
See also 7.6, Exodus and Departures from Krasna

People remaining in Krasna were limited to:

• Obtain land as it became available or purchase land outside of Krasna or lease it in order to run one's own farm,
• To become a resident on a small farm and work as a farm laborer, or
• To learn a trade.

There were strict rules applied to obtaining crown’s land. (See 4.2, Land Ownership and Inheritance Law in Bessarabia) Otherwise, the colonists were free to add onto their farms or purchase private property in accordance with Russian law. No colonist status was applied. The diligence and ability to repay of the German settlers had become well known in South Russia and they often were the preferred or sole lessors or purchasers looked at in land deals. Later land purchases of the Germans were made more difficult. (See Russian laws of 1887 and 1892, later Rumanian law)

According to available sources Krasna farmers began relatively late to purchase private land, actually only since 1871 when crown's land reverted to private farm property. (See 4.2, Land Owership and Inheritance Law in Bessarabia). At this point there were four people in Krasna obtaining land outside of the colony.

A document dated May 19, 1885, shows how much land was owned by the farmer colony of Krasna on July 1, 1871 (the time of conversion of the land to private property). ²⁾

• Settler owners on owned farm with fields (crown's land) 114 farms, 395 men
• Settlers without land, 238 men
• Settlers without crown's land, with land purchased elsewhere, 4 men

The settlement contains 6,641.3 desjatines of cultivated land and 268.9 desjatines of non-cultivated land, a total of 6,910.2 desjatines.
P.S. Church land amounts to 120 desjatines and is independent of assigned land, located southwest of the Krasna holdings.
The described land is occupied by farms and has come into the hands of owners in the settlement by inheritance, excepting land for public buildings and pasture, which totals 29.3 desjatines and is used by the settlers.
In order to get the right to use the assigned land permanently, the settlement has to pay the state tax of 2,698 rubles and 73 kopecks at a set date.

The result of the increase of population led to a constant diminishing of land indivudual farmers could farm. In the beginning, it was about 58 desjatines, not counting the farm yard. In 1871, it was only 11.6 (a fifth) or 9.7 (a sixth). This trend continued until 1940. In 1940, only 5% of the farms were closely related to the original size the individual settlers had received in 1814.

As mentioned above, Krasna people began purchasing more land after 1871. We do not have the details as to when these purchases were made, but there are clues.

One can read in the “Description of the German colonies of the Akkerman District”: ³⁾ At settlement, the community was given a total of 6,910 desjatines of land. In 1903 several colonists obtained 625 of land at the Krasna Inheritance Trust at 300 rubles per desjatine of land. Today (1913) a total of 7,535 desjatines of land is privately owned.

It has yet to be established where this Krasna inheritance land was located. It is documented that Krasna farmers purchased land east of the colony. Between the colonies of Klö¬stitz-Paris-Friedenstal-Lichtental at the time of the settlement of 1815, initally several thousand desjatines of land were left empty for use of later divisions. These holdings and an additional amount owned by earls and dukes were purchased around 1850 and later by the families of Hoffmann, Bodamer, Gerstenberger, Renz and Schimke and farmed as lage estates. It is not documented but probable, that Krasna people leased or purchased some of this land (10-25 kilometers distance from Krasna). There are documents of Krasna farmers’ purchases in Klöstitz and Paris. Krasna farmers also owned land in Neu-Paris and Friedenstal.

