The publishers of this enormous volume had the aim of "filling a gap in our economic literature" (p. I), namely, of providing at one and the same time both the addresses of commercial and industrial enterprises throughout Russia, and information "on the state of one or another branch of industry." There would be nothing to object to in such a combination of reference and scientific-statistical material if both the one and the other had been given in a sufficiently complete form. In the publication under review, unfortunately, the directory material completely overwhelms the statistical, which is given in an incomplete and very inadequately processed form. First of all, this publication compares unfavourably with previous publications of a similar type in that it does not give statistical data on each establishment and enterprise included in the list. Owing to this gap, the list of establishments and enterprises, which occupies 2,703 large columns of the most compact print, loses all scientific significance. And given the chaotic state of our commercial and industrial statistics, data on each individual establishment and enterprise are extremely important, for our official statistical institutions never carry out a more or less decent analysis of these data, confining themselves to reporting totals in which comparatively trustworthy material is mixed with absolutely untrustworthy material. We shall now show that this last remark applies also to the publication under review, but first let us note the following original method of the compilers. In printing the addresses of establishments and enterprises for each branch of production, they give the number of establishments and the total of their turnover only for the whole of Russia; they calculate the average turnover of one establishment in each branch of production and separate by a special sign the establishments having a turnover above and below this average. It would have been far more expedient (if it was really impossible to print data on each establishment separately) to establish several divisions of establishments and enterprises, uniform for all branches of trade and industry (by size of turnover, by number of workers, by type of motive power, etc.) and to distribute all establishments among these divisions. Then one could at least judge how complete and comparable the material is for different provinces and different branches of production. As for, for example, statistics of factories and works, it is sufficient to read the phenomenally vague definition of this concept on p. 1 of the publication (note) and to leaf through the lists of manufacturers in some branches of production to become convinced of the heterogeneity of the statistical material given in the book. The summary data of factory statistics given in Section I of Part I of "Commercial and Industrial Russia" ("Historico-Statistical Survey of Russian Industry and Trade") must therefore be treated very cautiously. We read there that in 1896 (partly in 1895) there were in the whole Russian Empire 38,401 factories with production valued at 2,745 million rubles, with 1,742,181 workers, counting both non-excise and excise branches and mining. This figure, we think, cannot be compared, without essential verification, with the figures of our factory statistics for earlier years. In 1896 a whole number of branches were registered which previously (before 1894/95) were not classed as "factory": bakeries, fishing grounds, slaughterhouses, printing and lithographic establishments, etc. The total production of all mining and metallurgical works in the Empire is estimated at 614 million rubles by original methods of which we are only told that the value of pig-iron was apparently repeated in the value of iron and steel. On the other hand, the number of workers in the entire mining and metallurgical industry is obviously understated: 505,000 are shown for 1895/96. This is either an error or an omission of many mining branches. From scattered figures in the book it can be seen that in some branches of production in this section alone the number of workers reaches 474,000, not counting workers engaged in the extraction of coal (about 53,000), salt (about 20,000), in quarries (about 10,000) and in several other mining branches (about 20,000). In 1890 the whole mining and metallurgical industry of the Empire had more than 505,000 workers, and it is precisely these branches that have particularly developed since then. For example, in five branches of this section for which historico-statistical data are given in the text (iron casting, wire, machine building, gold products, and copper products), in 1890 there were 908 works with production of 77 million rubles and 69,000 workers, and in 1896 — 1,444 works with production of 221.5 million rubles and 147,000 workers. Bringing together all the historico-statistical data scattered throughout the book, which unfortunately relate not to all branches of production but only to some (cotton processing, chemical production, and more than 45 other branches), we obtain the following information for the whole Empire. In 1890, 19,639 factories and works with total production of 929 million rubles and 721,000 workers, and in 1896, 19,162 factories and works with total production of 1,708 million rubles and 985,000 workers; adding two excise branches — beet-sugar and distillery production (1890/91: 116,000 workers; 1895/96: 123,000) — we get figures of 837,000 and 1,108,000 workers, which shows an increase of almost one-third in a six-year period. Let us note that the decline in the number of factories depends on the different registration of mills: in 1890, 7,003 mills (156 million rubles, 29,638 workers) were included among the factories, and in 1896 only 4,379 mills (272 million rubles, 37,954 workers).

Such are the data that can be extracted from the publication under review, and which permit one to form some idea of the industrial upsurge in Russia in the nineties. It will be possible to dwell on this question in greater detail when the full statistical data for 1896 have been published.

Written in February, before February 21 (March 5), 1899.

Published in March 1899 in the journal Nachalo, No. 3. Signed: V. L. Ilyin.

Printed from the text of the journal.