Chapter VI. Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry

• • Prefaces
  • Chapter I. The Theoretical Mistakes of the Narodnik Economists
  • Chapter II. The Differentiation of the Peasantry
  • Chapter III. The Landowners’ Transition from Corvée to Capitalist Economy
  • Chapter IV. The Growth of Commercial Agriculture
  • Chapter V. The First Stages of Capitalism in Industry
  • Chapter VI. Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry
  • Chapter VII. The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry
  • Chapter VIII. The Formation of the Home Market
  • Appendices

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I. The Rise of Manufacture and its Main Features

By manufacture is meant, as we know, co-operation based on division of labour. In origin, manufacture belongs directly to the above-described “first stages of capitalism in industry.” On the one hand, workshops with a more or less considerable number of workers gradually introduce division of labour, and in this way capitalist simple co-operation grows into capitalist manufacture. The statistics on the Moscow industries quoted in the preceding chapter clearly show the process of this genesis of manufacture: the larger workshops in all fourth category industries, in some of the third category, and in individual cases of the second category, systematically apply division of labour on a wide scale and must therefore be classed as types of capitalist manufacture. More detailed data on the technique and the economics of some of these industries will be given below.

On the other hand, we have seen how merchant’s capital in the small industries, upon reaching its highest stage of development, reduces the producer to the position of a wage-worker processing the raw material of others for payment by the piece. If further development leads to the introduction of systematic division of labour into production and transforms the technique of the small producer, if the “buyer-up” singles out certain detailed operations and gets them done by wage-workers in his own workshop, if, parallel with the distribution of work to be done in the home, and inseparably connected with it, big workshops with division of labour emerge (belonging very often to these same buyers-up), we are confronted with a process of the genesis of capitalist manufacture of another kind.

Manufacture is highly important in the development of capitalist forms of industry, as the link between handicrafts and small commodity production with primitive forms of capital, and large-scale machine industry (the factory). Manufacture is closer to the small industries because it continues to be based on hand technique, so that the big establishments cannot, therefore, fully displace the small ones, cannot completely divorce the industrialist from agriculture. “Manufacture was unable, either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionise that production to its very core (in ihrer Tiefe ). It towered up as an economic work of art, on the broad foundation of the town handicrafts, and of the rural domestic industries.” What brings manufacture closer to the factory is the rise of the big market, of big establishments with wage-workers, of big capital, which has brought masses of propertyless workers under its complete domination.

In Russian literature the prejudice regarding the isolation of so-called “factory” production from “handicraft” production, regarding the “artificiality” of the former and the “people’s” character of the latter, is so widespread that we think it particularly important to examine the data on all the more important branches of manufacturing industry and to show their economic organisation after they had grown out of the stage of small peasant industries, and before they were transformed by large-scale machine industry.

II. Capitalist Manufacture in Russian Industry

Let us begin with the industries that process fibres.

1) The Weaving Industries

The weaving of linen, wool, cotton and silk fabrics, galloons, etc., was organised everywhere in Russia as follows (before the appearance of large-scale machine industry). The industry was headed by big capitalist workshops employing tens and hundreds of wage-workers; the owners of these workshops, possessing sizable capital, undertook the large-scale purchase of raw material, partly working it up in their own establishments, and partly giving out yarn and warp to small producers (workroom owners, middlemen,, peasant-“handicraftsmen” etc.) who wove the cloth at home or in small workshops at piece rates. The work itself was done by hand, and the following operations were distributed among the workers: 1) yarn-dyeing; 2) yarn-winding (very often women and children specialised in this operation); 3) yarn-fixing (“fixers”); 4) weaving; 5) weft-winding for weavers (bobbin hands, mostly children). Sometimes in the big workshops there were special “threaders” (who threaded the warp through the eyes of the batten and reed.) of labour is usually applied, not only to single operations, but to wares, that is, the weavers specialise in producing various sorts of cloth. The selection of some operations to be done in the home does not, of course, make any change whatever to the economic structure of this type of industry. The workrooms or homes where the weavers work are simply external departments of the manufactory. The technical basis of such industry is hand production with extensive and systematic division of labour; from the economic point of view we see here the formation of large capital which controls the purchase of raw materials and the sale of wares on an extremely extensive (national) market, and under whose complete sway are a mass of proletarian weavers; a few large establishments (manufactories in the narrow sense of the term) dominate a mass of small ones. Division of labour leads to the emergence of specialist artisans from among the peasantry; non-agricultural centres of manufacture arise, such as the village of Ivanovo in Vladimir Gubernia (in 1871 it became the town of Ivanovo-Voznesensk and is now a centre of large-scale machine industry), the village of Velikoye in Yaroslavl Gubernia, and many other villages in Moscow, Kostroma, Vladimir and Yaroslavl gubernias, which have now turned into factory towns. In our economic literature and statistics the industry organised in this way is usually split up into two parts: peasants who work in their homes, or in not particularly big workrooms, workshops, etc., are classed under “handicraft” industry, while the bigger workrooms and workshops are placed among the “factories and works” (and, moreover, quite fortuitously, since no definitely established and uniformly applied rules exist as to the separation of small establishments from big ones, of workrooms from manufactories, of workers occupied in their homes from workers occupied in the workshop of the capitalist). Naturally, such classification, which places some wage-workers on one side, and some masters who hire these very wage-workers (in addition to the workers in their establishments) on the other, is nonsense from the scientific viewpoint.

Let us illustrate this by detailed data regarding one of the “handicraft weaving” industries, namely, silk weaving in Vladimir Gubernia. The “silk industry” is a typical specimen of capitalist manufacture. Hand labour prevails. Of the total number of establishments the small ones constitute the majority (179 out of 313, or 57% of the total, have from 1 to 5 workers), but in greater part they are not independent and are far behind the big ones in their significance to the industry as a whole. Establishments with 20 to 150 workers constitute 8% of the total (25), but in them 41.5% of the aggregate number of workers are concentrated, and they account for 51% of the total output. Of the total number of workers in the industry (2,823) there are 2,092 wage-workers, i.e., 74.1%. “On the job we meet with division of labour both in wares and in individual operations.” Weavers are rarely able to make both “velvet” and “satin” (the two principal lines in this trade). “The division of labour into separate operations within the workshop is most strictly practised only in the big factories” (i.e., manufactories) “that employ wage-workers.” The fully independent proprietors number only 123, who alone buy the raw materials themselves and sell the finished article; they have 242 family workers and “employ 2,498 wage-workers, who in greater part are paid by the piece,” a total, consequently, of 2,740 workers, or 97% of the aggregate number of workers. It is thus clear that the distribution by these manufactory owners, through the medium of “middle-men” (workroom owners), of work to be done in the home is no special form of industry at all, but is merely one of the operations of capital in manufacture. Mr. Kharizomenov rightly observes that the “mass of small establishments (57%) alongside the small number of big ones (8%), and the insignificant number of workers employed per establishment (7 1/2) conceal the true character of the trade” (loc. cit., 39). The specialisation characteristic of manufacture is seen here clearly in the separation of the industrialists from agriculture (the land is abandoned, on the one hand by the impoverished weavers, and on the other by the big manufactory owners) and in the formation of a special type of industrial population, who live much more “decently” than do the agriculturists, and look down upon the muzhik (loc. cit., 106). Our factory statistics have always registered only a very casually selected fraction of this industry.

The “galloon industry” in Moscow Gubernia is capitalist manufacture organised in a quite analogous fashion. Such precisely is the case with regard to the printed calico industry in Kamyshin Uyezd, Saratov Gubernia. According to the Directory for 1890, there were here 31 “factories” with 4,250 workers and output totalling 265,000 rubles, while according to the List there was one “work distributing office” with 33 workers in the establishment and an output totalling 47,000 rubles. (In other words, in 1890 workers employed in the establishment and on the side were lumped together!) According to local investigators, in 1888 nearly 7,000 looms were engaged in producing printed calico, an output totalling 2 million rubles, and “the whole business is run by a few manufacturers,” who employ “handicraftsmen” too, including children of 6 and 7 years of age for a payment of 7 to 8 kopeks per day (Reports and Investigations, Vol. I). And so forth.

2) Other Branches of the Textile Industry. The Felt Trade.

To judge by official factory statistics, felt production shows a very poor development of “capitalism”: in all European Russia there are altogether 55 factories, with 1,212 workers and an output totalling 454,000 rubles (Directory for 1890). But these figures merely show a casually picked fragment of a widely developed capitalist industry. Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia occupies first place for the development of “factory” felt production, and in that gubernia the principal centre of the industry is the town of Arzamas and the suburb Viyezdnaya Sloboda (where there are 8 “factories” with 278 workers and an output totalling 120,000 rubles; in 1897 there were 3,221 inhabitants; and in the village of Krasnoye, 2,835). It is in the environs of these centres that “handicraft” felt-making is developed, in some 243 establishments, employing 935 workers, with an output totalling 103,847 rubles (Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, V). To illustrate clearly the economic organisation of felt-making in this district, let us try the graphic method and indicate by specific symbols the producers who occupy special places in the general structure of the industry.

It is clear, therefore, that the separation of “factory” and “handicraft” industry is purely artificial, that what we have before us is a single and integral structure of industry which fully fits into the concept of capitalist

(approximately)

manufacture. From the technical aspect it is hand production. The organisation of the work is that of co-operation based on division of labour, which is here observed in two forms: as to wares (some villages specialise in plain felt, others in boots, hats, socks, etc.), and as to individual operations (for example, the whole village of Vasilyev Vrag shapes hats and socks for the village of Krasnoye, where the semi-prepared article is finished, etc.). This is capitalist co-operation, for it is headed by big capital, which has created large manufactories and has brought under its sway (by an intricate web of economic relations) a mass of small establishments. The overwhelming majority of the producers have been transformed into workers performing one operation and producing for entrepreneurs under extremely insanitary conditions. The long standing of the industry and the fully established capitalist relations result in the separation of the industrialists from agriculture: in the village of Krasnoye agriculture is in utter ruin, and the life of the inhabitants differs from that of the agricultural population.

Quite analogous is the organisation of the felt industry in a number of other districts. In 363 village communities of Semyonov Uyezd in the same gubernia, the industry in 1889 was carried on by 3,180 households, with 4,038 persons working. Of 3,946 workers, only 752 worked for the market, 576 were wage-workers and 2,618 worked for masters on the basis, in greater part, of using the latter’s materials; 189 households gave out work to 1,805 households. The big owners have workshops with as many as 25 wage-workers, and buy wool to a value of some 10,000 rubles per year. The big owners are called thousanders ; their turnover runs to from 5,000 to 100,000 rubles; they have their own wool warehouses, and their own booths for the sale of wares. For Kazan Gubernia the List gives 5 felt “factories,” with 122 workers and an output totalling 48,000 rubles, as well as 60 outside workers. Evidently the latter are also included among the “handicraftsmen,” concerning whom we read that they often work for “buyers-up” and that there are establishments having 60 workers. Of 29 felt “factories” in Kostroma Gubernia, 28 are concentrated in Kineshma Uyezd, and have 593 workers employed in the establishments and 458 outside (List, pp. 68-70; two of the enterprises have only outside workers. Steam-engines already appear). From the Transactions of the Handicraft Commission (XV) we learn that out of a total of 3,908 wool-carders and felt-makers in this gubernia, 2,008 are concentrated in Kineshma Uyezd. The Kostroma felt-makers are in greater part dependent or work for wages in extremely insanitary workshops. In Kalyazin Uyezd, Tver Gubernia, we find, on the one hand, that home work is done for “factory owners” (List, 113), and, on the other, that precisely this uyezd is a centre of “handicraft” felt-makers; as many as 3,000 of them come from this uyezd, passing through the wasteland called “Zimnyak” (in the 60s it was the site of Alexeyev’s cloth mill), and forming “an enormous labour market of wool-carders and felt-makers.” In Yaroslavl Gubernia outside work for “factory owners is a]so done” (List, 115) and there are “handicraftsmen” who work for merchant proprietors, using the latter’s wool, etc.

