Читать книгу Fields, Factories, and Workshops. Or, Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work онлайн

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Let me add that the above-mentioned figures, including only those manufactures which show a yearly return of more than £200, do not include the immense variety of domestic trades which also have considerably grown of late, side by side with the manufactures. The domestic industries—so characteristic of Russia, and so necessary under her climate—occupy now more than 7,500,000 peasants, and their aggregate production was estimated a few years ago at more than the aggregate production of all the manufactures. It exceeded £180,000,000 per annum. I shall have an occasion to return later on to this subject, so that I shall be sober of figures, and merely say that even in the chief manufacturing provinces of Russia round about Moscow domestic weaving—for the trade—shows a yearly return of £4,500,000; and that even in Northern Caucasia, where the petty trades are of a recent origin, there are, in the peasants’ houses, 45,000 looms showing a yearly production of £200,000.

As to the mining industries, notwithstanding over-protection, and notwithstanding the competition of fuelwood and naphtha,ssss1 the output of the coal mines of Russia has doubled during the years 1896-1904, and in Poland it has increased fourfold.ssss1 Nearly all steel, three-quarters of the iron, and two-thirds of the pig-iron used in Russia are home produce, and the eight Russian works for the manufacture of steel rails are strong enough to throw on the market over 10,000,000 cwts. of rails every year (10,068,000 cwts. in 1910).ssss1