Landowners’ Activities Aimed at Improving the Economic Condition of Rural Farms in the Years 1918–1939 (On the Example of Kielce Voivodeship)

Abstract Large landownership was one of the main market players in the interwar period. It was a specific enterprise, legally and economically separated. It had its own organisational structure, human, financial and material resources. It carried out production and commercial activities with the aim of making a profit. The number of landowners in Kielce Voivodeship was estimated at 711, and together with their family members they made up a collective five times that number. The landowners were entrepreneurs, who coped with the economic reality with more or less success. The list of landowners was headed by owners of large estates – the Myszkowski, Drucki-Lubecki, Wielopolski, Łubieński, Czartoryski, Radziwiłł, Potocki, Tarnowski and Zamoyski families. However, farms consisting of a single manor, with an area of 180–300 ha, predominated. Apart from a small group of farm owners who wasted their fortune, the landowners were attached to the land and wanted to keep it in good economic condition. Owning a farm entailed responsibility for it. It obliged the owner to manage it properly and not leave it to its fate. My aim is to characterise the activities of landowners as entrepreneurs aiming to improve the economic condition of their property. I have in mind modernisation, which manifested itself in modern technical procedures, mechanisation, selective crop-animal production and the industrialisation of landed estates