3) The Hat-and-Cap and Hemp-and-Rope Trades

Above we gave statistics for the hat industry of Moscow Gubernia. They show that two-thirds of the total output and of the total number of workers are concentrated in 18 establishments, which have an average of 15.6 wage-workers. The “handicraft” hat-makers perform only part of the hat-making operations: they make the shapes, which are sold to Moscow merchants who have their own “finishing establishments”; on the other hand, “clippers” (women who clip the down) work at home for the “handicraft” hat-makers. Thus, all in all, we find here capitalist co-operation based on division of labour and entangled in a whole network of diverse forms of economic dependence. In the centre of the industry (the village of Klenovo, Podolsk Uyezd) the separation of the industrialists (mainly wage-workers) from agriculture is clearly to be seen, together with a rise in the level of the population’s requirements: they live “more decently,” dress in calico and even in cloth, buy samovars, abandon ancient customs, etc., thereby evoking the bitter complaints of the local admirers of old times. The new era even occasioned the appearance of migratory hat-makers.

A typical example of capitalist manufacture is the cap industry in the village of Molvitino, Bui Uyezd, Kostroma Gubernia. “The principal . . . occupation in the village of Molvitino and in . . . 36 hamlets is the cap industry.” Agriculture is being abandoned. Since 1861 the industry has greatly developed; sewing-machines have become widely used. In Molvitino 10 workshops are busy all year round with 5 to 25 male and 1 to 5 female workers each. “The best workshop . . . has a turnover of about 100,000 rubles per annum.” Work is also distributed to homes (for example, materials for the crowns are made by women in their homes). Division of labour cripples the workers, who work under the most insanitary conditions and usually contract tuberculosis. The lengthy existence of the industry (for over 200 years) has produced highly skilled craftsmen; the Molvitino craftsmen are known in the big cities and in the remote outer regions.

The centre of the hemp industry in the Medyn Uyezd, Kaluga Gubernia, is the village of Polotnyani Zavod. This is a large village (according to the census of 1897 it had 3,685 inhabitants) with a population that is landless and highly industrial (over 1,000 “handicraftsmen”); it is the centre of the “handicraft” industries of Medyn Uyezd. The hemp industry is organised in the following way: the big proprietors (of whom there are three, the biggest being Yerokhin) have workshops employing wage-workers and circulating capital of more or less considerable dimensions for purchasing raw materials. The hemp is combed in the “factory,” spun by spinners in their homes, and twisted both in the factory and in the home. It is warped in the factory and woven both in the factory and in the home. In 1878 a total of 841 “handicraftsmen” was counted in the hemp industry; Yerokhin is considered to be both a “handicraftsman” and a “factory owner,” employing 94-64 workers in 1890 and in 1894-1895; according to Reports and Investigations (Vol. II, p.187), “hundreds of peasants” work for him.

In Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, the rope industry is also centred in non-agricultural industrial villages, Nizhni Izbylets and Verkhni Izbylets in the Gorbatov Uyezd. According to Mr. Karpov (Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, Vol. VIII), the Gorbatov-Izbylets district is one large rope-making area; part of the inhabitants of the town of Gorbatov are also engaged in the industry, and the villages of Verkhni Izbylets and Nizhni Izbylets are, in fact, “almost part of the town of Gorbatov”; the inhabitants live like townspeople, drink tea every day, wear clothing bought in the shops, and eat white bread. Altogether, as many as two-thirds of the inhabitants of 32 villages are engaged in the industry, a total of 4,701 working (2,096 men and 2,605 women) with an output of about 1 1/2 million rubles. The industry has been in existence for nearly 200 years, and is now declining. It is organised as follows: all work for 29 proprietors, using the latter’s materials, are paid by the piece, are “totally dependent upon the proprietors” and work from 14 to 15 hours a day. According to Zemstvo statistics (1889) the industry employs 1,699 male workers (plus 558 females and males of non-working age). Of 1,648 working only 197 work for sale, 1,340 work for proprietors and 111 are wage-workers employed in the workshops of 58 proprietors. Of 1,288 allotment households, only 727, or a little over half, cultivate all their land themselves. Of 1,573 allotment-holding working persons, 306, or 19.4%, do not engage in agriculture at all. Turning to the question as to who these “proprietors” are, we must pass from the sphere of “handicraft” industry to that of “factory” industry. According to the List for 1894-95 there were two rope factories there, with 231 workers employed on the premises and 1,155 working outside, with an output totalling 423,000 rubles. Both these establishments have installed motors (which they did not have either in 1879 or in 1890), and we therefore clearly see here the transition from capitalist manufacture to capitalist machine industry, and the transformation of “handicraft” work distributors and buyers-up into real factory owners.

In Perm Gubernia the handicraft census of 1894-95 registered 68 peasant rope-and-string yards, with 343 workers (of whom 143 were hired) and an output totalling 115,000 rubles. These small establishments are headed by big manufactories, which are reckoned together, viz.: 6 owners employ 101 workers (91 hired) and have an output totalling 81,000 rubles. The system of production in these big establishments may serve as the most striking example of “serial manufacture” (as Marx calls it), i.e., the sort of manufacture in which different workers perform different consecutive operations in working up the raw material: 1) hemp scutching; 2) combing; 3) spinning; 4) coiling; 5) tarring; 6) winding on drum; 7) passing threads through perforated board; 8) passing threads through iron bush; 9) stranding of plaits, twisting and gathering of ropes.

The organisation of the hemp industry in Orel Gubernia is evidently similar: from among the considerable number of small peasant establishments big manufactories emerge, principally in the towns, and are included among the “factories and works” (according to the Directory for 1890 there were in Orel Gubernia 100 hemp-scutching factories, with 1,671 workers and an output totalling 795,000 rubles). The peasants work in the hemp industry “for merchants” (probably for the very same manufacturers), using the latter’s materials, at piece rates, the work being divided up into special operations: “scutchers” scutch the hemp; “spinners” spin it; “bearders” trim it, “wheelmen” turn the wheel. The work is very hard; many contract consumption and “rupture.” The dust is so thick that “unless accustomed you will not stay in it for a quarter of an hour.” The work is done in ordinary sheds from dawn to dusk, from May to September.

4) The Wood-Working Trades

The most typical example of capitalist manufacture in this sphere is the chest-making industry. According to the data, for instance, of the Perm investigators, “this industry is organised as follows: a few big proprietors, owning workshops that employ wage-workers, purchase materials, partly make the wares on their own premises, but mainly give out material to small workshops making parts, and in their own shops assemble them and, after finishing, send the ready article to market. Division of labour . . . is employed on the job extensively: the making of the entire chest is divided into ten or twelve operations, each separately performed by handicraftsmen. The organisation of the industry consists in the combination of workers performing one operation (Teilarbeiter, as they are called in Das Kapital ) under the command of capital.” This is heterogeneous manufacture (heterogene Manufaktur, as Marx calls it), in which the different workers do not perform consecutive operations in turning the raw material into the product, but make the various parts of the product, which are afterwards assembled. The preference of the capitalists for the domestic work of “handicraftsmen” is to be explained partly by the above mentioned character of manufacture, and partly (and mainly) by the cheaper labour of the home workers. Let us observe that the relatively big workshops in this industry are sometimes also included among “factories and works.”

In all probability, the chest-making industry is organised similarly in Vladimir Gubernia, in Murom Uyezd where, according to the List, there are 9 “factories” (all hand-operated), with 89 workers on the premises and 11 outside, and an output totalling 69,810 rubles.

The carriage industry, in Perm Gubernia, for example, is organised on similar lines: from among the mass of small establishments there emerge assembly workshops employing wage-workers; the small handicraftsmen are workers who make parts of the carriages both out of their own materials, and out of materials supplied by the “buyers-up” (i.e., owners of the assembly workshops.) We read about the Poltava “handicraft” carriage builders that in the suburb of Ardon there are workshops that employ wage-workers and also distribute work to homes (the bigger masters having as many as 20 outside workers). In Kazan Gubernia, division of labour as to wares is to be observed in the building of town carriages: some villages specialise in sleighs, others in wheeled vehicles, etc. “The town carriages, completely assembled in the villages (but without the metal work, wheels or shafts), are sent to Kazan merchant customers, who in turn send them to blacksmiths for the metal work. The carriages are then sent back again to the shops and workshops in the town, where they are finished off, i.e., are upholstered and painted. . . . Kazan, where town carriages were formerly iron-mounted, gradually passed this work on to handicraftsmen, who work at home for a smaller payment than do the town craftsmen....” Hence, capital prefers to distribute work to home workers because this reduces the cost of labour-power. The organisation of the carriage industry, as is evident from the data quoted, constitutes, in the majority of cases, a system of handicraftsmen making parts, who are under the sway of capital.

The large industrial village of Vorontsovka, Pavlovsk Uyezd, Voronezh Gubernia (9,541 inhabitants in 1897), constitutes, as it were, a single manufactory of wooden articles (Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, etc., Vol. IX, article by Rev. M. Popov). Over 800 houses are engaged in the industry (as well as some households in the suburb of Alexandrovka, which has over 5,000 inhabitants). They make carts, tarantasses, wheels, chests, etc., to a total of about 267,000 rubles. Less than one-third are independent masters; hired workers in masters’ workshops are rare. The majority work to order for peasant merchants at piece rates. The workers are in debt to the proprietors and are worn out by arduous toil: the people are growing feebler. The inhabitants of the suburb are industrial, not of the rural type, and scarcely engage in agriculture at all (except to work vegetable plots), since their allotments are miserably small. The industry has been long in existence, diverting the population from agriculture and increasingly widening the rift between the rich and the poor. The people subsist on meagre food; they dress “more smartly than before,” “but beyond their means,” in clothing that is entirely bought. “The population has succumbed to the spirit of industry and trade.” “Nearly all who have no craft carry on some trading. . . . Under the influence of industry and trade, the peasant has, generally speaking, become more unreserved, and this has made him more developed and resourceful.”

The celebrated wooden-spoon industry of the Semyonov Uyezd, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, is close to capitalist manufacture in its organisation. True, there are no big workshops standing out from among the mass of small workshops and dominating them, but we find a deeply-rooted division of labour and the complete subjection of the mass of part-job workers to capital. Before it is ready, the spoon passes through no less than 10 hands, the buyers-up getting some of the operations done by specially hired workers or giving them out to specialist workers (for example, for varnishing); some of the villages specialise in particular operations (for example, the village of Dyakovo specialises in spoon finishing to the order of the buyer-up, at piece rates; the villages of Khvostikovo, Dianovo and Zhuzhelka specialise in varnishing, etc.). The buyers-up purchase the timber wholesale in the Samara and other gubernias, where they send parties of hired workers; they own warehouses for raw material and manufactured goods, supply the most valuable material to handicraftsmen for processing, etc. The mass of workers doing part jobs merge into a single, complex mechanism of production, entirely under the sway of capital. “It is all the same to the spoon-makers whether they work for hire at the master’s cost and on his premises, or are occupied in their own cottages, for in this industry, as in others, everything has been weighed, measured and counted. The spoon-maker never earns more than just enough to keep body and soul together.” It is quite natural that under such conditions the capitalists who dominate the whole trade are in no hurry to open their own workshops, and the industry, based on hand skill and traditional division of labour, stagnates in its seclusion and immobility. Tied to the land, the “handicraftsmen” seem to have become petrified in their routine: as in 1879, so in 1889, they still count money in the old style, in banknotes and not in silver.

