The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VII. The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry

IX. The Development of the Lumber and Building Industries

One of the necessary conditions for the growth of large-scale machine
industry (and a highly characteristic concomitant of its advance) is the
development of the industry for the supply of fuel and building materials,
as well as of the building industry. Let us begin with the lumber
industry.

The felling and preliminary dressing of trees for their own needs has been
an occupation of the peasantry from time immemorial, one that nearly
everywhere forms part of the tiller’s round of work. By the lumber
industry, however, we mean exclusively the preparation of lumber for sale . Characteristic of the post-Reform period is a particularly
rapid growth of this industry, the demand for timber having grown rapidly
both for personal consumption (the growth of towns, the increase of the
non-agricultural population in the villages, and the loss of woodland by
the peasants upon their emancipation) and, particularly, for productive consumption. The development of commerce, industry, urban life,
military requirements, railroads, etc., etc., has led to an enormous
increase in the demand for timber to be used, not by human beings, but by
capital. In the industrial gubernias, for instance, the price of wood fuel
has risen “by leaps and bounds”: “in the last five years
(up to 1881) the price of wood fuel has more than doubled”. [1] “The price of timber has begun to rise enormously.” [2]

In Kostroma Gubernia “with the huge consumption of wood fuel by the
factories the price has doubled in the past seven years,” [3] etc. Timber exports rose from 5,947,000 rubles in 1856 to 30,153,000
rubles in 1881 and 39,200,000 rubles in 1894, i.e., in the ratio

100 : 507 : 659. [4]

The amount of building timber and wood fuel transported along 1he inland waterways of
European Russia in 1866-1868 averaged 156 million poods per year [5] and in
1888-1890, 701 million poods per year, [6] i.e., there was a more than fourfold increase. The amount transported by railway in
1888-1890 averaged 290 million poods, [7] whereas in
1866-1868 it was probably no more than 70 million poods. [8]

That is to say, total timber freights in the 60s amounted to about 226 million poods,
and in 1888-1890 to 991 million poods—a more than fourfold
increase. The vast growth of the lumber industry in precisely the post
Reform period is thus beyond doubt.

How is this industry organised? On purely capitalist lines. Forestland is
bought from landowners by entrepreneurs—“lumber industrialists,” who hire workers to fell and saw the timber, to
float it, etc. In Moscow Gubernia, for example, the Zemstvo statisticians listed only 337 lumber
industrialists out of 24,000 peasants engaged in lumber industries. [9]

In
Slobodskoi Uyezd, Vyatka Gubernia, 123 lumber industrialists were listed
(“the small ones are mostly subcontractors of the big ones,”
of whom there were only 10), while the number of workers engaged in
lumbering was 18,865, with average earnings of 19 1/2 rubles per worker. [10]

Mr. S. Korolenko calculated that in the whole of European Russia as many
as 2 million peasants were engaged in lumbering, [11] and
this figure is hardly an exaggeration if, for instance, in 9 uyezds of
Vyatka Gubernia (out of 11) about 56,430 lumber workers were listed, and
in the whole of Kostroma Gubernia, about

47,000. [12]

Lumbering is one of the worst paid occupations; the sanitary conditions
are atrocious, and the workers’ health is severely affected. Left to
toil in the remote forest depths, these workers are in a totally
defenceless position, and in this branch of industry bondage, the truck
system, and such-like concomitants of the “patriarchal”
peasant industries prevail. In confirmation of this description, let us
quote some opinions of local investigators. Moscow statisticians mention
the “compulsory purchase of provisions,” which usually reduces
to a marked degree the lumber workers’ earnings. The Kostroma
lumbermen “live in teams in the forests, in hastily and badly
erected shanties, where there are no stoves, and which are heated by open
hearths. Bad food, consisting of bad soup and of bread which is like stone
by the end of the week, fetid air . . . constantly damp clothes . . . all
this is bound to have a disastrous effect upon the health of the lumber
industrialists.” The people live in “much dirtier” conditions in the “lumber” volosts than in the industrial
volosts (i.e., the volosts in which outside employment predominates). [13]

Regarding Tikhvin Uyezd, Novgorod Gubernia, we read: “Agriculture
. . . constitutes an auxiliary source of income, although in all official
statistics you will find that the people engage in farming. . . . All that
the peasant gets to meet his essential needs is earned in felling and
floating lumber for the lumber industrialists. But a crisis will set in
soon: in some five or ten years, no forests will be left. . . .”
“The men who work in the lumber camps are more like boatmen [28] ; they
spend the winter in the forest-encircled lumber camps . . . and in the
spring, having lost the habit of working at home, are drawn to the work of
lumber floating; harvesting and haymaking alone make them return to their
homes. . . .” The peasants are in “perpetual bondage” to
the lumber industrialists. [14]

Vyatka investigators note that the hiring season for lumbering is usually
arranged to coincide with tax-paying time, and that the purchase of
provisions from the employer greatly reduces earnings. . . . “Both
the tree fellers and the wood-choppers receive about 17 kopeks per summer
day, and about 33 kopeks per day when they work with their own
horses. . . . This paltry pay is an inadequate remuneration for labour, if
we bear in mind the extremely insanitary conditions under which it is done,” [15] etc., etc.