During the land reform, many owners had to set aside thousands of hectares of land for the use of the so-called six-hectare farmers, but it is not clear whether landless people from Krasna or Krasna large farmers received any of these parcels. (See also land reform further below)

It is a fact, however, that people from Krasna owned land in Rozinowka Scharg (Schag?), located east of Krasna, most likely in the valley of the Schag river and which belonged to the above mentioned properties. Krasna ownership is also documented for the Schreiber Steppe, which likely belonged to the community of Friedenstal. When Krasna farmers worked “out on the steppe,” they spent the night there to avoid the long travel times required to travel there and back home. There had to be modest sleeping and cooking facilities at the land. At harvest, people spent several days on the steppe. Alois Leinz ⁴⁾ reports: When Krasna land already became scarce my grandfather Gottlieb Leinz and other Krasna farmers bought land in the steppes, also called Schag. This area was about 12 kilometers distant from Krasna and the farmers built themselves utility buildings with two or three rooms, each, a stable and a shed. Only Martin Ternes had a relatively large establishment there, run by his son Julius and farmed intensively for about ten years. He also lived there. All others used their utility buildings only for the time they worked the land and the buildings were vacant the rest of the time. Several Krasna people did establish themsleves there and the place was nicknamed “Neu-Krasna” (New Krasna). Officially it belonged most likely to Neu-Paris.

Krasna people had purchased large pieces of agricultural land under the Russian government in its final decades. In Rumanian times they often feared that they could not purchase enough land to assure farms for their sons. Rumanian had voided the Russian Liquidation Laws as they pertained to the German settlers, but many farmers still suffered from this for years to come. Until the agricultural reform of 1920 the Germans could not freely use the land.

The carrying out of the agricultural reform of 1920/1921 delivered them an additional economic blow from which many never recovered. A total of 64,177 hectares was taken from the German Bessarabian farmers and 8,200 hectares of it was distributed among the landless Germans. These new landowners were called hectare farmers and some of them were settled in so-called hectare communities. ⁵⁾

Krasna landowners lost a total of 201 hectares of land. It is not clear whether the former church land was part of this action, but out of the original 123 desjatines of church land in Russian times the community kept only 18 hectares after the agricultural reform. Landless people of Krasna also profited from the agricultural law. According to the Staats Anzeiger newspaper of May 10, 1921, they received 6 hectares of land, each about 8.5 kilometers distance from the village.

The large farmers who suffered most from these changes often bought land back from hectare farmers who could not work the land so far from the village without sufficient transportation or because they were not used to paying taxes and wanted to get away from that aspect. They listed land ownership in the names of their wife or children.

One can note that these measures were not especially effective. The areas were not large enough to secure a living for individual farmers. This measure did not solve the landless problems.

The land reform limited the economical growth opportunities of the German communities. The option to obtain new land remained severely limited and forced many Krasna farmers to leave.

The remaining farmers were forced to find new ways to keep themselves above water, especially the small family operations. It became necessary to farm more intensively with existing land. Attempts of this are eveident since the middle of the twenties.
See 4.1, Agriculture in Krasna

The land survey taking place from 1927-1937 completely disallowed land sales. A remark by the External Affairs Office in Berlin responded to reports from the German Embassy in Rumania: German farmers are only permitted to buy land in the rarest of cases.

Krasna people continued to buy land somehow, perhaps even by bribing Rumanian officials. Laws on the books are one thing and laws in operation are another. There was much corruption and money accomplished a lot that was not exactly legal. Land was purchased in Krasna and the neighboring communities from:

• hectare farners owning 100 hectares of land but only using 50-60 hectares of it for themselves,
• from 6 hectare farmers who soon sold their land to work as day laborers,
• from community members leaving the area (See 7.6, Exodus and Departures from Krasna).

It seems like it was also possible to by-pass the quote of 100 hectares sine there are reports of several Krasna farmers owning over 130 hectares of land in 1930. The amount of land owned by Krasna farmers in 1940 was 9512 square hectares, ⁶⁾, Heimatbuch der Bessarabiendeutschen 1960 (Homeland Book of the Germans from Bessarabia), 1960, page 7)) of which were :

• Located around Krasna region, 7,532 hectares
• In Rozinowka Scharg (Schag?), 436 hectares
• On the Schreiber Steppe (Friedenstal community), 327 hectares
• In the Paris region, 554 hectares
• In the Klöstitz region, 663 hectares

Krasna landownership was distributed on the farms as follows: ⁷⁾

• 157 farms (37.8%) owned less than 10 ha,
• 141 farms (34.0%) owned 10-25 ha,
• 96 farms (23.1%) owned 25-50 ha,
• 15 farms (3.6%) owned 50-100 ha,
• 6 farms (1.5%) owned more than 100 ha.

