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

412
V. I. LENIN
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 combmaker
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 wageworkers
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 bead 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