By the appendage to the factory we mean those forms of wage-labour and small industry whose existence is directly connected with the factory. These include, first of all (in part), the lumber and building workers, of whom we have spoken and who in some cases directly form part of the industrial population of factory centres, and in others belong to the population of surrounding villages.[1] Further, they include workers employed on peat bogs—which are sometimes worked by factory owners themselves[2]; carters, loaders, packers, and so-called labourers generally, who always constitute a fairly considerable part of the population of industrial centres. In St. Petersburg, for instance, the census of December 15, 1890, registered 44,814 persons (of both sexes) in the group of “day labourers and labourers”; then 51,000 persons (of both sexes) in the carting industry, of whom 9,500 are specially engaged in carting heavy and miscellaneous loads. Further, certain auxiliary work is done for factories by small “independent” industrialists; in factory centres or their environs such industries spring up as barrel-making for oil-mills and distilleries,[3] basket-making for packing glassware,[4] packing-case making for hardware, the making of wooden handles for joiners’ and fitters’ tools,[5] the making of brads for footwear factories, and of “tanning” for leather works, etc.,[6] the weaving of bast-matting for the packing of factory wares (in the Kostroma and other gubernias), the making of “sticks” for matches (in the Ryazan, Kaluga and other gubernias), cardboard-box making for tobacco factories (in the environs of St. Petersburg),[7] the making of wood-dust for vinegar factories,[8] the spinning of waste yarn in small spinning sheds (in Lodz), which has developed owing to the demand created by the big mills,[9] etc., etc. All these small industrialists, like the wage-workers referred to above, belong either to the industrial population of factory centres, or to the semi-agricultural population of the surrounding villages. Furthermore, when a factory’s work is limited to the production of a semi-manufactured article, small industries are sometimes called into existence which engage in treating it further; for example, machine spinning has given an impetus to handicraft weaving, and “handicraft” producers of metal goods cluster around ironworks, etc. Finally, capitalist domestic industry is often an appendage to the factory.[10] The epoch of large-scale machine industry is marked in all countries by the extensive development of capitalist domestic industry in such branches as, for example, ready-made clothing. We have spoken above of the wide extent of such industry in Russia, of the conditions peculiar to it and of the reason for considering it more correct to describe it in the chapter on manufacture.
In order to give anything like a full description of the appendage to the factory one needs complete statistics on the occupations of the population, or monographic descriptions of the entire economic life of factory centres and their environs. But even the fragmentary data with which we have had to content ourselves show the incorrectness of the opinion widespread here that factory industry is isolated from other forms of industry, that the factory population is isolated from the population not employed in factories. The development of forms of industry, like that of all social relationships in general, cannot but proceed very gradually, among a mass of interlocking, transitional forms and seeming reversions to the past. Thus, the growth of small industries may express (as we have seen) the progress of capitalist manufacture; now we see that the factory, too, may sometimes develop small industries. Work for the “buyer-up,” is also an appendage to both the manufactory and the factory. To give a proper assessment of the significance of such phenomena, we must consider them in conjunction with the whole structure of industry at the given stage of its development and with the main trends of this development.
[1] For instance, in Ryazan Gubernia “at the Khludov factory alone” (1894-95—4,849 workers, output 6 million rubles), “as many as 7,000 horses are engaged in the winter in wood-carting, most of them belonging to peasants of the Yegoryevsk Uyezd”[11] (Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, VII, pp. 1109-1110).—Lenin
[2] Chaos also reigns in the statistics for the peat industry. As a rule this industry is not classified among the “factory” trades (cf. Kobelyatsky, Handbook, p. 15), although at times it is. For instance, the List gives 12 peat fields employing 2,201 workers in Vladimir Gubernia and in that gubernia alone, although peat is extracted in other gubernias as well. According to Svirsky (Factories and Works of Vladimir Gubernia ), in 1890 there were 6,038 persons employed in extracting peat in Vladimir Gubernia. The total number of workers in Russia employed in the extraction of peat must be many times greater.—Lenin
[3] Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, Vol. VI.—Lenin
[4] Ibid., Vol. VIII, in Novgorod Gubernia.—Lenin
[5] Ibid., Vol. IX, in the suburban volosts of Tula Uyezd.—Lenin
[6] In Perm Gubernia, near the town of Kungur, in Tver Gubernia in the village of Kimry, etc.—Lenin
[7] See Report of the Zemstvo Board of the St. Petersburg Uyezd for 1889. Mr. Voinov’s report on Medical District V.—Lenin
[8] Reports and Investigations, I, p. 360.—Lenin
[9] Reports of Inquiry into Factory Industry in the Kingdom of Poland, St. Petersburg, 1888, p. 24.—Lenin
[10] In the List we counted 16 factories, each employing 1,000 and more workers on their premises, which had additionally a total of 7,857 outside workers. Fourteen factories, each with from 50.0 to 999 workers, employed 1,352 outside workers. The registration of outside work by the List is quite haphazard and full of gaps. The Collection of Factory Inspectors’ Reports estimates for 1903 a total of 632 work-distributing offices, giving work to 65,115 workers. These data are very incomplete, of course; nevertheless, it is characteristic that the overwhelming majority of these offices, and the workers they employ, relate to centres of factory industry (Moscow area: 503 offices 49,345 workers; Saratov Gubernia—Sarpinka fabrics—33 offices, 10,000 workers). (Note to 2nd edition.)—Lenin
[11] The “Khludov Factory,” the property of the brothers A. and G. Khludov was situated in the town of Yegoryovsk Ryazan Gubernia. The firm’s full title was: “Yegoryevsk Cotton-Spinning Factory Co., A. and G. Khludov.” The bracketed data (showing the number of workers and the value of output) given in Lenin’s footnote were taken from the List of Factories, St. Petersburg, 1897, Issue No. 763. [p. 534]
| | |
| | | | | | |