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

444
V. I. LENIN
the average daily earnings are 13 kopeks, yearly 26 rubles
20 kopeks.*
One of the most pernicious aspects of capitalist
domestic industry is that it leads to a reduction in the level
of the worker’s requirements. The employer is able to
recruit workers in remote districts where the popular standard
of living is particularly low and where the worker’s
connection with the land enables him to work for a bare
pittance. For example, the owner of a village stocking
establishment explains that in Moscow rents are high and
that, besides, the knitters “have to be . . . supplied with
white bread . . . whereas here the workers do the job in
their own cottages and eat black bread. . . . Now how can
Moscow compete with us!”** In the cotton-winding industry
the explanation of the very low wages is that for the
peasants’ wives, daughters, etc., this is merely a supplementary
source of income. “Thus, the system prevailing in
this trade forces down to the utmost limit the wages of
those for whom it is the sole means of livelihood, reduces
the wages of those who obtain their livelihood exclusively
by factory labour below their minimum needs, or retards the
raising of their standard of living. In both cases it
creates extremely abnormal conditions.”*** “The factory
seeks cheap weavers,” says Mr. Kharizomenov, “and it
finds them in their native villages, far from the centres
of industry. . . . That wages drop steadily as one moves from
the industrial centres to the outer regions is an undoubted
fact.”**** Hence, the employers are perfectly well able to
take advantage of the conditions which artificially tie the
population to the rural districts.
The isolation of the home workers is a no less pernicious
aspect of this system. Here is a graphic description
of this aspect of the matter, as given by buyers-up
* Mme. Gorbunova, who has described the women’s industries,
wrongly gives the earnings as 18 kopeks and 37 rubles 77 kopeks
respectively, for she takes only the average figures for each industry
and leaves out of account the different numbers of women working
in the different industries. 145
** Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, Vol. VII, Pt. II,
p. 104.
*** Ibid., p. 285.
**** Industries of Vladimir Gubernia, III, 63. Cf. ibid., 250.