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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
579
“These figures fully illustrate the phenomena . . . 1) that
migration for work in industry helps to raise wages in
agriculture, and 2) that it attracts the best forces of the population.”*
Not only money wages, but real wages also
rise. In the group of uyezds from which not fewer than 60
out of every 100 working people migrate the average wage
of the farm labourer employed by the year is 69 rubles, or
123 poods of rye; in the uyezds where from 40 to 60%
migrate, it is 64 rubles, or 125 poods of rye; in the uyezds
which supply less than 40% of the migrants, it is 59 rubles, or
116 poods of rye.** In these same groups of uyezds the percentage
of letters of complaint about a shortage of labour
steadily drops: 58%, 42% and 35%. In manufacturing industry
wages are higher than in agriculture, and “the industries,
according to the statements of numerous correspondents,
help to develop new requirements (tea, calico, boots, clocks,
etc.) among the peasant population, raise their general
standard of living, and in this way bring about a rise in
wages.”*** Here is a typical view by a correspondent: “The
shortage [of labour] is always acute, and the reason is that
the suburban population is spoilt, it works in the railway
workshops and serves on the railways. The nearness of
Kaluga and its markets always attract the surrounding
inhabitants, who come to sell eggs, milk, etc., and then
engage in orgies of drunkenness in the taverns; the reason
is that everybody wants to get the highest pay for the least
work. To be an agricultural labourer is considered a disgrace:
all strive to get to the town, where they swell the ranks
of the proletariat and the riff-raff; the countryside, on the
other hand, suffers from a shortage of capable and healthy
labourers.”**** We would be quite justified in describing
this appraisal of industries employing migratory workers
as Narodist. Mr. Zhbankov, for instance, while pointing
out that those who migrate are not superfluous but “necessary”
workers whose places are taken by entering peasants,
considers it “obvious” that “such mutual replacements are
* Statistical Survey of Kaluga Gubernia for 1896, Sec. II, p. 48.
** Ibid., Sec. I, p. 27.
*** Ibid., p. 41.
**** Ibid., p. 40, author’s italics.