The toy industry in Moscow Gubernia is headed similarly by establishments of the capitalist-manufactory type. Of 481 workshops, 20 have over 10 workers each. Division of labour, both as to wares and as to individual operations, is practised on a very wide scale, enormously raising the productivity of labour (at the cost of crippling the worker). For example, it is estimated that a small workshop yields a return of 26% of the selling price, and a big workshop, one of 58%. Of course, the fixed capital of the big proprietors is also much larger; technical devices are met with (for example, drying sheds). The centre of the industry is a non-agricultural township, the suburb of Sergiyevsky (where there are 1,055 workers out of a total of 1,398, with an output to the amount of 311,000 rubles out of a total of 405,000 rubles; the population, according to the 1897 census, numbers 15,155). The author of the article on this industry, referring to the prevalence of small workshops, etc., considers it more, but still not very, likely that the industry will develop into manufacture rather than into factory industry. “In the future, too,” he says, “the small producers will always be able to compete more or less successfully with large-scale production” (loc. cit., 93). The author forgets that in manufacture the technical basis is always the same hand-production that obtains in the small industries; that the division of labour can never be such a decisive advantage that it will entirely eliminate the small producers, particularly if the latter resort to such means as lengthening the working day, etc.; and that manufacture is never in a position to embrace the whole of production, but remains a mere superstructure over the mass of small establishments.

5) The Processing of Livestock Produce. [The Leather and Fur Trades]

The most extensive areas of the leather industry present particularly striking examples of the complete merging of “handicraft” and factory industry, examples of capitalist manufacture highly developed (in depth and in breadth). What is characteristic is the fact that the gubernias which are conspicuous for the size of their “factory” leather industry (Vyatka, Nizhni-Novgorod, Perm and Tver) are marked by a particular development of “handicraft” industries in this sphere.

In the village of Bogorodskoye, Gorbatov Uyezd, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, there were, according to the Directory for 1890, 58 “factories” with 392 workers and an output totalling 547,000 rubles; according to the List for 1894-95 there were 119 “works,” with 1,499 workers on the premises and 205 outside, and with an output totalling 934,000 rubles (the latter figures covering only the processing of livestock produce, the principal local industry). But these data deal only with the top levels of capitalist manufacture. Mr. Karpov in 1879 computed in this village and its environs over 296 establishments, with 5,669 workers (a large number of whom worked at home for capitalists), and with an output totalling about 1,490,000 rubles in the following industries: tanning, shingle-gluing, basket-weaving (for packing goods), harness-making, horse-collar-making, mitten-making and, standing by itself, pottery. The Zemstvo census of 1889 listed 4,401 industrialists for this district, and of 1,842 workers for whom detailed information is given, 1,119 work for hire in other people’s workshops and 405 work at home for masters. “Bogorodskoye, with its population of 8,000, is a huge tannery in continuous operation.” To be more precise, it is a “serial” manufactory controlled by a few big capitalists who buy the raw materials, tan the hides, and turn them into a variety of articles, hiring several thousand absolutely propertyless workers for the job and ruling over the small establishments. This industry has had a very long existence, since the 17th century; particularly memorable in the industry’s history are the Sheremetevs (beginning of the 19th century), landlords who helped considerably to develop the industry and, incidentally, protected the proletariat, which came into existence here long ago, from the local rich. After 1861 the industry greatly developed, and particularly did big establishments grow at the expense of the small ones; centuries of industrial activity produced from among the population remarkably skilled craftsmen who have carried the trade all over Russia. The firmly-rooted capitalist relations have led to the separation of industry from agriculture: hardly any farming is done in Bogorodskoye village itself, which, on the contrary, divorces neighbouring peasants who move into this “town” from the land. Mr. Karpov notes in this village “a complete absence of peasant characteristics among the inhabitants,” so that “you would never think you were in a village and not a town.” This village leaves Gorbatov and all the other uyezd towns of Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia far behind, with the exception, perhaps, of Arzamas. It is “one of the considerable commercial and industrial centres in the gubernia, and its industry and commerce run into the millions.” “The radius of the industrial and commercial influence of Bogorodskoye is very wide; but most closely connected with the industry of Bogorodskoye is that of its environs within a radius of 10 to 12 versts. These industrial environs are, as it were, a continuation of Bogorodskoye itself.” “The inhabitants of Bogorodskoye do not in the least resemble the ordinary, raw muzhiks: they are artisans of the burgher type, shrewd, experienced people, who look down on the peasants. The manner of life and the ethical standards of the Bogorodskoye inhabitants are completely urban.” To this we must add that the industrial villages of Gorbatov Uyezd are marked by a relatively high level of literacy among the population. Thus, the percentage of literate and student men and women is, in the villages of Pavlovo, Bogorodskoye and Vorsma, 37.8% and 20% respectively, as against 21.5% and 4.4% in the rest of the uyezd (see Zemstvo statistical Material ).

Quite analogous (only on a smaller scale) are the relations in the leather-processing industries of the villages of Katunki and Gorodets (Balakhna Uyezd), Bolshoye Murashkino (Knyaginin Uyezd), Yurino (Vasil Uyezd), and Tubanayevka, Spasskoye, Vatras and Latyshikha in the same uyezd. These are similar non-agricultural centres with a “ring” of surrounding agricultural villages, and with similar diverse industries and numerous small establishments (and also workers in the home) subordinated to big entrepreneurs, whose capitalist workshops are occasionally included among “factories and works.” Without going into statistical details, which will provide nothing new compared with what has already been said, let us merely quote the following extremely interesting description of the village of Katunki:

“A certain patriarchal simplicity in the relations between masters and workmen, which, however, is not so noticeable at first sight and is, unfortunately (?), disappearing increasingly every year . . . testifies to the handicraft character of the industries (?). It is only recently that the factory character both of the industries and of the population has begun to be observed, under the influence, in particular, of the town, intercourse with which has been facilitated by the inauguration of the steamboat service. Today the village looks like a regular industrial township: there is no sign of agriculture whatever, the houses are built close together as in the towns; the fine brick houses of the rich, and alongside of them the miserable hovels of the poor; the long wooden and brick buildings of the factories crowded in the middle of the village — all this sharply distinguishes Katunki from the neighbouring villages and clearly points to the industrial character of the local population. The inhabitants themselves possess features of character that also call to mind the type of “factory hand” who has already taken shape in Russia: a certain showiness in house furniture, in clothes and manners, spendthrift habits of life in most cases, and little care for the morrow, a forwardness and often affectation in speech, a certain superciliousness towards the country yokel — all these features are possessed by them in common with all Russian factory people.”

In the town of Arzamas, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, the “factory” statistics listed in 1890 a total of 6 tanneries, employing 64 workers (Directory ); this is only a small fraction of the capitalist manufacture which embraces the fur, boot-making and other industries. The same factories employ workers in the home, both in the town of Arzamas (in 1878, estimated at 400) and in 5 suburban villages, where out of the 360 furrier households, 330 work for Arzamas merchants, using their materials and working 14 hours a day for 6 to 9 rubles per month; that is why the furriers are pallid, feeble and degenerating folk. In the suburb of Viyezdnaya Sloboda, of the 600 boot-maker households, 500 work for masters, from whom they receive the cut-out leather. The industry is of long standing, being about 200 years old, and is still growing and developing. The inhabitants hardly engage in agriculture at all; their whole manner of life is purely urban, and they live “in grand style.” The same applies to the furrier villages mentioned above, the inhabitants of which “look down with disdain upon the peasant and call him a ‘country bumpkin’.”

We find exactly the same thing in Vyatka Gubernia. The Vyatka and Slobodskoi uyezds are centres both of “factory” and of “handicraft” leather and fur trades. In the Vyatka Uyezd, the handicraft tanneries are concentrated on the outskirts of the town and “supplement” the industrial activities of the big works, for example, by working for the big owners; working for the latter also, in the majority of cases, are the handicraft harness-makers and glue makers. The fur factory owners have hundreds working for them in the home, sewing sheepskins, etc. This is just a single capitalist manufactory with branches: sheepskin dressing and sheepskin-coat-making, leather and harness, etc. Still more striking are the relations existing in the Slobodskoi Uyezd (the centre of the industries is the suburb of Demyanka); here we see a small number of big factory owners at the head of handicraft tanners (numbering 870), boot- and mitten-makers (855), sheepskin-dressers (940), and tailors (309 make short sheepskin coats to order from capitalists). Generally speaking, such organisation of the production of leather goods is evidently very widespread: thus, in the town of Sarapul, Vyatka Gubernia, the List gives 6 tanneries, also making footwear, which employ, in addition to 214 workers on the premises, 1,080 outside workers (p. 495). What would become of our “handicrafts men,” those representatives of “people’s” industry who are depicted in such bright hues by all sorts of Manilovs, if all the Russian merchants and factory owners were to compute with equal detail and precision the outside workers employed by them?

Reference should be made here to the industrial village of Rasskazovo, Tambov Uyezd, Tambov Gubernia (population in 1897 was 8,283), a centre both of “factory” industry (cloth mills, soap-works, tanneries and distilleries) and of “handicraft” industry, the latter being closely connected with the former; and to the industries: tanning, felt-making (as many as 70 masters, and establishments employing from 20 to 30 workers), glue-making, boot-making, stocking knitting (there is not a household where stockings are not knit from wool that “buyers-up” give out by weight), etc. Near this village is the suburb of Belaya Polyana (300 households), celebrated for industries of the same kind. In Morshansk Uyezd, the centre of the handicraft industries is the village of Pokrovskoye-Vasilyevskoye, which is also the centre of factory industry (see Directory and Reports and Investigations, Vol. III). In Kursk Gubernia, noteworthy as industrial villages and centres of “handicraft” industries are the suburbs: Veliko-Mikhailovka (Novy Oskol Uyezd; population in 1897 was 11,853), Borisovka (Graivoron Uyezd — 18,071 inhabitants), Tomarovka (Belgorod Uyezd, 8,716 inhabitants), Miropolye (Sudzha Uyezd, over 10,000 inhabitants. See Reports and Investigations, Vol. I, Information for 1888-1889). In the same villages you will also find leather “works” (see Directory for 1890). The principal “handicraft” industry is leather and boot-making. It arose as far back as the first half of the 18th century and reached the peak of its development in the 60s of the 19th century having become “a stable organisation of a purely commercial character.” The whole business was monopolised by contractors, who bought the leather and gave it out to be processed by handicraftsmen. The railways destroyed this monopoly character of capital, and the capitalist contractors transferred their capital to more profitable undertakings. Today it is organised as follows: there are about 120 big entrepreneurs; they own workshops where wage-workers are employed, and also distribute work to homes; there are as many as 3,000 small independent masters (who, however, buy their leather from the big ones); there are 400 people who work at home (for the big masters), and as many wage-workers; then there are the apprentices. The total number of boot-makers is over 4,000. In addition, there are handicraft potters, icon-case makers, icon painters, table-cloth weavers, etc.

