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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
425
ing tens and hundreds of wage-workers, but they also
distribute many separate operations to be done by workers,
urban and rural, in their homes; those who perform these
operations sometimes still have their own workshops and
employ wage-workers. Naturally, side by side with the
big there are small workshops, with all the consecutive
stages of dependence upon the capitalists. Division of
labour is the general basis of the whole structure of this
trade. The process of samovar-making is divided into the
following separate operations: 1) rolling the copper sheets
into tubes (tubing); 2) soldering the tubes; 3) filing the
seams; 4) fitting the bottoms; 5) beating out the shapes;
6) cleaning the insides: 7) turning the bodies and necks;
8) plating; 9) press-punching the vents in the bottoms and
the covers; 10) assembling the samovars. Further, there are
the separate processes of casting the small copper parts: a)
preparing the moulds and b) casting.* Where work is given
out to be done in the home, each of these operations may
constitute a special “handicraft” industry. One of these
“industries” was described by Mr. Borisov in Vol. VII of
the Transactions of the Handicraft Commission. This industry
(samovar tubing) consists in peasants doing at piece rates
one of the operations we have described, using merchants’
materials. The handicraftsmen left Tula town to work in
the countryside after 1861; the cost of living and standard
of requirements were lower in the countryside (loc. cit.,
p. 893). Mr. Borisov quite rightly attributes this tenacity
of the “handicraftsman” to the retention of hand-labour in
the beating out of samovars; “it will always be profitable
for the manufacturer to employ the village handicraftsman,
because he works at from 10 to 20% below the rate of the
urban artisan” (916).
Mr. Borisov estimated the value of the output of samovars
in 1882 at approximately 5 million rubles, the number
of workers (handicraftsmen included) totalling from 4,000
to 5,000. In this case also the factory statistics cover only
* The Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, Vol. X, contain
an excellent description by Mr. Manokhin of the samovar industry in
Suksun, Perm Gubernia. Its organisation is the same as that in Tula
Gubernia. Cf. ibid., Vol. IX, Mr. Borisov’s article on handicraft
industries at the 1882 exhibition.