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advantages of serfdom were being prominently discussedamong many of the serf-owners themselves, while therising commercial and industrial entrepreneurs wereonly too anxious to sweep away serfdom and the restrictionsimposed by the class system. During thereign of Nicholas I (1825-55) their factories, especiallyin the textile industry, worked by free hired labour, hadstrikingly increased, while those worked by serf labourhad declined heavily. Yet their legal disabilities, althoughmitigated by Nicholas, remained galling and hampering.The labour market was greatly restricted by the exclusiveprivileges of owning serfs acquired by the nobility andgentry, and the level of internal consumption wasdeplorably low.The serf-owners, officially estimated in 1851 at262,000 males, were sharply divided among themselves,particularly according as to whether their lands werein 'the consuming provinces,' or in the black-earthprovinces, or in New Russia. In Great Russia well overhalf of the serf-owners were small proprietors with lessthan ten male serfs apiece, whose interests and outlookwere widely different from those of the large landowners,with anything from a hundred to many thousands ofmale serfs each, to whom over four-fifths of the serfsbelonged. These divergences were increased by thegreat extension of wheat-growing, mainly for export, inthe south and the middle Volga. Especially here moreand more serf-owners were considering hired labourmore satisfactory than serf labour, the technical backwardnessof which was becoming acutely felt.At the same time, serfdom was becoming more andmore dangerous. There had been no mass revolt sincethat of Pugachov (1773-75; see pp. 161-170), but peasantoutbreaks were increasing alarmingly. In the last tenyears of Nicholas's reign there were at the least fourhundred of them, and in the following six years alone(1855-60) the same number. In twenty years (1835-54)two hundred and thirty serf-owners or their bailiffs werekilled; in three years before emancipation anotherfifty-three. The situation far exceeded in scale andintensity that in the most disturbed districts of Ireland141