A highly characteristic and typical example of capitalist manufacture is the squirrel-fur industry in Kargopol Uyezd, Olonets Gubernia, described with such knowledge of the facts, and with truthful and artless presentation of the whole life of the industrial population by a craftsman and teacher in the Transactions of the Handicraft Commission (Vol. IV). According to his description (in 1878), the industry has existed since the beginning of the 19th century: 8 masters employ 175 workers, in addition to which they have as many as 1,000 seamstresses and some 35 families of furriers working for them at home (in different villages), 1,300 to 1,500 persons in all, with an output totalling 336,000 rubles. As a point of interest, it should be noted that when this was a flourishing industry it was not included in the “factory” statistics. The Directory for 1879 makes no mention of it. But when it began to decline the statistics included it. The Directory for 1890 listed for the town and the uyezd of Kargopol 7 works, with 121 workers and an output totalling 50,000 rubles, whereas the List gave 5 works, with 79 workers (plus 57 outside) and an output totalling 49,000 rubles. The order of things prevailing in this branch of capitalist manufacture is very instructive as a specimen of what goes on in our age-old, purely native “handicraft industries,” that have been left stranded in one of Russia’s numerous rural backwoods. The craftsmen work 15 hours a day in a very unhealthy atmosphere and earn 8 rubles per month, less than 60 or 70 rubles per year. The masters’ incomes amount to about 5,000 rubles per annum. The relations between masters and workers are “patriarchal”: according to ancient custom, the master gives the workers kvass and salt gratis, which they have to beg from his cook. As a mark of gratitude to the master (for “giving” them work) the workers come, without pay, to pull squirrel tails, and also clean furs after work. The workers live in the workshop all the week, and the masters knock them about, seemingly in a joke (p. 218, loc. cit.), make them do all sorts of jobs, such as raking hay, shovelling snow, fetching water, rinsing clothes, etc. Labour is astonishingly cheap in Kargopol itself, and the peasants in the vicinity “are ready to work for next to nothing.” Work is done by hand, there is systematic division of labour, and there is a lengthy apprenticeship (8 to 12 years); the lot of the apprentices can easily be imagined.

6) The Remaining Livestock Processing Trades

A particularly noteworthy example of capitalist manufacture is the celebrated boot industry of the village of Kimry, Korcheva Uyezd, Tver Gubernia, and its environs. The industry is a very old one, having existed since the 16th century. Since the Reform, it has continued to grow and develop. In the early 70s Pletnev counted 4 volosts in the area covered by this industry, but in 1888 the area included 9 volosts. Basically the organisation of the industry is as follows. It is headed by the owners of big workshops employing wage-workers; they distribute the cut-out leather to be made up by outside workers. Mr. Pletnev counted 20 such masters, employing 124 adults and 60 boys, with an output totalling 818,000 rubles, while the number of workers occupied at home for these capitalists is estimated by the author approximately at 1,769 adults and 1,833 boys. Then come the small masters, each with 1 to 5 wage-workers and 1 to 3 boys. These masters dispose of their goods mainly in the village market in Kimry; they number 224 and have 460 adults and 301 boys working for them; output totals 187,000 rubles. Hence, there are 244 masters altogether, employing 2,353 adults (of whom 1,769 work at home) and 2,194 boys (of whom 1,833 work at home), with an output totalling 1,005,000 rubles. Further, there are workshops which do various individual operations: currying (skin-cleaning with scraper); chipping (gluing of chips left from currying); special carting (4 masters, with 16 employees and up to 50 horses); special carpentry (box-making), etc. Pletnev calculated the total output at 4.7 million rubles for the whole district. In 1881 the number of handicraftsmen was computed at 10,638, and with migrants, 26,000, with an output totalling 3.7 million rubles. As to conditions of labour, it is important to note the excessively long working day (14 to 15 hours) and the extremely insanitary working conditions, payment in goods, etc. The centre of the industry, Kimry village, “is more like a small town” (Reports and Investigations, I, 224); the inhabitants are poor agriculturists, and are engaged in their industry all the year round; only the rural handicraftsmen give up the industry during haymaking. The houses in Kimry village are urban, and the inhabitants are distinguished for their urban habits of life (such as “showiness”). Until very recently this industry was not included in “factory” statistics, probably because the masters “readily style themselves handicraftsmen” (ibid., 228). The List has for the first time included 6 boot workshops in Kimry district, with 15 to 40 workers each on the premises, and with no outside workers. Of course, it contains no end of gaps.

Manufacture also includes the button industry of Moscow Gubernia, Bronnitsi and Bogorodskoye uyezds — the making of buttons from hoofs and rams’ horns. Engaged in this industry are 487 workers, employed in 52 establishments; the output totals 264,000 rubles. Establishments with fewer than 5 employees number 16; those with 5 to 10 — 26; those with 10 and more — 10. Masters who do without wage-workers number only 10; these work for big masters, using the latter’s materials. Only the big industrialists (who, as is evident from the figures given, should have from 17 to 21 workers per establishment) are quite independent. It is they, evidently, who figure in the Directory as “factory owners” (see p. 291: 2 establishments with an output totalling 4,000 rubles and with 73 workers). This is “serial manufacture”; the horns are first steamed in what is called the “smithy” (a wooden hut with a furnace); then they are passed on to the workshop where they are cut up, after which they go to a stamping press, where the pattern is imprinted, and, lastly, are finished and polished on lathes. The industry has its apprentices. The working day is 14 hours. Payment in goods is a regular thing. The relations between masters and men are patriarchal, as seen in the following: the master calls the workers “boys,” and the pay-book is called the “boys’ book”; when the master pays the workers, he lectures them and never grants in full their “requests” for payment.

The horn industry, which is included in our table of small industries (Appendix I to Chapter V, Industries Nos. 31 and 33), is also of the same type. “Handicraftsmen” employing dozens of wage-workers figure also in the Directory as “factory owners” (p. 291). Division of labour is practised; work is also given out to home workers (horn trimmers). The centre of the industry in Bogorodsk Uyezd is the big village of Khoteichi, where agriculture is receding into the background (population in 1897 was 2,494). The Moscow Zemstvo publication stated quite rightly: Handicraft Industries of Bogorodsk Uyezd, Moscow Gubernia, in 1890, that this village “is nothing but a large comb manufactory ” (p. 24, our italics). In 1890, over 500 industrialists were counted in this village, with an output of from 3.5 to 5.5 million combs. “More often than not, the horn dealer is also a buyer-up of finished goods, and in many cases a big comb-maker as well.” The position of those makers who are compelled to take horns “at piece rates” is particularly bad: “their position is actually worse than that of the wage-workers in the big establishments.” Dire need compels them to exploit the labour of their whole families beyond measure, to lengthen their working day and to put juveniles to work. “During the winter, work in Khoteichi starts at one o’clock in the morning, and it is hard to say for certain when it ends in the cottage of the ‘independent’ craftsman doing ‘piece-work.’” Payment in goods is widely practised. “This system, eliminated with such difficulty from the factories, is still in full force in the small handicraft establishments” (27). Probably, the horn goods industry is organised on similar lines in Kadnikov Uyezd, Vologda Gubernia, in the area of Ustye village (known as “Ustyanshchina”), where there are 58 hamlets. Mr. V. Borisov (Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, Vol. IX) counts 388 handicraftsmen here, with an output totalling 45,000 rubles; all the handicraftsmen work for capitalists, who buy horns in St. Petersburg and tortoise-shell abroad.

At the head of the brush industry in Moscow Gubernia (see Appendix I to Chapter V, Industry No. 20) we find big establishments with a large number of wage-workers and with systematic division of labour. It is interesting to note at this point the changes that took place in the organisation of this industry between 1879 and 1895 (see Moscow Zemstvo publication: The Brush Industry According to the Investigation of 1895 ). Some well-to-do industrialists went to Moscow to carry on the industry there. The number of industrialists increased 70%, the increase being particularly large in the number of women (+170%) and girls (+159%). The number of big workshops with wage-workers diminished: the proportion of establishments with wage-workers dropped from 62% to 39%. This was due to the fact that the masters began to distribute work to be done in the home. The introduction into general use of the drilling machine (for making holes in brush blocks) accelerated and facilitated one of the main processes in brushmaking. The demand for “setters” (craftsmen who “set” bristle in the block) increased; and this operation, which became increasingly specialised, fell to the lot of women, their labour being cheaper. The women began to work at home setting bristle, and were paid by the piece. Thus, the growing resort to domestic industry was caused in this case by progress in technique (drilling machine), progress in division of labour (the women do nothing but set bristle), and progress in capitalist exploitation (the labour of women and girls being cheaper). This example shows very clearly that domestic industry by no means eliminates the concept of capitalist manufacture, but, on the contrary, is sometimes even a sign of its further development.

7) The Processing of Mineral Products

In the section relating to ceramics we get an example of capitalist manufacture in the industries of the Gzhel district (an area of 25 villages Bronnitsi and Bogorodskoye uyezds, Moscow Gubernia). The relevant statistics are given in our table of small industries (Appendix I to Chapter V, Industries Nos. 15, 28 and 37). From these data it is evident that despite the enormous differences between the three Gzhel industries: pottery, porcelain and decorative, these differences disappear as we pass from one grade of establishment to another in each industry, and we get a series of workshops of successively increasing dimensions. Here are the average numbers of workers per establishment according to grade in these three industries: 2.4 — 4.3 — 8.4 — 4.4. — 7.9 — 13.5 — 18 — 69 — 226.4. In other words, the workshops range from the very smallest to the very biggest. There is no doubt that the big establishments belong to the category of capitalist manufacture (inasmuch as they have not introduced machines, have not developed into factories); what is important, however, is not only this, but also that the small establishments are connected with the big ones ; that we have a single system of industry here and not separate workshops of one or other type of economic organisation. “Gzhel constitutes a single economic whole” (Isayev, loc. cit., 138), and the big workshops in the district have grown slowly and gradually out of the small ones (ibid., 121). The work is done by hand, with considerable division of labour : among the potters we find wheel hands (specialising in different sorts of pottery), kilnmen, etc., and sometimes special workers for preparing colours. In the manufacture of porcelain-ware division of labour is extremely detailed: crushers, wheel hands, feeders, kilnmen, decorators, etc. The wheel hands even specialise in the various kinds of porcelain ware (cf. Isayev, loc. cit., 140: in one case division of labour increases productivity of labour by 25%). The decorators’ shops work for the porcelain makers and are, therefore, only departments of the latter’s manufactories, performing a special detailed operation. It is characteristic of developed capitalist manufacture that physical strength itself becomes a specialty. Thus, in Gzhel, some of the villages are engaged (almost to a man) in clay digging; for heavy work not requiring special skill (grinding), workers from the Tula and Ryazan gubernias are employed almost exclusively, being superior in strength and vigour to the not very robust Gzhelians. Payment in goods is widely practised. Agriculture is in a bad way. “The Gzhelians are a degenerating race” (Isayev, 168) — weak-chested, narrow-shouldered, feeble; the decorators lose their sight at an early age, etc. Capitalist division of labour breaks up the worker and deforms him. The working day is from 12 to 13 hours.

8) The Metal Trades. The Pavlovo Industries

The celebrated Pavlovo lock and cutlery industries cover the whole of Gorbatov Uyezd, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, and Murom Uyezd, Vladimir Gubernia. These industries originated very long ago. Smirnov states that as far back as 1621 there were (according to the cadastres) 11 smithies in Pavlovo. By the middle of the 19th century these industries constituted a far-flung network of fully developed capitalist relations. After the Reform, the industries in this district continued to develop and expand. According to the Zemstvo census of 1889, in Gorbatov Uyezd 13 volosts and 119 villages were engaged in industry; a total of 5,953 households, 6,570 male workers (54% of the total number working in these villages) and 2,741 old men, juveniles and women, 9,311 persons in all. In the Murom Uyezd, Mr. Grigoryev in 1881 registered 6 industrial volosts, 66 villages, 1,545 households and 2,205 male workers (39% of the total number working in these villages). Not only were large, non-agricultural industrial villages formed (Pavlovo, Vorsma), but even the surrounding peasants were diverted from agriculture: outside of Pavlovo and Vorsma, in Gorbatov Uyezd, 4,492 persons were engaged in industries, of whom 2,357, or more than half did not engage in agriculture. Life in centres like Pavlovo has become quite urban and has given rise to incomparably more developed requirements, more cultured environment, clothes, manner of life, etc., than among the surrounding “raw” peasants.

