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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
345
a number of industries the investigators quote precise statistics
on output, and sometimes also on the farms of each
separate craftsman (date of origin of establishment, number
of workers, family and hired, total annual output, number
of horses owned by craftsmen, method of cultivating the
soil, etc.). The investigators provide no classified tables,
however, and we have therefore been obliged to compile
them ourselves, dividing the craftsmen in each industry
into grades (I, bottom; II, middle and III, top) according
to the number of workers (family and hired) per establishment,
and sometimes according to the volume of output,
technical organisation, etc. In general, the criteria according
to which the craftsmen have been divided into grades
are based on all the data given in the description of the
industry; but in different industries we have found it necessary
to take different criteria for dividing the craftsmen
into grades. For example, in very small industries we have
placed in the bottom grade establishments with 1 worker,
in the middle grade those with 2, and in the top grade those
with 3 and more; whereas in the bigger industries we have
placed in the bottom grade establishments with 1 to 5 workers,
in the middle grade those with 6 to 10, etc. Had we not
employed different methods of classification we could not
have presented for each industry data concerning establishments
of different size. The table drawn up on these lines
is given in the Appendix (see Appendix I); it shows the
criteria according to which the craftsmen in each industry
are divided up into grades, gives for each grade in each
industry absolute figures of the number of establishments,
workers (family and hired combined), aggregate output,
establishments employing wage-workers, number of wageworkers.
To describe the farms of the handicraftsmen we
have calculated the average number of horses per peasant
household in each grade and the percentage of craftsmen
who cultivate their land with the aid of “a labourer” (i.e.,
commodity-producers work for the market and not for buyers-up,—at
all events, in the overwhelming majority of cases. Work for buyers-up
is a more complicated phenomenon, one that we shall examine separately
later on. The house-to-house censuses of handicraftsmen who
work for buyers-up are unsuitable for judging the relations existing
among small commodity-producers.