The village of Krasnoye in Kostroma Province and district is one of those industrial villages which ordinarily serve as centers of our "popular" capitalist manufacture. This large village (in 1897 with 2,612 inhabitants) bears a purely urban character; its residents live as petit bourgeois and do not engage in agriculture (with very few exceptions). Krasnoye is the center of the jewelry trade, which encompasses 4 volosts and 51 settlements (including Sidorovskaya volost of Nerekhtsk district) with 735 homesteads and approximately 1,706 workers[440]. "The principal representatives of the trade," says Mr. Tillo, "must undoubtedly be considered the major manufacturers of Krasnoye village: merchants Putilov, Mazov, Sorokin, Chulkov and others. They purchase materials—gold, silver, copper—maintain master craftsmen, buy up finished articles, place orders for work in homes, supply samples of products, etc." (2043). The major manufacturers have workshops—"rabochorna" (laboratories)—where metals are forged and melted, then distributed for finishing to "kustariy"; they possess technical equipment—"prepy" (presses, stamps for cutting out articles), "boyni" (for stamping designs), "valsy" (for drawing out metal), workbenches, etc. Division of labor is widely applied in production: "The work on almost each article passes through several hands in established order. For example, to make earrings, silver is first given by the manufacturer-owner to his own workshop, where it is partly drawn through the roller and partly drawn into wire; this material then goes by order to a separate master, and if he has a family, the execution of this work is divided among several persons: one stamps out from the silver sheet the design or shape of the earring, another bends the wire into a ring which goes into the ear, a third solders these things together, and finally a fourth polishes the finished earring. The work is not difficult and does not require significant preparation; very often soldering and polishing are done by women and children from 7–8 years of age" (2041)[441]. The working day here is likewise characterized by inordinate length, ordinarily reaching 16 hours. Payment in goods is practiced.

The following statistical data (published most recently by the local assay inspector) vividly illustrate the economic structure of the trade{97}:

"Both first groups (about two-thirds of the total number of masters) can more properly be equated not to kustariy, but to factory workers laboring at home." In the highest group "hired labor is encountered with increasing frequency... Masters begin to purchase other people's products," in the upper strata of the group "buying-up predominates," and "four of the buyers have no workshops at all"[442].

The samovar and harmonica trades of the city of Tula and its environs present extraordinarily typical examples of capitalist manufacture. In general, the "kustarny" trades of this district are distinguished by great antiquity: their origins go back to the fifteenth century[443]. They received particular development from the mid-seventeenth century; from that time Mr. Borisov considers the 2nd period of development of Tula trades. In 1637 the first cast-iron foundry was built (by the Dutchman Vinius). The Tula armorers formed a special blacksmith settlement, constituted a special estate with special rights and privileges. In 1696 the first cast-iron foundry in Tula arises, established by an outstanding Tula blacksmith, and the trade transfers to the Urals and Siberia[444]. From this time begins the 3rd period in the history of Tula trades. Masters began to establish their own enterprises, teaching the craft to neighboring peasants. In the 1810–1820s the first samovar factories arose. "By 1825 in Tula there were already counted 43 different factories, belonging to armorers, and those existing at the present time almost all belong to former armorers, now Tula merchants" (l.c., 2262). Here, consequently, we see direct continuity and connection between the old guild masters and the principals of later capitalist manufacture. In 1864 the Tula armorers were freed from serf dependence{98} and transferred to the meshchane class; earnings fell owing to fierce competition from village kustariy (which also caused reverse resettlement of manufacturers from the city to the countryside); workers turned to trades: the samovar, lock, knife, and harmonica trades (the first Tula harmonicas appeared in 1830–1835).

The samovar trade is organized at present as follows. At the head stand major capitalists who own workshops with dozens and hundreds of hired workers; moreover, many detailed operations they also entrust to home workers—both urban and rural; these executors of detailed operations sometimes themselves still have workshops with hired workers. Of course, alongside the large workshops there are small ones, with all consecutive gradations of dependence upon capitalists. Division of labor constitutes the general foundation of the entire structure of this production. The process of samovar manufacture is divided into the following separate operations: 1) folding copper sheet into tubes (navvodka); 2) soldering them; 3) filing seams; 4) attaching bases; 5) hammering articles (so-called "tyakhtaniye"); 6) cleaning the inner surface; 7) turning samovars and necks; 8) tinning; 9) stamping out air holes by press on bases and combustion chambers; 10) assembly of the samovar. Then there are also separate: the casting of small copper parts: a) molding and b) casting[445]. When work is distributed to homes, each of these operations can constitute a separate "kustarny" trade. One of these "trades" is described by Mr. Borisov in volume VII of the "Works of the Kustarny Commission." This trade (nav-samovar work) consists in the fact that peasants execute for piece-rate pay from merchants' materials one of the detailed operations we have described. Kustariy moved to the countryside to work from the city of Tula after 1861: in the countryside maintenance is cheaper and the level of needs is lower (l.c., p. 893). Mr. Borisov rightly explains this vitality of the "kustar" by the preservation of hand forging of samovars: "the village kustar will always be more advantageous for the customer-manufacturer, because he works 10–20% cheaper than the urban craftsman" (916).

The dimensions of samovar production Mr. Borisov determined in 1882 at approximately 5 million rubles with 4–5 thousand workers (kustariy as well). Factory-plant statistics in this case also encompasses only a small part of all capitalist manufacture. The "Index" for 1879 counted in Tula Province 53 samovar "factories" (all hand-operated) with 1,479 workers and with a production sum of 836 thousand rubles. The "Index" for 1890—162 factories—2,175 workers—1,100 thousand rubles, yet only 50 factories (1 steam-powered) with 1,326 workers and 698 thousand rubles were included in the named list. Evidently, about a hundred small establishments were classified this time as "factories." Finally, the "List" indicates—in 1894/95—25 factories (4 steam-powered) with 1,202 workers (+607 external) and production sum of 1,613 thousand rubles. In these data neither the number of factories nor the number of workers are comparable (for the reason indicated above, as well as owing to the mixing in previous years of workers in establishments and external workers). What is certain is only the progressive displacement of manufacture by large machine industry: in 1879, 2 factories had 100 or more workers; in 1890—2 (one steam-powered); in 1894/95—4 (three steam-powered)[446].

The harmonica trade possesses precisely the same organization, standing at a lower stage of economic development[447]. "More than 10 separate specialties participate in harmonica production" ("Works of the Kustarny Commission," IX, 236); the manufacture of various parts of the harmonica or the production of certain detailed operations constitutes the subject of separate, quasi-independent "kustarny" trades. "During slack times all kustariy work for factories or for more or less significant workshops, from whose owners they receive materials; during periods of increased demand for harmonicas, however, a mass of small producers appears who buy up individual parts from kustariy, themselves assemble harmonicas, take them to local shops—stores, where harmonicas are then very eagerly bought up" (ibid.). Mr. Borisov counted in 1882 in this trade 2–3 thousand workers and a production sum of approximately 4 million rubles; factory-plant statistics indicated in 1879 two "factories" with 22 workers—production sum 5 thousand rubles; in 1890—19 factories with 275 workers, production sum 82 thousand rubles; in 1894/95—1 factory with 23 workers (plus 17 external), with production sum 20 thousand rubles[448]. Steam engines are not applied at all. All these leaps in figures indicate purely random selection of individual establishments, constituting component parts of the complex organism of capitalist manufacture.