162 MANUFACTUllES OF RUSSIA. 



Enssia is very limited; in the customhouse data it is not given separately, but in- 

 cluded in the column of locksmith wares. 



On comparing the figures of the table here annexed with those showing the 

 extent of home production of the same wares it will be easily seen that this branch 

 of industry is very little developed as yet. The growing production of steel and the 

 efforts to introduce the manufacturing of special types, including instrument steel, 

 taken at some of the Ural and northern manufactories together with other encour- 

 aging measures, gives reasons to expect that a marked improvement, as well as a 

 decided growth of this branch of industry having so great an importance and being 

 so necesiury to Russia, will soon be noticeable in the Empire. 



Wire and wire goods. 



Although wire drawing is one of the industries founded long ago in Eussia, 

 its development relates to the fourties, when electric telegraphs were established. 

 The Istinsk manufactory in the Pronsk district of the Eiazan government, founded 

 in the year 1719, for iron works was one of the first to introduce the drawing of 

 wire; the household industry of wire drawing had existed already in many localities, 

 the village Besvodnoie situated on the right side of the Volga at 30 versts distance 

 from Nizhni-Novgorod holding a conspicious place among them; the wire drawn there 

 was used exclusively for the manufacture of fishhooks, the making of which in the 

 village Besvodnoie and in many of the adjoining villages was founded in times im- 

 memorial. 



The introduction of wire drawing in the Eussian iron works was followed by 

 the rolling of thin iron for the purpose. When, in 1863, the right of importing 

 iron duty free given to machine-building manufactories was extended to the wire 

 mills as well, the rolling of thin iron at the iron works did not decrease, and 

 some of them, namely, those situated in central Eussia, began to manufacture other 

 kinds than telegraph wire, using imported iron, as it was much cheaper and thin- 

 ner, a quarter of an inch or 6 mm. in diameter, it being impossible to limit the use 

 of foreign wire when imported free of duty. 



The above mentioned franchise, together with the very small expenses of 

 manufacturing such thin iron into telegraph wire (5 — 4 mm.) brought about the 

 establishment of independent tvire mills which used foreign iron exclusively. The 

 markets received a great supply of wire, which began to be used in the manufacture 

 of nails, the production of which grew rapidly towards the seventies and spreading 

 over all Eussia excluded even to a certain extent the use of forged nails, the latter 

 forming a prominent branch of industrj^ among the peasants of the village Uloma of 

 the district of Cherepoviets, government of Novgorod, as has been already mentioned. 

 Besides, in the manufacture of nails and tacks, wire was used also in the making 

 of other wares, such as all sorts of chains, latches, clamps and the like. 



In 1881 with the cessation of the above mentioned franchise and with the 

 raising of the import tax the following year from 40 kopecks to l.lOroubles gold per 

 pond for all kinds of rod iron less than half an inch in diameter, the position of some 

 of the wire mills became uncertain. On the contrary the iron manufacturers, at whose 



