174 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



persons are engaged in the domestic trades, and that 

 their production reaches, at the lowest estimate, more 

 than 15 0,000,000, and most probably 200,000,000 

 (2,000,000,000 roubles) every year.* It thus exceeds 

 the total production of the* great industry. As to the 

 relative importance of the two for the working classes 

 suffice it to say that even in the government of Moscow, 

 which is the chief manufacturing region of Russia (its 

 factories yield upwards of one-fifth in value of the 

 aggregate industrial production of European Russia), 

 the aggregate incomes derived by the population from 

 the domestic industries are three times larger than the 

 aggregate wages earned in the factories. 



The most striking feature of the Russian domestic 

 trades is that the sudden start which was made of late 

 by the factories in Russia did not prejudice the domestic 

 industries. On the contrary, it gave a new impulse to 

 their extension ; they grow and develop precisely in 

 those regions where the factories are growing up fastest. 

 Another most suggestive feature is the following .- 

 although the unfertile provinces of Central Russia have 

 been from time immemorial the seat of all kinds of petty 

 trades, several domestic industries of modern origin are 

 developing in those provinces which are best favoured 

 by soil and climate. Thus, the Stavropol government 

 of North Caucasus, where the peasantry have plenty of 

 fertile soil, has suddenly become the seat of a widely 

 developed silk-weaving industry in the peasants' houses, 

 and now it supplies Russia with cheap silks which have 

 completely expelled from the market the plain silks 

 formerly imported from France. In Orenburg and on 



* It appears from the house-to-house inquiry, which embodies 855,000 

 workers, that the yearly value of the produce which they use to manu- 

 facture reaches ^"21,087,000 (the rouble at 2^d.), that is, an average of 

 25 per worker. An average of 20 for the 7,500,000 persons engaged 

 in domestic industries would already give 150,000,000 for their aggregate 

 production ; but the most authoritative investigators consider that figure 

 as below the reality. 