Turning to the economic organisation of the Pavlovo industries, we must first of all note the indubitable fact that the “handicraftsmen” are headed by the most typical capitalist manufactories. For example, in the Zavyalovs’ establishment (which already in the 60s employed over 100 workers at the bench and has now introduced a steam engine) a penknife passes through 8 or 9 hands: the forger, blade-maker, handle-maker (usually an outside worker), hardener, facer, polisher, finisher, grinder and marker. This is extensive capitalist co-operation based on division of labour, with a considerable number of the workers performing individual operations employed at home and not in the capitalist’s workshop. Here are facts given by Mr. Labzin (in 1866) on the bigger establishments in the villages of Pavlovo, Vorsma and Vacha, covering all branches of production in this district: 15 proprietors had 500 workers occupied on the premises and 1,134 workers outside, making a total of 1,634, with an output totalling 351,700 rubles. How far this description of economic relations is applicable to the whole district at the present time may be seen from the following data:

Thus, the organisation of the industry as outlined by us prevails in all the districts. All in all, about three-fifths of the total number of workers are employed capitalistically. Here too, consequently, we find manufacture predominating in the general structure of the industry and holding masses of workers under its sway, without, however, being able to eradicate small production. The relative tenacity of the latter is fully explained, firstly, by the fact that in some branches of the Pavlovo industry mechanised production has not yet been introduced at all (for instance, in lock-making); and, secondly, by the fact that the small producer tries to save himself from sinking by resorting to means that cause him to sink far lower than the wage-worker. These means are: lengthening the working day, and reducing the standard of living and of general requirements. “The earnings of the group of handicraftsmen who work for proprietors are less subject to fluctuation” (Grigoryev, loc. cit., 65); at Zavyalovs’, for example, the lowest-paid worker is the handle-maker; “he works at home, and that is why he is satisfied with lower earnings” (68). The handicraftsmen who work “for factory owners” are “able to earn somewhat more than the average earnings of the one who takes his products to the market. Larger earnings are particularly noticeable among the workers who live in the factories” (70). The working day in the “factories” is from 14 1/2 to 15 hours, with a maximum of 16 hours. “The working day of the home-working handicraftsmen, on the other hand, is never less than 17 hours and sometimes as much as 18 and even 19 hours” (ibid.). It would not be in the least surprising if the law of June 2, 1897 caused an increase here in home-work; it is high time these “handicraftsmen” directed their efforts towards compelling the proprietors to organise factories! Let the reader also recall the notorious Pavlovo “loan-purchase,” “exchange,” “wife-pawning” and similar forms of bondage and personal degradation which grind down the quasi-independent small producer. Fortunately, rapidly developing large-scale machine industry does not so readily tolerate these worst forms of exploitation as manufacture does. Running ahead a little, let us quote data on the growth of factory production in this district.

We thus see that ever-increasing numbers of workers are being drawn into large establishments, which are going over to the use of machines.

9) Other Metal Trades

The industries of Bezvodnoye village, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia and Uyezd also come under the head of capitalist manufacture. This is also an industrial village, the majority of whose inhabitants do not engage in agriculture at all, and which serves as the centre of an industrial area of several villages. According to the Zemstvo census of 1889 (Material, Vol. VIII, Nizhni-Novgorod, 1895), in the Bezvodnoye Volost (581 households) 67.3% of the households cultivated no land, 78.3% had no horses, 82.4% engaged in industries, and 57.7% had literate persons and schoolchildren in the family (as against an average for the uyezd of 44.6%). The Bezvodnoye industries are devoted to the production of various metal goods: chains, fish-hooks, and metal fabrics; the output was estimated at 2 1/2 million rubles in 1883 and 1 1/2 million rubles in 1888-89. The organisation of the industry is as follows: work for proprietors, using their materials, which is distributed among a number of workers performing single operations and done partly in the employers’ workshops and partly in the home. For example, in the making of fish-hooks the various operations are performed by “benders,” “cutters” (who work in a special shed) and “pointers” (women and children who sharpen the hook-points in their homes); all these work at piece rates for the capitalist, while the bender gives out work on his own account to the cutters and pointers. “Metal wire is now done by horse-driven windlasses; formerly the wire was drawn by blind men, who were brought here in large numbers. . . .” One of the “specialities” of capitalist manufacture! “The conditions under which this work is done differ very much from those in all the other trades. People have to work in a stifling atmosphere filled with the harmful vapours emanating from accumulated horse dung.” Organised on the same lines of capitalist manufacture are the screen, the pin, and the gold-thread industries. In the last-named industry at the beginning of the 80s there were 66 establishments, employing 670 workers (of whom 79% were hired), with an output totalling 368,500 rubles; some of these capitalist establishments were occasionally also included among the “factories and works.”

The locksmith industries of the Burmakino Volost (and surrounding volosts) of Yaroslavl Gubernia and Uyezd are probably organised on the same lines. At all events, here we observe the same division of labour (blacksmiths, blowers and locksmiths), the same extensive development of wage-labour (of 307 smithies in the Burmakino Volost, 231 employ wage-workers), the same predominance of big capital over all these detail workers (the buyers-up are at the top; the blacksmiths work for them, and the locksmiths for the blacksmiths), the same combination of the buying up of wares with the production of wares in capitalist workshops, some of which are occasionally included among the “factories and works.”

In the appendix to the preceding chapter, statistics were given on the tray and the copper industries of Moscow Gubernia (the latter in the district known as “Zagarye”). The data show that wage-labour plays a predominant part in these industries, that the industries are headed by large workshops employing an average of from 18 to 23 wage-workers per establishment, with an average output of from 16,000 to 17,000 rubles. If we add to this that division of labour is very widely practised here, it will be clear that what we have is capitalist manufacture. “The small industrial units, which are an anomaly under the existing conditions of technique and division of labour, can only hold out alongside the big workshops by lengthening the working day to the utmost” (Isayev, loc. cit., p. 33) — among the tray-makers, for example, for as long as 19 hours. The ordinary working day here is from 13 to 15 hours; with the small proprietors it is from 16 to 17 hours. Payment in goods is widely practised (both in 1876 and in 1890). Let us add that the lengthy existence of this industry (it arose at the beginning of the 19th century, at the latest) and extensive specialisation have, in this case too, produced highly skilled workers; the Zagarians are famed for their craftsmanship. Specialities have also sprung up in the industry which need no preliminary training and are within the grasp of even under-age workers. “This very possibility,” Mr. Isayev rightly observes, “of becoming an under-age worker at once and acquiring a trade, as it were, without having to study, indicates that the handicraft spirit, which demands the training of labour-power, is disappearing; the simplicity of many of the detailed operations is a symptom of the transition of handicraft to manufacture” (loc. cit., 34). Let us only observe that to a certain degree the “handicraft spirit” always remains in manufacture, for its basis is the same hand production.

10) The Jewellery, Samovar and Accordion Trades

The village of Krasnoye, Kostroma Gubernia and Uyezd, is one of the industrial villages usually held up as centres of our “people’s” capitalist manufacture. This large village (in 1897 it had 2,612 inhabitants) is purely urban in character; the inhabitants live like townspeople and (with very few exceptions) do not engage in agriculture. Krasnoye is the centre of the jewellery industry which covers 4 volosts and 51 villages (including Sidorovskoye Volost of Nerekhta Uyezd), and in them 735 households and about 1,706 workers. “The principal representatives of industry,” said Mr. Tillo, “are undoubtedly the big industrialists of the village of Krasnoye: the Pushilovs, Mazovs, Sorokins, Chulkovs and other merchants. They buy materials (gold, silver and copper), employ craftsmen, buy up finished articles, distribute orders for work to be done in the home, supply samples, etc.” (2043). The big industrialists have their workshops, so-called “rabotorni” (laboratories), where the metal is smelted and forged, then to be given out for finishing to “handicraftsmen”; they have technical appliances, such as “pretsi” (presses and dies for stamping), “punches” (for embossing designs), “rollers” (for stretching the metal), benches, etc. Division of labour is widely practised: “Nearly every article passes through several hands in an established order in the course of manufacture. For example, in the making of ear-rings, the master industrialist first sends the silver to his own workshop, where part of it is rolled and part drawn into wire; then on receipt of an order the material is given to a craftsman who, if he has a family, divides the work among several persons; one uses a punch to cut the silver plates into the shapes for the ear-rings, another bends the wire into the rings with which the ear-rings are attached to the ears, a third solders these parts, and, lastly, a fourth polishes the finished ear-rings. None of this work is difficult, or requires much training; very often the soldering and the polishing are done by women and by children of 7 or 8 years of age” (2041). Here, too, the working day is excessively long, usually as much as 16 hours. Payment in provisions is common.

The following statistics (published quite recently by a local assay inspector) clearly illustrate the economic structure of the industry:

“Both the first groups (about two-thirds of the total number of craftsmen) should be classed as home-working factory workers rather than as handicraftsmen.” In the top group “wage-labour occurs more and more frequently. . . . The craftsmen have begun to buy articles made by others”; in the upper strata of this group “buying-up predominates,” and “four of the buyers-up have no workshops at all.”

The samovar and accordion industries in Tula town and environs are highly typical examples of capitalist manufacture. Generally speaking, the “handicraft” industries in this district have a long history, dating back to the 15th century. They evidenced a particularly rapid development in the middle of the 17th century; Mr. Borisov considers that the second period in the development of the Tula industries then began. In 1637 the first iron foundry was built (by the Dutchman Vinius). The Tula gunsmiths formed a separate smiths’ suburb, constituted a separate social estate, enjoying special rights and privileges. In 1696 the first iron foundry was erected in Tula by a famous Tula blacksmith, and the industry spread to the Urals and Siberia. Then began the third period in the history of the Tula industries. The craftsmen set up their own workshops and taught the trade to surrounding peasants. In the 1810s and 1820s the first samovar factories were started. “By 1825 there were in Tula 43 different factories that belonged to gunsmiths, while those in existence at the present time nearly all belong to one-time gunsmiths, now Tula merchants” (loc. cit., 2262). Here, consequently, we observe a direct continuity and connection between the old guild masters and the principals of subsequent capitalist manufacture. In 1864 the Tula gunsmiths were freed from serf dependence and assigned to the burgher estate; earnings dropped as a consequence of the severe competition of the village handicraftsmen (which caused a reverse flow of industrialists from town to country); the workers turned to the samovar, lock, cutlery, and accordion industries (the first Tula accordions appeared in 1830-1835).

The samovar industry is at present organised as follows. It is headed by big capitalists who own workshops employing tens and hundreds of wage-workers, but they also distribute many separate operations to be done by workers, urban and rural, in their homes; those who perform these operations sometimes still have their own workshops and employ wage-workers. Naturally, side by side with the big there are small workshops, with all the consecutive stages of dependence upon the capitalists. Division of labour is the general basis of the whole structure of this trade. The process of samovar-making is divided into the following separate operations: 1) rolling the copper sheets into tubes (tubing); 2) soldering the tubes; 3) filing the seams; 4) fitting the bottoms; 5) beating out the shapes; 6) cleaning the insides: 7) turning the bodies and necks; 8) plating; 9) press-punching the vents in the bottoms and the covers; 10) assembling the samovars. Further, there are the separate processes of casting the small copper parts: a) preparing the moulds and b) casting. Where work is given out to be done in the home, each of these operations may constitute a special “handicraft” industry. One of these “industries” was described by Mr. Borisov in Vol. VII of the Transactions of the Handicraft Commission. This industry (samovar tubing) consists in peasants doing at piece rates one of the operations we have described, using merchants’ materials. The handicraftsmen left Tula town to work in the countryside after 1861; the cost of living and standard of requirements were lower in the countryside (loc. cit., p. 893). Mr. Borisov quite rightly attributes this tenacity of the “handicraftsman” to the retention of hand-labour in the beating out of samovars; “it will always be profitable for the manufacturer to employ the village handicraftsman, because he works at from 10 to 20% below the rate of the urban artisan” (916).

