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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
371
of the householder; 2) by “hiring,” i.e., by hiring some neighbour
who tills the land of the “distressed” householder
with his own implements. This method of cultivation is
characteristic of the poor peasant who is being steadily
ruined. Of opposite significance is the third method,
namely, cultivation with the aid of a “labourer,” i.e., the
hire of agricultural (“land”) labourers by the farmer. These
workers are usually hired for the whole summer; and, particularly
in the busy season, the master usually reinforces
them with employees from his workshop. “Thus, the method
of cultivating the soil with the aid of the ‘land’ labourer
is quite a profitable one” (Industries of Moscow Gubernia,
VI, I, 48). In our table we have assembled the data on
this method of cultivation for 16 industries, in 7 of which
there are no masters who hire “land labourers.” In all these
16 industries the master industrialists who hire rural labourers
constitute 12% of the total, and by grades: I) 4.5%;
II) 16.7% and III) 27.3%. The better off the industrialists are,
the more often we find rural entrepreneurs among them.
The analysis of the data on the industrial peasantry consequently
reveals the same picture of parallel differentiation
in both industry and agriculture that we observed in Chapter
II on the basis of the data on the agricultural peasantry.
The hiring of “land labourers” by “handicraft” masters
is very widespread in all the industrial gubernias. We
meet, for example, with references to the hiring of agricultural
labourers by the rich bast-matting makers of Nizhni-
Novgorod Gubernia. The furriers of the same gubernia
hire agricultural labourers, who usually come from the purely
agricultural surrounding villages. The “village-community
peasants of Kimry Volost engaged in the boot industry
find it profitable to hire for the cultivation of their fields
men and women labourers who come to Kimry in large
numbers from Tver Uyezd and neighbouring . . . localities.”
The pottery decorators of Kostroma Gubernia send their
wage-workers, when not occupied at their regular jobs, to
work in the fields.* “The independent masters” (metalbeaters
of Vladimir Gubernia) “keep special field workers”;
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, III, 57, 112; VIII,
1354; IX, 1931, 2093, 2185.