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

422
V. I. LENIN
10) T h e J e w e l l e r y , S a m o v a r a n d A c c o r d i o n
T r a d e s
The village of Krasnoye, Kostroma Gubernia and Uyezd,
is one of the industrial villages usually held up as centres
of our “people’s” capitalist manufacture. This large village
(in 1897 it had 2,612 inhabitants) is purely urban in
character; the inhabitants live like townspeople and
(with very few exceptions) do not engage in agriculture.
Krasnoye is the centre of the jewellery industry which
covers 4 volosts and 51 villages (including Sidorovskoye
Volost of Nerekhta Uyezd), and in them 735 households and
about 1,706 workers.* “The principal representatives of
industry,” said Mr. Tillo, “are undoubtedly the big industrialists
of the village of Krasnoye: the Pushilovs, Mazovs,
Sorokins, Chulkovs and other merchants. They buy materials
(gold, silver and copper), employ craftsmen, buy
up finished articles, distribute orders for work to be done
in the home, supply samples, etc.” (2043). The big industrialists
have their workshops, so-called “rabotorni” (laboratories),
where the metal is smelted and forged, then to
be given out for finishing to “handicraftsmen”; they have
technical appliances, such as “pretsi” (presses and dies
for stamping), “punches” (for embossing designs), “rollers”
(for stretching the metal), benches, etc. Division of
labour is widely practised: “Nearly every article passes
through several hands in an established order in the course
of manufacture. For example, in the making of ear-rings,
the master industrialist first sends the silver to his own
workshop, where part of it is rolled and part drawn
into wire; then on receipt of an order the material is given
to a craftsman who, if he has a family, divides the work
among several persons; one uses a punch to cut the silver
plates into the shapes for the ear-rings, another bends the
wire into the rings with which the ear-rings are attached
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, Vol. IX, article
by Mr. A. Tillo.—Reports and Investigations, Vol. III (1893). The
industry continues to develop. Cf. letter to Russkiye Vedomosti, 1897,
No. 231. Vestnik Finansov, 1898, No. 42. Output totals over 1 million
rubles, of which about 200,000 rubles is received by the workers
and about 300,000 rubles by buyers-up and merchants.