Mr. Borisov estimated the value of the output of samovars in 1882 at approximately 5 million rubles, the number of workers (handicraftsmen included) totalling from 4,000 to 5,000. In this case also the factory statistics cover only a fraction of capitalist manufacture. The Directory for 1879 counted in Tula Gubernia 53 samovar “factories” (all hand-operated) with 1,479 workers and an output totalling 836,000 rubles. The Directory for 1890 gives 162 factories, 2,175 workers, and an output of 1.1 million rubles; the list of firms, however, contains only 50 factories (1 steam operated), with 1,326 workers and an output totalling 698,000 rubles. Evidently, some hundred small establishments were in this case classed as “factories.” Lastly, the List gives the following for 1894-95: 25 factories (4 steam-operated), 1,202 workers (+ 607 outside), and an output totalling 1,613,000 rubles. In these data neither the number of factories nor the number of workers are comparable (for the reason given above, and also because of the lumping together in previous years of workers on the premises and outside). The only thing beyond doubt is that manufacture is being steadily displaced by large-scale machine industry: in 1879, there were 2 factories with 100 and more workers; in 1890 there were 2 (one steam-operated) and in 1894-95 there were 4 (three steam-operated).

The accordion industry, which is at a lower stage of economic development, is organised in precisely the same way. “In the making of accordions there are over ten separate trades” (Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, IX, 236); the making of the different parts of an accordion or the performance of some of the operations constitute separate, quasi-independent “handicraft” industries. “When things are quiet all the handicraftsmen work for factories or for more or less big workshops, the owners of which supply them with materials; when, however, there is a brisk demand for accordions, a large number of small producers appear, who buy up parts from the handicraftsmen, assemble them and take the finished articles to the local shops where accordions are very readily purchased” (ibid.). Mr. Borisov in 1882 estimated from 2,000 to 3,000 workers in this industry, with an output totalling about 4 million rubles; factory statistics in 1879 showed two “factories,” with 22 workers and an output totalling 5,000 rubles; in 1890, 19 factories, with 275 workers and an output totalling 82,000 rubles; in 1894-95 one factory, with 23 workers (plus 17 outside) and an output totalling 20,000 rubles. Steam-engines are not employed at all. All these figure variations indicate a purely haphazard picking of individual establishments which are component parts of the complex organism of capitalist manufacture.

III. Technique in Manufacture. Division of Labour and its Significance

Let us now draw conclusions from the foregoing data and see whether they are really indicative of a special stage in the development of capitalism in our industry.

The feature common to all the industries we have examined is the retention of hand production and systematic, widely practised division of labour. The process of production is split up into several single operations performed by different specialist craftsmen. The training of such specialists takes a fairly long time, and therefore a natural concomitant of manufacture is apprenticeship. It is well known that under the general conditions of commodity economy and capitalism this gives rise to the worst forms of personal dependence and exploitation. The disappearance of apprenticeship is connected with a higher development of manufacture and with the advent of large-scale machine industry, when machines reduce the period of training to a minimum or when such simple single operations arise as can be done even by children (see above example of Zagarye).

The retention of hand production as the basis of manufacture explains its comparative immobility, which is particularly striking when compared with the factory. The development and extension of division of labour proceeds very slowly, so that for whole decades (and even centuries) manufacture retains its form once it has been adopted; as we have seen, quite a number of the industries examined are of quite ancient origin, yet no great changes in methods of production have been observed in the majority of them until recently.

As for division of labour, we shall not repeat here the commonly known tenets of theoretical economics concerning the part it plays in the process of development of the productive powers of labour. On the basis of hand production no other progress in technique was possible except by division of labour. Let us merely note the two major circumstances that make clear the need for division of labour as a preparatory stage for large-scale machine industry. Firstly, the introduction of machines is possible only when the production process has been split into a number of the simplest, purely mechanical operations; machines are first used for the simplest operations and their spread to the more complicated processes is very gradual. For example, in weaving, the power-loom has long predominated in the production of plain fabrics, whereas silk weaving continues to be carried on mainly by hand; in the engineering trade the machine is applied first of all to one of the simplest operations – grinding, etc. But this splitting of production into the simplest operations, while being a necessary preparatory step to the introduction of large-scale machine production, leads at the same time to a growth of small industries. The surrounding population is enabled to perform such detailed operations in its homes, either to order of the manufactory owners, using their materials (bristle setting in brush manufacture, sewing sheepskins, sheepskin coats, mittens, boots, etc., in the leather trade, horn trimming in comb manufacture, samovar “tubing,” etc.), or even “independently” buying the materials, making certain parts of the product and selling them to the manufacturers (in the hat, carriage, accordion and other industries, etc.). It seems paradoxical that the growth of small (sometimes even “independent”) industries should be an expression of the growth of capitalist manufacture: nevertheless it is a fact. The “independence” of such “handicraftsmen” is quite fictitious. Their work could not be done, and their product would on occasion even have no use-value, if there were no connection with other detailed operations, with other parts of the product. And only big capital, ruling (in one form or another) over a mass of workers performing separate operations was able to and did create this connection. One of the main errors of Narodnik economics is that it ignores or obscures the fact that the “handicraftsman” performing a single operation is a constituent part of the capitalist manufactory.

The second circumstance that must particularly be stressed is that manufacture trains skilled workers. Large-scale machine industry could not have developed so quickly in the post-Reform period had it not been preceded by a long period in which manufacture trained workers. For instance, the investigators of the “handicraft” weaving industry of the Pokrov Uyezd, Vladimir Gubernia, note the remarkable “technical skill and experience” of the weavers of Kudykino Volost (where the village of Orekhovo and the famous Morozov mills are situated): “nowhere. . . do we find such intensity . . . of labour . . . ; a strict division of labour between the weaver and the bobbin-hand is invariably practised here. . . .” “The past . . . has imparted to the Kudykinians . . . expert skill in the technique of production . . . an ability to cope with all sorts of difficulties.” “Factories cannot be erected in any village and in any number,” we read in reference to silk weaving: “the factory must follow the weaver into the villages where, due to migratory labour” (or, let us add, due to domestic industry), “a contingent of proficient workers has been formed.” Establishments like the St. Petersburg boot factory could not have developed so quickly if in the district around Kimry village, say, skilled workers who have now taken to migration had not been developing for centuries, etc. That, incidentally, is why very great importance attaches to the formation by manufacture of a whole number of large districts which specialised in certain trades and trained large numbers of skilled workers.

Division of labour in capitalist manufacture disfigures and cripples the worker, including the “handicraftsman” who makes single parts. It produces virtuosi and cripples; the former as rare exceptions, whose skill arouses the astonishment of investigators, and the latter in the shape of the mass of “handicraftsmen,” – weak-chested, with inordinately developed arms, “curvature of the spine,” etc., etc.

IV. The Territorial Division of Labour and the Separation of Agriculture From Industry

Directly connected with division of labour in general is, as has been noted, territorial division of labour – the specialisation of certain districts in the production of some one product, of one sort of product and even of a certain part of a product. The predominance of hand production, the existence of a mass of small establishments, the preservation of the worker’s connection with the land, the tying of the craftsman to a given trade, – all this inevitably gives rise to the seclusion of the different industrial districts of manufacture; sometimes this local seclusion amounts to complete isolation from the rest of the world, with which only the merchant masters have dealings.

In the following effusion Mr. Kharizomenov underrates the significance of the territorial division of labour: “The vast distances of the Empire go hand in hand with sharp differences of natural conditions: one locality is rich in timber and wild animals, another in cattle, while a third abounds in clay or iron. These natural features determined the character of industry. The great distances and inconveniences of communication made the transport of raw materials impossible, or extremely costly. As a result, industry had necessarily to nestle where an abundance of raw material was close at hand. Hence the characteristic feature of our industry – the specialisation of commodity production in large and compact areas” (Yuridichesky Vestnik, loc. cit., p. 440).

Territorial division of labour is not a characteristic feature of our industry, but of manufacture (both in Russia and in other countries); the small industries did not produce such extensive districts, while the factory broke down their seclusion and facilitated the transfer of establishments and masses of workers to other places. Manufacture not only creates compact areas, but introduces specialisation within these areas (division of labour as to wares). The availability of raw materials in the given locality is not at all essential for manufacture, and is hardly even usual for it, for manufacture presupposes fairly wide commercial intercourse.

Connected with the above-described features of manufacture is the circumstance that this stage of capitalist evolution is marked by a specific form of separation of agriculture from industry. It is no longer the peasant who is the most typical industrialist, but the non-farming “artisan” (and at the other pole – the merchant and the workshop owner). In most cases (as we have seen) the industries organised on the lines of manufacture have non-agricultural centres: either towns or (much more often) villages, whose inhabitants hardly engage in agriculture at all, and which should be classed as settlements of a commercial and industrial character. The separation of industry from agriculture is here deeply rooted in the technique of manufacture, in its economy, and in the peculiarities of its way of life (or culture). Technique ties the worker to one trade and therefore, on the one hand, renders him unfit for agriculture (physically weak, etc.), and, on the other, demands continuous and long pursuit of the craft. The economic structure of manufacture is characterised by a far deeper differentiation among the industrialists than is the case in the small industries; and we have seen that in the small industries, differentiation in industry is paralleled by differentiation in agriculture. With the utter pauperisation of the mass of producers, which is a condition and a consequence of manufacture, its working personnel cannot be recruited from among farmers who are at all economically sound. Among the cultural peculiarities of manufacture are, firstly, the very lengthy (sometimes age-old) existence of the industry, which leaves its impress upon the population; and secondly, the higher standard of living of the population. We shall deal with the latter circumstance in greater detail further on, but first let us note that manufacture does not bring about the complete separation of industry from agriculture. Under hand technique the big establishments cannot eliminate the small ones completely, especially if the small handicraftsmen lengthen their working day and reduce the level of their requirements: under such conditions, manufacture, as we have seen, even develops the small industries. It is natural, therefore, that in the majority of cases we see around the non-agricultural centre of manufacture a whole region of agricultural settlements, the inhabitants of which also engage in industries. Hence, in this respect, too, we find clearly revealed the transitional character of manufacture between small hand production and the factory. If even in the West the manufacturing period of capitalism could not bring about the complete separation of the industrial workers from agriculture, in Russia, with the preservation of many institutions that tie the peasants to the land, such separation could not but be retarded. Therefore, we repeat, what is most typical of Russian capitalist manufacture is the non-agricultural centre which attracts the population of the surrounding villages – the inhabitants of which are semi-agriculturists and semi-industrialists – and dominates these villages.

Particularly noteworthy in this connection is the fact of the higher cultural level of the population of such non-agricultural centres. A higher degree of literacy, a considerably higher standard of requirements and life, vigorous dissociation from the “rawness” of “native village soil” – such are the usual distinguishing features of the inhabitants of such centres. One can understand the enormous significance of this fact, which clearly demonstrates the progressive historical role of capitalism, and moreover of purely “people’s” capitalism, which even the most ardent Narodnik would scarcely dare characterise as “artificial,” since the overwhelming majority of the centres described are usually classified under the heading of “handicraft” industry! The transitional character of manufacture is revealed here too, since it merely begins the transformation of the mentality of the population, and only large-scale machine industry completes it.

