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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
527
for example, the Zemstvo statisticians listed only 337
lumber industrialists out of 24,000 peasants engaged in
lumber industries.* In Slobodskoi Uyezd, Vyatka Gubernia,
123 lumber industrialists were listed (“the small ones are
mostly subcontractors of the big ones,” of whom there were
only 10), while the number of workers engaged in lumbering
was 18,865, with average earnings of 192 rubles per
worker.** Mr. S. Korolenko calculated that in the whole of
European Russia as many as 2 million peasants were
engaged in lumbering,*** and this figure is hardly an exaggeration
if, for instance, in 9 uyezds of Vyatka Gubernia (out
of 11) about 56,430 lumber workers were listed, and in the
whole of Kostroma Gubernia, about 47,000.**** Lumbering
is one of the worst paid occupations; the sanitary conditions
are atrocious, and the workers’ health is severely affected.
Left to toil in the remote forest depths, these workers are
in a totally defenceless position, and in this branch of
industry bondage, the truck system, and such-like concomitants
of the “patriarchal” peasant industries prevail.
In confirmation of this description, let us quote some
opinions of local investigators. Moscow statisticians mention
the “compulsory purchase of provisions,” which usually
reduces to a marked degree the lumber workers’ earnings.
The Kostroma lumbermen “live in teams in the forests, in
hastily and badly erected shanties, where there are no stoves,
and which are heated by open hearths. Bad food, consisting
of bad soup and of bread which is like stone by the end of the
week, fetid air . . . constantly damp clothes . . . all this is
bound to have a disastrous effect upon the health of the lumber
industrialists.” The people live in “much dirtier” conditions
in the “lumber” volosts than in the industrial volosts (i.e.,
the volosts in which outside employment predominates).(*)
* Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, Vol. VII, Pt. I,
Sec. 2. Frequently in this country no distinction is made in lumbering
between masters and workers, the latter also being described as lumber
industrialists.
** Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, XI, 397.
*** Hired Labour.
**** Calculated from Transactions of the Handicraft Commission.
(*) Loc. cit., pp. 19-20 and 39. Cf. a quite analogous opinion
in Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, XII, 265.