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

29 страница из 66

It would be a gross error to imagine that the decline of foreign imports is mainly due to high protective duties. The decline of imports is much better explained by the growth of home industries. The protective duties have no doubt contributed (together with other causes) towards attracting German and English manufacturers to Poland and Russia. Lodz—the Manchester of Poland—is quite a German city, and the Russian trade directories are full of English and German names. English and German capitalists, English engineers and foremen, have planted within Russia the improved cotton manufactures of their mother countries; they are busy now in improving the woollen industries and the production of machinery; while Belgians have rapidly created a great iron industry in South Russia. There is now not the slightest doubt—and this opinion is shared, not only by economists, but also by several Russian manufacturers—that a free-trade policy would not check the further growth of industries in Russia. It would only reduce the high profits of those manufacturers who do not improve their factories and chiefly rely upon cheap labour and long hours.