INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 343 



has lately taken a great development. A highly 

 concentrated industry, and a high productivity, 

 as well as a considerable export trade, which 

 all testify to a high industrial development of 

 the country, thus go hand in hand with a high 

 development of the domestic trades and small 

 industries altogether. 



It hardly need be said that in Austria, Hun- 

 gary, Italy, and even the United States, the 

 petty trades occupy a prominent position, and 

 play in the sum total of industrial activity an 

 even much greater part than in France, Belgium, 

 or Germany. But it is especially in Russia that 

 we can fully appreciate the importance of the 

 rural industries and the terrible sufferings 

 which will be quite uselessly inflicted on the 

 population, if the policy of the State is going to 

 be now the policy advocated by a number of 

 landlords and factory-owners namely, if the 

 State throws its tremendous weight in favour of 

 a pauperisation of the peasants and an artificial 

 annihilation of the rural trades, in order to create 

 a centralised great industry.* 



The most exhaustive inquiries into the present 

 state, the growth, the technical development of 



* Since 1907 the Russian Government has inaugurated this 

 policy, and has begun to destroy by violence the village com- 

 munity in the interest of the landlord and the protected indus- 

 tries. 



