INTRODUCTION. XLVII 



guild and non-guild certificates and tickets, taken out (Table 9). and the tax received 



from them, have been growing manifestly, even within the comparatively short 

 period of five years. 



Comparing the above stated number, 1,236,000 of trade certificates for 1889 

 (exclusive of 253,000 clerk certificates 983,000 will remain) with the number of 

 commercial undertakings paying the assessed tax, their number being, as shown in 

 Table 6, about 360,000, it will appear that the majority of such undertakings 

 belong to the category of the small trades, a result which also follows from 

 the fact that in 1889 there were issued for the whole Empire 23,000 first guild, 

 311,000 second guild certificates with the right of trading on a medium footing, 

 and 648,000 certificates for petty trade and huckstering. Among the representatives 

 of the last class of trade there are some 25,000 traders employed exclusively in the 

 sale of articles as peddlars. This is due to the circumstance that many peasant 

 wares circulate in Eussia in the villages, through the medium of special hucksters, 

 peddlars and costermongers, who often extend their visits to very remote regions of 

 the country. Some of these traders barter their wares for flax, eggs, down, bristles 

 and other products of peasant economy; in this way sometimes large quantities of 

 goods are collected. vSpeaking generally, however, in Eussia not more than one per 

 cent of the inhabitants are employed in trade, or if the unskilled workmen occupied 

 as accessories to trade and the families of traders be included, it may be estimated 

 that about 3 to 4 per cent of the population in Eussia are engaged in trade. This 

 is about the proportion of persons deriving a livelihood from various kinds of mining 

 and manufacturing activity (Table 12); and if a like number be reckoned as living 

 upon trades and military and civil service the long recognised fact results, that the 

 great bulk of the population of Eusssia, about 85 per cent, live upon the land. It 

 cannot, however, be denied that this state of things in the present period of pro- 

 tection of the development of industry is changing somewhat. 



The percentage of the inhabitants engaged in industry and trade is gradually 

 increasing, a state of things which is justified not only by the facts communicated 

 upon the first pages of this Introduction, especially by the cheapening of grain, but 

 also by other considerations. For the tilling of the land and the care of agricul- 

 tural operations in forms at all intensive in character, that is, with the employment 

 of improved machinery, an incomparably less percentage of the population is required 

 than that which is now engaged in farming in Eussia. With the present course of 

 things, the present prices of agricultural labour are much lower than those of all other 

 kinds of occupations, a fact which is demonstrated by direct calculation in the writer's 

 work, «A Eational Tariffs, 1892, page 145, and in this Introduction. It may then be 

 affirmed that it is only just to expect in the future a rise in the prices of agricultural 

 products and a relative fall in those of all kinds of manufactured articles. 



