Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

342
V. I. LENIN
Similarly, the Perm handicraft census revealed (according
to data showing the time of origin of 8,884 small artisan
and handicraft establishments) that the post-Reform
period is characterised by a particularly rapid growth of
small industries. It will be interesting to take a closer glance
at this process of the rise of new industries. The production
of woollen and semi-silk fabrics in Vladimir Gubernia
began recently, in 1861. At first this was a peasant outside
occupation, but later “subcontractors” made their appearance
in the villages, who distributed yarn. One of the first
“factory owners” at one time traded in groats, buying them
up in the Tambov and Saratov “steppes.” With the building
of railways, grain prices were levelled out, the grain trade
became concentrated in the hands of millionaires, and so
our merchant decided to invest his capital in an industrial
weaving enterprise; he went to work in a factory, learnt
the business and became a “subcontractor.”* Thus, the formation
of a new “industry” in this locality was due to the fact
that the general economic development of the country was
forcing capital out of trade and directing it towards industry.**
The investigator of the industry we have taken
as an example points out that the case he has described is
by no means an isolated one: the peasants who earned
their living by outside employments “were pioneers in all
sorts of industries, carried their technical knowledge
to their native villages, got new labour forces to follow their
example and migrate, and fired the imagination of the rich
muzhiks with stories of the fabulous profits which the industry
brought the workroom owner and the subcontractor. The rich
muzhik, who used to store his money away in a chest, or
traded in grain, paid heed to these stories and put his money
into industrial undertakings” (ibid.). The boot and felt
industries in Alexandrov Uyezd, Vladimir Gubernia, arose
in some places in the following way: the owners of calico
in Industries of Moscow Gubernia and in Mr. Isayev’s book of the same
title.
* Industries of Vladimir Gubernia, III, 242-243.
** In his researches into the historical destiny of the Russian
factory, M. I. T.-Baranovsky showed that merchant’s capital was a
necessary historical condition for the formation of large-scale industry.
See his The Factory, etc., St. Petersburg, 1898.