This was the thought provoking result of the real divisions, which increased threateningly in Rumanian times. The farm sizes changed from the profitable operations of large and medium sizes to the less profitable medium and small operations. The table shows that barely 5% of the farms were still half the original size of all the farms given to the settlers in 1814.

A growing tendency was also the change by people from agriculture to other economic endeavors. The seriousness of the situation is evident in a letter written by the German ambassador in Bucharest, Fabricius, who wrote on February 3, 1939, to the Ministry of the Exterior in Berlin and reported that there was such a lack of land among the Germans in Bessarabia that many families with a large number of children already were forced to leave the settlements on their own.

According to a statement concerning the colony of Wittenberg, a Bessarabian farmer at the end of the 1930's could somehow exist with 15 hectares of land and make a living with 37 hectares or more. This must have also held true for Krasna and the list above shows that more than two thirds of the farmers in Krasna no longer reached that level.

Krasna farm families according to property ownership as of 1940: ⁸⁾)

Aside from land purchases people leased agricultural land. After the serfdom of farmers was rescinded in 1860, large landowners without the helpers could not manage their vast holdings and leased large tracts of their land. This became a great resource for farmers and colonists also took advantage of this opportunity.

Krasna farmers also leased land for various reasons. Some wanted to have a larger crop planting area. Others had no initial land. In 1940, Krasna had 56 farm families with leased land.

Land was leased in the home area but also in neighboring villages. It was usual to “sow for a half,” meaning the landowner received half of the harvest. This was not very advantageous for the lessors, but this rule existed throughout Bessarabia, even in Krasna.

Among our forebears at the settlement of 1814/1815 were also unmarried men and women who came there with relatives. They received no land, just a farmstead, usually at the end of the village, where they built their small houses. They were called residents or people in the small houses. They were mostly poor people, workmen, day workers or herders. The residents, landless people who did not have a farm, completed the hierarchy.

Aside from this immigrant landless people soon after the settlement landless people also came from the landowner ranks, because of the Minorate rule. Added to them were people who had lost their farms because of bad luck, poor management or for other reasons. Gradually, a group of landless people developed in the colonies and spread rapidly.

In 1827, there were supposedly 266 tradesmen among the colonists who had no farm. ⁹⁾ The same statistic shows 22 more families in Krasna than existing farms.
Law prohibited division of the land parcel to heirs and the number of colonists not receiving land grew. In 1857 South Russia and Bessarabia had 9,273 families with land and 6,281 landless ones. The districts of Malojaroslawetz and Klöstitz already had more landless people than landowners back then. We have the figures for Krasna for 1871: 395 males with land, 238 without land. ¹⁰⁾ According to Conrad Keller ¹¹⁾, Krasna had 54 landless families. Their number increased to 67 families in 1940. (See also table above)

It was almost impossible to make a living without land. Exceptions to this were the priest, teacher, merchant or mill owner.

Some of the landless population helped themselves by leasing a parcel of land from their brothers or more fortunate brothers, helping with the harvest in return. Others learned and plied a trade, either in their own village or in another town of South Russia, without giving up the colonist status. The rest of them had to work as servants, handmaids or maidservants with the well-to-do farmers or try to obtain land elsewhere.
People who had slipped into the circle of small farmers, landless, weak or ill and handicapped hardly ever made a comeback, since there was virtually no other industry aside from farming. Unmarried people could go into service at a larger farm as manservants or maidservants, but a married man could only work in day labor in the summer months. It was even more difficult for married women; they could only work as hired help to do the washing or to hoe corn. They could make a little money on the side with needlework, knitting or spinning.

