38 THE DECENTRALISATION 



The town of Berdyansk," he added, " can now 

 boast of the largest reaper manufactory in Eu- 

 rope, capable of turning out three thousand 

 machines annually." * 



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 



* Report of Vice-Consul Green, The Economist, 9th June, 

 1894 : " Reapers of a special type, sold at 15 to 17, are 

 durable and go through more work than either the English 

 or the American reapers." In the year 1893, 20,000 reaping 

 machines, 50,000 ploughs, and ao on, were sold in that district 

 only, representing a value of 822,000. Were it not for the 

 simply prohibitive duties imposed upon foreign pig-iron (two 

 and a half times its price in the London market), this industry 

 would have taken a still greater development. But in order 

 to protect the home iron industry which consequently con- 

 tinued to cling to obsolete forms in the Urals a duty of 61s. 

 a ton of imported pig-iron was levied. The consequences of this 

 policy for Russian agriculture, railways and State's budget 

 have been discussed in full in a work by A. A. Radzig, The 

 Iron Industry of the World. St. Petersburg, 1896 (Russian). 



