346 SMALL INDUSTRIES AND 



veloping in those provinces which are best 

 favoured by soil and climate. Thus, the Stavro- 

 pol government of North Caucasus, where the 

 peasantry have plenty of fertile soil, has sud- 

 denly 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 the Black Sea, 

 the petty trades' fabrication of agricultural 

 machinery, which has grown up lately, is an- 

 other instance in point. 



The capacities of the Russian domestic in- 

 dustrial workers for co-operative organisation 

 would be worthy of more than a passing mention. 

 As to the cheapness of the produce manu- 

 factured in the villages, which is really astonish- 

 ing, it cannot be explained in full by the ex- 

 ceedingly long hours of labour and the starva- 

 tion earnings, because overwork and very low 

 wages are characteristic of the Russian fac- 

 tories as well. It depends also upon the cir- 

 cumstance that the peasant who grows his own 

 food, but suffers from a constant want of money, 

 sells the produce of his industrial labour at any 

 price. Therefore, all manufactured goods used 

 by the Russian peasantry, save the printed 

 cottons, are the production of the rural manu- 