V. The Economic Structure of Manufacture

In all the industries organised on the lines of manufacture that we have examined, the vast mass of the workers are not independent, are subordinated to capital, and receive only wages, owning neither raw material nor finished product. At bottom, the overwhelming majority of the workers in these “industries” are wage-workers, although this relationship never achieves in manufacture the completeness and purity characteristic of the factory. In manufacture, merchant’s capital is combined with industrial capital, is interwoven with it in the most diverse ways, and the dependence of the operative on the capitalist assumes a host of forms and shades, from work for hire in another person’s workshop, to work at home for a “master,” and finally to dependence in the purchase of raw material or in the sale of the product. Under manufacture, side by side with the mass of dependent workers, there always remains a more or less considerable number of quasi-independent producers. But all this diversity of forms of dependence merely covers up the main feature of manufacture, the fact that the split between the representatives of labour and of capital is already manifested in full force. By the time the emancipation of the peasants took place this split in the larger centres of Russian manufacture had already been sealed by a continuity of several generations. In all the “industries” above examined we see a mass of people whose only means of livelihood is to work in a condition of dependence upon members of the propertied class; on the other hand, we see a small minority of well-to-do industrialists who control (in one form or another) nearly the whole industry of the given district. It is this fundamental fact that imparts to our manufacture a pronounced capitalist character, as distinct from the preceding stage. Dependence on capital and work for hire existed then too, but it had not yet taken definite shape, had not yet embraced the mass of industrialists, the mass of the population, had not given rise to a split among the various groups of individuals participating in production. Moreover, production itself in the preceding stage still preserves its small dimensions – the difference between the master and the worker is relatively small – there are scarcely any big capitalists (who always head manufacture) – nor are there any workers tied to a single operation and thereby tied to capital, which combines these detailed operations into a single mechanism of production.

Here is an old writer’s evidence which strikingly confirms this characterisation of the data cited by us above: “In the village of Kimry, as in other so-called rich Russian villages, Pavlovo, for example, half the population are beggars who live entirely on alms. . . . If an operative falls sick, and moreover lives alone, he risks going the next week without a crust of bread.”

Thus, the main feature of the economy of Russian manufacture was already fully revealed by the 60s – the contrast between the “wealth” of a whole number of “celebrated” “villages” and the complete proletarisation of the overwhelming majority of “handicraftsmen.” Connected with this feature is the circumstance that the most typical workers in manufacture (namely, artisans who have entirely or virtually broken with the land) are already gravitating towards the next, and not the preceding, stage of capitalism, that they stand closer to the worker in large-scale machine industry than to the peasant. The above-quoted data on the cultural level of the handicraftsmen are striking proof of this. But that description cannot be extended to the whole mass of the working personnel in manufacture. The retention of a vast number of small establishments and small masters, the retention of connection with the land and the exceedingly extensive development of work in the home – all this leads to large numbers of “handicraftsmen” in manufacture gravitating still towards the peasantry, towards becoming small masters, towards the past and not the future, and clinging to all sorts of illusions about the possibility (by supreme exertion, by thrift and resource fullness) of becoming independent masters. Here is a remarkably fair appraisal of these petty-bourgeois illusions given by an investigator of the “handicraft industries” of Vladimir Gubernia:

“The final victory of large-scale industry over small industry, the bringing together of the workers, scattered in numerous work rooms, within the walls of a single silk mill, is only a matter of time, and the sooner this victory is achieved the better it will be for the weavers.

“Characteristic of the present organisation of the silk industry are the instability and indefiniteness of economic categories, the struggle between large-scale production, and small production and agriculture. This struggle drags the small master and the weaver into fevers of excitement, yielding them nothing but divorcing them from the land, dragging them into debt and overwhelming them in periods of depression. Concentration of production will not reduce the weaver’s wages, but will make it unnecessary to entice workers and intoxicate them, to attract them with advances that do not correspond to their annual earnings. With the diminution of mutual competition factory owners lose interest in expending considerable sums on involving the weaver in debt. Moreover, large-scale production so clearly counterposes the interests of the factory owner and the workers, the wealth of the one and the poverty of the others, that the weaver cannot develop the desire to become a factory owner himself. Small production gives the weaver no more than large-scale production does, but it lacks the stability of the latter and for that reason corrupts the worker much more deeply. False hopes arise in the mind of the handicraft weaver, he looks forward to the opportunity of setting up his own loom. To achieve this ideal he strains himself to the utmost, falls into debt, steals, lies, regards his fellow-weavers not as friends in misfortune, but as enemies, as competitors for the very wretched loom that he sees in his mind’s eye in the remote future. The small master does not understand his economic insignificance; he cringes to the buyers-up and the factory owners, hides from his fellow-weavers where and on what terms he buys his raw materials and sells his product. Imagining that he is an independent master, he becomes a voluntary and wretched tool, a plaything in the hands of the big traders. No sooner does he succeed in dragging himself out of the mire, in acquiring three or four looms, than he begins to talk about the troubles of the employer, the laziness and drunkenness of the weavers, about the necessity of insuring the factory owner against non-payment of debts. The small master is the incarnation of industrial servility, just as in the good old days the butler and the housekeeper were the incarnation of serf servility. So long as the instruments of production are not entirely divorced from the producer and the latter still has opportunities of becoming an independent master, so long as the economic gulf between the buyer-up and the weaver is bridged by proprietors, small masters and middle-men, who direct and exploit the lower economic categories and are subject to the exploitation of the upper ones, the social consciousness of those who work is obscured and their imagination is distorted by fictions. Competition arises where there should be solidarity, and the interests of what are really antagonistic economic groups are united. Not confining itself to economic exploitation, the present organisation of silk production finds its agents among the exploited and lays upon them the task of obscuring the minds and corrupting the hearts of those who work” (Industries of Vladimir Gubernia, Vol. III, pp. 124-126).

VI. Merchant’s and Industrial Capital In Manufacture. The “Buyer-Up” and the “Factory Owner”

From the data given above it is evident that along with big capitalist workshops we always find an extremely large number of small establishments at this stage of capitalist development; numerically, these, as a rule, even predominate, although they play a quite subordinate role in the sum-total of production. This retention (and even, as we have seen above, development) of small establishments under manufacture is quite a natural phenomenon. Under hand production, the large establishments have no decisive advantage over the small ones; division of labour, by creating the simplest detailed operations, facilitates the rise of small workshops. For this reason, a typical feature of capitalist manufacture is precisely the small number of relatively large establishments side by side with a considerable number of small establishments. Is there any connection between the one and the other? The data examined above leave no doubt that the connection between them is of the closest, that it is out of the small establishments that the large ones grow, that the small establishments are sometimes merely outside departments of the manufactories, that in the overwhelming majority of cases the connection between them is maintained by merchant’s capital, which belongs to the big masters and holds sway over the small ones. The owner of the big workshop has to buy raw materials and sell his wares on a large scale; the bigger his turnover, the smaller (per unit of product) are his expenses on the purchase and sale of goods, on sorting, warehousing, etc., etc.; and so there arises the retail reselling of raw materials to small masters, and the purchase of their wares, which the manufactory owner resells as his own. If (as is often the case) bondage and usury are linked with these transactions in the sale of raw materials and the purchase of wares, if the small master gets materials on credit and delivers wares in payment of debt, the big manufactory owner obtains a high level of profit on his capital such as he could never obtain from wage-workers. Division of labour gives a fresh impetus to the development of such relations of dependence of the small masters upon the big ones: the latter either distribute materials in the homes for making up (or for the performance of certain detailed operations), or buy up from the “handicraftsmen” parts of products, special sorts of products, etc. In short, the closest and most inseparable tie between merchant’s and industrial capital is one of the most characteristic features of manufacture. The “buyer-up” nearly always merges here with the manufactory owner (the “factory owner,” to use the current but wrong term, which classifies every workshop of any size as a “factory”). That is why, in the overwhelming majority of cases, data on the scale of production of the big establishments in themselves give no idea of their real significance in our “handicraft industries,” for the owners of such establishments have at their command the labour, not only of the workers employed in their establishments, but of a mass of domestic workers, and even (de facto ) of a mass of quasi-independent small masters, in relation to whom they are “buyers-up.” The data on Russian manufacture thus bring out in striking relief the law established by the author of Capital, namely, that the degree of development of merchant’s capital is inversely proportional to the degree of development of industrial capital. And indeed, we may characterise all the industries described in § II as follows: the fewer the big workshops in them, the more is “buying-up” developed, and vice versa; all that changes is the form of capital that dominates in each case and that places the “independent” handicraftsman in conditions which often are incomparably worse than those of the wage-worker.

The fundamental error of Narodnik economics is that it ignores, or glosses over, the connection between the big and the small establishments, on the one hand, and between merchant’s and industrial capital, on the other. “The factory owner of the Pavlovo area is nothing more than a complex type of buyer-up,” says Mr. Grigoryev (loc. cit., p. 119). That is true, not only of Pavlovo, but of the majority of industries organised on the lines of capitalist manufacture; the reverse is likewise true: the buyer-up in manufacture is a complex type of “factory owner”; this, incidentally, is one of the fundamental differences between the buyer-up in manufacture and the buyer-up in the small peasant industries. But to see in this fact of the connection between the “buyer-up” and the “factory owner” some argument in favour of small industry (as Mr. Grigoryev and many other Narodniks do) means drawing absolutely arbitrary conclusions and distorting facts to fit preconceived notions. A host of facts testify, as we have seen, to the point that the combination of merchant’s capital with industrial capital makes the position of the direct producer considerably worse than that of the wage-worker, lengthens his working day, reduces his earnings, and retards economic and cultural development.

VII. Capitalist Domestic Industry as an Appendage of Manufacture

Capitalist domestic industry – i.e., the processing at home, for payment by the piece, of raw materials obtained from an entrepreneur – is also met with, as indicated in the preceding chapter, in the small peasant industries. Later we shall see that it is met with again (and on a large scale) alongside the factory, i.e., large-scale machine industry. Thus, capitalist domestic industry is met with at all stages of the development of capitalism in industry, but is most characteristic of manufacture. Both the small peasant industries and large-scale machine industry manage very easily without domestic industry. The manufactory period, however, of capitalist development, with its characteristic retention of the worker’s connection with the land, and with an abundance of small establishments around big ones – can be imagined with difficulty, or hardly at all, without the distribution of home work. And the facts of Russia do indeed show, as we have seen, that in the industries organised on the lines of capitalist manufacture the distribution of home work is particularly widespread. That is why we think it most appropriate to examine in precisely this chapter the characteristic features of capitalist domestic industry, although some of the examples quoted below cannot be assigned specifically to manufacture.

Let us point, first of all, to the multitude of middlemen between the capitalist and the worker in domestic industry. The big entrepreneur cannot himself distribute materials to hundreds and thousands of workers, scattered sometimes in different villages; what is needed is the appearance of middle-men (in some cases even of a hierarchy of middle-men) to take the materials in bulk and distribute them in small quantities. We get a regular sweating system, a system of the severest exploitation: the “subcontractor” (or “workroom owner,” or “tradeswoman” in the lace industry, etc., etc.), who is close to the worker, knows how to take advantage even of specific cases of his distress and devises such methods of exploitation as would be inconceivable in a big establishment, and as absolutely preclude all possibility of control or supervision.

Alongside the sweating system, and perhaps as one of its forms, should be placed the truck system --the system of payment in provisions–which is prohibited in factories, but continues to reign in handicraft industries, especially where the work is distributed to homes. Above, in describing the various industries, instances were given of this widespread practice.

Further, capitalist domestic industry inevitably entails extremely insanitary working conditions. The utter poverty of the worker, the utter impossibility of controlling working conditions by regulations of any kind, and the combination of the living and working premises, such are the conditions that convert the dwellings of the home workers into hotbeds of infection and occupational disease. In the large establishments one can fight such things; domestic industry, however, is in this respect the most “liberal” form of capitalist exploitation.