Farmers, who had no grown sons or daughters had to hire help in order to manage the farm. It was customary to hire helpers for a period of one year. Farmers needing extra help or desiring to get new help because they were not satisfied with the current workers started looking for candidates before the beginning of the New Year. Krasna people ranked at the top. After an oral agreement was made, the new employee received a down payment and the contract in Russian fashion was sealed. In Rumanian times more bureaucracy was required and a written agreement had to be made. It is doubtful, however, that all the Krasna folks complied with this measure.

Domestic servants and day laborers received free meals in addition to their pay and they usually ate with the family at the same table.
Day workers were mostly hired seasonally, like at corn cutting or wine harvesting. Mostly Bulgarians and Moldavians from neighboring villages were hired for the jobs.

The German landless or day laborers also had to contract out for a year in order to make a living.

Two examples to demonstrate the situation for day workers:

• Fall 1910: Day hires are rare and expensive this year. A day worker received 1 ruble and 50 kopecks per day. Seasonal workers for harvesting and threshing work received 90-115 rubles. ¹²⁾
• Wages for farm helpers during harvest and threshing season (1929) amounted to 2,000-4,000 lei, depending on the size of the farm, with larger farms paying a bit more. If there would not have been so many strangers, salaries could have been between 4,000 and 8,000 lei. Russian laborers came from far away and overran the market. ¹³⁾

Wages were not any higher ten years later (roughly 30 lei per day). Those were starvation wages, considering that in 1939 the cost for ten chicken eggs was 5-10 lei.

In normal years, independent workers with outside jobs could earn a bit more to subsist. There were groups of people totally dependent upon others, such as orphans, the elderly and ill without relatives to care for them. Orphans without property were sent to relatives or acquaintences until they were 15 years of age. There, sometimes earlier, they had to work very hard.

The Katzbach chronicle ¹⁴⁾ states: We have many landless people in the village. These are poor people either plying a trade or working as day laborers. In Rumanian times many of them received about 3 hectares of land, but the property is mostly too far away for them to work it. Up to now the rich and the poor still co-exist peacefully.

Krasna also had poor and very poor people who starved in the years when harvests were poor or the trades did not earn them an income. We have an example how they helped themselves and how others helped them:

• There are reports of the poor begging for tomato soup or meat broth on butchering days.
• Some came with little dishes and begged for flour, which they then dipped out of the farmer’s bin into a sack slung across their shoulder.
• Kaspar Ternes: ¹⁵⁾ Although the farms steadily decreased in size, most people had a decent income. Yes, we cannot deny this, there were poor folk in Krasna not cared for by neither state nor church. I can still hear the voice of the poor woman knocking at out door shortly before Christmas and saying to my mother: “We have nothing left to eat and will have to starve.” Thanks to our mother’s generosity, these folk had a decent Christmas meal. This was in 1927/1928.
• The North Dakota Staats Anzeiger of December 14, 1928 printed a letter from Krasna: In spite of repeated pleas to friends in America, we have not received an answer. I will now try my plea in the Staats Anzeiger, which is widely read…we want to let people know that we are in dire straits. Some days there is not even a crust of bread and the children cry with hunger pains for bread and there is nothing we can give them. It will get worse when winter sets in, especially if it is a cold winter. There are seven of us in my family and we have no food. Perhaps, dear friends, you can spare a few dollars to ease the need. God will bless you.
• On August 28, 1938 the Dakota Rundschau reports from Krasna: “We have managed to get ourselves in bad straits. Grain prices are horribly low and money is terribly scarce. The villages now have many unemployed people, who cannot even find work during the harvest. A lot of them go to the fields to scrounge for leftover grain.

In closing it has to be noted that the local agriculture could not have been maintained as it was. New efforts needed to be made to secure an income for the people. Land ownership no longer sufficed.