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

458
V. I. LENIN
of this obvious exaggeration, let us turn to the data given
in the Yearbook, which differs to advantage from all other
sources, in that it contains a list of factories with an output
exceeding 1,000 rubles. At the present time (since
1885), establishments with a smaller total output are not
counted as factories. An estimate of these small establishments
according to the Yearbook reveals that 2,366 were
included in the general list of factories, employing 7,327
workers and an output amounting to 987,000 rubles. The
total number of factories, however, in 71 trades, according
to the Yearbook, was 6,891, with 342,473 workers and
an output totalling 276,211,000 rubles. Consequently,
the small establishments represent 34.3% of the total
number of establishments, 2.1% of the total number of
workers, and 0.3% of the total output. It stands to reason
that it is absurd to regard such small establishments (with
an average per establishment of a little over 3 workers
and less than 500 rubles output) as factories, and that
there can be no question of there being anything like a complete
registration of them. Not only have such establishments
been classed as factories in our statistics, but there
have even been cases of hundreds of handicraftsmen being
quite artificially and arbitrarily combined as a “factory.”
For example, this very Yearbook mentions in the rope-making
trade of the Izbylets Volost, Gorbatov Uyezd, Nizhni-
Novgorod Gubernia, a factory “of the peasants of the
Izbylets Volost; 929 workers; 308 spinning wheels; output
100,400 rubles” (p. 149); or in the village of Vorsma in the
same uyezd, a factory of “temporarily bound peasants of
Count Sheremetev; 100 smithies; 250 carpenters’ benches
(in homes); 3 horse-operated and 20 hand-operated grindstones;
902 workers; output 6,610 rubles” (p. 281). One can
imagine what an idea of the real situation such statistics
give!*
* As to understatements by factory owners in their returns
regarding the number of employed workers and the output, the abovementioned
sources make two interesting attempts at verification.
Timiryazev compared the returns made by over a hundred big factory
owners for the official statistics with the returns they made for the
1865 Exhibition. The latter figures proved to be 22% higher than
the former (loc. cit., I, pp. IV-V). In 1868 the Central Statistical