An excessively long working day is also an essential feature of domestic work for the capitalist and of the small industries in general. Instances have been given illustrating the comparative length of the working day in the “factories” and among the “handicraftsmen.”

The drawing of women and of children of the tenderest age into production is nearly always observed in domestic industry. To illustrate this, let us cite some facts from a description of the women’s industries of Moscow Gubernia. There are 10,004 women engaged in cotton winding; children start work at the age of 5 or 6 (!); daily earnings are 10 kopeks, yearly 17 rubles. The working day in the women’s industries in general is as much as 18 hours. In the knitting industry children start work from the age of six, daily earnings are 10 kopeks, yearly 22 rubles. Altogether 37,514 females are employed in the women’s industries; they begin working from the age of 5 or 6 (in 6 out of 19 industries, which 6 industries account for 32,400 female workers); the average daily earnings are 13 kopeks, yearly 26 rubles 20 kopeks.

One of the most pernicious aspects of capitalist domestic industry is that it leads to a reduction in the level of the worker’s requirements. The employer is able to recruit workers in remote districts where the popular standard of living is particularly low and where the worker’s connection with the land enables him to work for a bare pittance. For example, the owner of a village stocking establishment explains that in Moscow rents are high and that, besides, the knitters “have to be . . . supplied with white bread . . . whereas here the workers do the job in their own cottages and eat black bread. . . . Now how can Moscow compete with us!” In the cotton-winding industry the explanation of the very low wages is that for the peasants’ wives, daughters, etc., this is merely a supplementary source of income. “Thus, the system prevailing in this trade forces down to the utmost limit the wages of those for whom it is the sole means of livelihood, reduces the wages of those who obtain their livelihood exclusively by factory labour below their minimum needs, or retards the raising of their standard of living. In both cases it creates extremely abnormal conditions.” “The factory seeks cheap weavers,” says Mr. Kharizomenov, “and it finds them in their native villages, far from the centres of industry. . . . That wages drop steadily as one moves from the industrial centres to the outer regions is an undoubted fact.” Hence, the employers are perfectly well able to take advantage of the conditions which artificially tie the population to the rural districts.

The isolation of the home workers is a no less pernicious aspect of this system. Here is a graphic description of this aspect of the matter, as given by buyers-up themselves: “The operations of both” (the small and the big buyers-up of nails from the Tver blacksmiths) “are organised according to one system – when they collect the nails, they pay partly in money and partly in iron, and to make the blacksmiths more tractable always have them working in their homes.” These words provide a simple clue to the “vitality” of our “handicraft” industry!

The isolation of the home workers and the abundance of middle-men naturally lead to widespread bondage, to all kinds of personal dependence, which usually accompany “patriarchal” relationships in remote rural districts. Workers’ indebtedness to employers is extremely widespread in the “handicraft” industries in general, and in domestic industry in particular. Usually the worker is not only a Lohnsklave but also a Schuldsklave. Instances were given above of the conditions in which the worker is placed by the “patriarchal character” of rural relationships.

Passing from the description of capitalist domestic industry to the conditions making for its spread, we must first make mention of the connection between this system and the tying of the peasant to his allotment. The lack of freedom of movement, the necessity of occasionally suffering monetary loss in order to get rid of land (when payments for the land exceed returns from it, so that a peasant who leases his allotment finds himself paying a sum to the lessee), the social-estate exclusiveness of the peasant community – all this artificially enlarges the sphere of application of capitalist home-work, artificially binds the peasant to these worst forms of exploitation. Obsolete institutions and an agrarian system that is thoroughly saturated with the social-estate principle thus exert a most pernicious influence in both agriculture and industry, perpetuating technically backward forms of production which go hand in hand with the greatest development of bondage and personal dependence, with the hardest lot and the most helpless position of the working people.

Furthermore, there is also an undoubted connection between home-work for capitalists and the differentiation of the peasantry. Extensive incidence of home-work presupposes two conditions: 1) the existence of a mass of rural proletarians who have to sell their labour-power, and to sell it cheaply; 2) the existence of well-to-do peasants, well acquainted with local conditions, who can undertake the function of agents in distributing work. A salesman sent in by the merchant will not always be able to fulfil this function (particularly in the more or less complex industries) and will hardly ever be able to fulfil it with such “virtuosity” as can a local peasant, “one of themselves.” The big entrepreneurs would probably be unable to carry out half their operations in distributing work to home workers if they did not have at their command a whole army of small entrepreneurs who can be trusted with goods on credit or on commission, and who greedily clutch at every opportunity of enlarging their small commercial operations.

Finally, it is extremely important to point to the significance of capitalist domestic industry in the theory of the surplus-population created by capitalism. No one has talked so much about the “freeing” of the Russian workers by capitalism as have Messrs. V. V., N.-on and other Narodniks, but none of them has taken the trouble to analyse the specific forms of the “reserve army” of labour that have arisen and are arising in Russia in the post-Reform period. None of the Narodniks has even noticed the trifling detail that home workers constitute what is, perhaps, the largest section of our “reserve army” of capitalism. By distributing work to be done in the home the entrepreneurs are enabled to increase production immediately to the desired dimensions without any considerable expenditure of capital and time on setting up workshops, etc. Such an immediate expansion of production is very often dictated by the conditions of the market, when increased demand results from a livening up of some large branch of industry (e.g., railway construction), or from such circumstances as war, etc. Hence, another aspect of the process which we described in Chapter II as the formation of an agricultural proletariat of millions, is, incidentally, the enormous development in the post-Reform period of capitalist domestic industry. “What has become of the hands released from the occupations of domestic, strictly natural economy, which had in view the family and the few consumers in the neighbouring market? The factories overcrowded with workers, the rapid expansion of large-scale domestic industry provide a clear answer” (Industries of Vladimir Gubernia, III, 20. Our italics). The figures given in the following section will show how great the number of workers employed by entrepreneurs in domestic industry must be in Russia today.

VIII. What Is “Handicraft” Industry?

In the two preceding chapters we dealt mainly with what in Russia is usually called “handicraft” industry; we may now try to answer the question put in the heading.

Let us begin with some statistics, so as to judge which of the forms of industry analysed above figure in publications among the general mass of “handicraft industries.”

The Moscow statisticians, in concluding their investigation of the peasant “industries,” summarised all and sundry non-agricultural occupations. They listed altogether 141,329 persons (Vol. VII, Pt. III) engaged in local industries (in the making of commodities), but among these were included artisans (a section of the shoe-makers, glaziers and many others), wood sawyers, etc., etc. Not fewer than 87,000 (according to our calculations of the different industries) were domestic workers employed by capitalists. The number of wage-workers in the 54 industries for which we have been able to combine the data is 17,566, out of 29,446, i.e., 59.65%. For Vladimir Gubernia we have obtained the following results (from five issues of Industries of Vladimir Gubernia ): altogether, 18,286 engaged in 31 industries; of these 15,447 were engaged in industries in which capitalist domestic industry predominates (including 5,504 wage-workers, i.e., hirelings of the second degree, so to speak). Further, there are 150 rural artisans (of whom 45 are hired) and 2,689 small commodity producers (of whom 511 are hired). The total number of capitalistically engaged workers is (15,447 + 45 + 511 =) 16,003, i.e., 87.5%. In Kostroma Gubernia (on the basis of Mr. Tillo’s tables in the Transactions of the Handicraft Commission ), there are 83,633 local industrialists, of whom 19,701 are lumber-workers (fine “handicraftsmen”!), while 29,564 work in their homes for capitalists; some 19,954 are engaged in industries in which small commodity-producers predominate, and some 14,414 are village artisans. In 9 uyezds of Vyatka Gubernia there are (according to the same Transactions ) 60,019 local industrialists; of these, 9,672 are millers and oil-pressers; 2,032 are pure artisans (engaged in fabric-dyeing); 14,928 are partly artisans and partly commodity-producers, the overwhelming majority working independently; 14,424 engage in industries partly subordinated to capital; 14,875 engage in industries entirely subordinated to capital; 4,088 engage in industries in which wage-labour completely predominates. On the basis of the data in the Transactions regarding the other gubernias we have compiled a table of those industries on the organisation of which more or less detailed information is available. We get 97 industries employing 107,957 persons, with an output totalling 21,151,000 rubles. Of these, industries in which wage-labour and capitalist domestic industry predominate employ 70,204 persons (18,621,000 rubles); industries in which wage-workers and workers occupied at home for capitalists constitute only a minority employ 26,935 persons (1,706,000 rubles); and, finally, industries in which independent labour almost completely predominates employ 10,818 persons (824,000 rubles). According to Zemstvo statistical materials regarding 7 industries of Gorbatov and Semyonov uyezds of Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, there are 16,303 handicraftsmen, of whom 4,614 work for the local market; 8,520 work “for a master,” and 3,169 as wage-workers; in other words, 11,689 are capitalistically employed workers. According to the returns of the 1894-95 Perm handicraft census, of 26,000 handicraftsmen, 6,500 (25%) are wage-workers, and 5,200 (20%) work for buyers-up, in other words, 45% are capitalistically employed workers.

Fragmentary as the data are (no others were available), they nevertheless clearly show that, taken as a whole, a mass of capitalistically employed workers are classified among the “handicraftsmen.” For instance, those working at home for capitalists number (according to the above-quoted data) over 200,000. And this is for some 50 or 60 uyezds, by no means all of which have been investigated thoroughly. For the whole of Russia the number of workers of this type must be something like two million. If to these are added the wage-workers employed by “handicraftsmen” – and, as may be seen from the above-quoted figures, their number is by no means as small as is sometimes thought here in Russia – we shall have to concede that the figure of 2 million industrial workers capitalistically employed outside the so-called “factories and works” is, if anything, a minimum figure.

To the question – “What is handicraft industry?” – the data quoted in the last two chapters compel us to give the answer that the term used is absolutely unsuitable for purposes of scientific investigation, and is one usually employed to cover all and sundry forms of industry, from domestic industries and handicrafts to wage-labour in very large manufactories. This lumping together of the most diverse types of economic organisation, which prevails in a host of descriptions of “handicraft industries,” was taken over quite uncritically and quite senselessly by the Narodnik economists, who made a tremendous step backward by comparison, for example, with a writer like Korsak, and availed themselves of the prevailing confusion of terms to evolve the most curious theories. “Handicraft industry” was regarded as something economically homogeneous, something sufficient unto itself, and was “counterposed ” (sic !) to “capitalism,” which without further ado was taken to mean “factory” industry. Let us take Mr. N.-on, for instance. On p. 79 of his Sketches we find the heading “Capitalisation (?) of Industries,” and then, without any reservation or explanation, “Data on Factories.”. . . The simplicity is positively touching: “capitalism” = “factory industry,” and factory industry = what is classified under this heading in official publications. And on the basis of such a profound “analysis” the masses of capitalistically employed workers included among the “handicraftsmen” are wiped off capitalism’s account. On the basis of this sort of “analysis” the question of the different forms of industry in Russia is completely evaded. On the basis of this sort of “analysis” one of the most absurd and pernicious prejudices is built up concerning the distinction between our “handicraft” industry and our “factory” industry, the divorcement of the latter from the former, the “artificial character” of “factory” industry, etc. It is a prejudice because no one has ever so much as attempted to examine the data, which in all branches of industry show a very close and inseparable connection between “handicraft” industry and “factory” industry.

The object of this chapter has been to show in what precisely this connection consists and precisely which specific technical, economic and cultural features are represented by the form of industry that in Russia stands between small-scale industry and large-scale machine industry.