Thus, the lumber workers constitute one of the big sections of the rural
proletariat; they have tiny plots of land and are compelled to sell their
labour-power on the most disadvantageous terms. The occupation is
extremely irregular and casual. The lumbermen, therefore, represent that
form of the reserve army (or relative surplus-population in capitalist society) which theory describes as latent [16] ; a certain (and, as we have seen, quite large)
section of the rural population must always be ready to undertake such
work, must always be in need of it. That is a condition for the existence
and development of capitalism. To the extent that the forests are
destroyed by the rapacious methods of the lumber industrialists (which
proceeds with tremendous rapidity), an ever-growing need is felt for
replacing wood by coal, and the coal industry, which alone is capable of
serving as a firm basis for large-scale machine industry, develops at an
ever faster rate. Cheap fuel, obtainable at any time and in any quantity,
at a definite and little fluctuating price—such is the demand of the
modern factory. The lumber industry is not in a position to meet this demand. [17]

That is why its predominance over the coal industry as a source of fuel supply
corresponds to a low level of capitalist development. As for the social
relations of production, in this respect the lumber industry is to the
coal industry approximately what capitalist manufacture is to large-scale
machine industry. The lumber industry means a technique of the most
elementary kind, the exploitation of natural resources by primitive
methods; the coal industry leads to a complete technical revolution and to
the extensive use of machinery. The lumber industry leaves the producer a
peasant; the coal industry transforms him into a factory hand. The lumber
industry leaves all the old, patriarchal way of life practically intact,
enmeshing in the worst forms of bondage the workers left to toil in the
remote forest depths and taking advantage of their ignorance,
defencelessness and isolation. The coal industry creates mobility of the
population, establishes large industrial centres and inevitably leads to
the introduction of public control over production. In a word, the change-over described is of the same
progressive significance as the replacement of the manufactory by the factory. [18]

Building was originally also part of the peasant’s round of domestic
occupations, and it continues to be so to this day wherever semi-natural
peasant economy is preserved. Subsequent development leads to the building
workers’ turning into specialist artisans , who work to
customers’ orders. In the villages and small towns the building
industry is largely organised on these lines even today; the artisan
usually maintains his connection with the land and works for a very narrow
circle of small clients. With the development of capitalism, the retention
of this system of industry becomes impossible. The growth of trade,
factories, towns and railways creates a demand for types of buildings that
are architecturally and dimensionally different from the old buildings of
the patriarchal epoch. The new buildings require very diverse and costly
materials, the co-operation of masses of workers of the most varied
specialities and a considerable length of time for their completion; the
distribution of these new buildings does not correspond at all to the
traditional distribution of the population; they are erected in large
towns or suburbs, in uninhabited places, along railways in process of
construction, etc. The local artisan turns into a migratory worker and is
hired by an entrepreneur contractor , who gradually thrusts
himself in between the consumer and the producer and becomes a real capitalist. The spasmodic
development of capitalist economy, the alternation of prolonged periods of
bad business with periods of “building booms” (like the one we
are experiencing now, in 1898) tremendously accelerate the expansion and
deepening of capitalist relationships in the building industry.

Such, according to the material of Russian economic literature, has been
the post-Reform evolution of the industry under review. [19]

This evolution finds particularly striking expression in the territorial
division of labour, in the formation of large areas in which the working
population specialises in some particular branch of building. [20]

This specialisation of areas presupposes the formation of large markets for
building work and, in this connection, the rise of capitalist
relationships. To illustrate this point let us quote data for one such
area. Pokrov Uyezd, Vladimir Gubernia, has long been celebrated for its
carpenters, who already at the beginning of the century constituted more
than half the total population. After the Reform carpentry continued to spread. [21]

In
“the carpenters’ area the contractors are an element analogous
to the subcontractors and factory owners”; they are usually drawn
from among the most enterprising members of carpenters’
artels. “Cases are not rare of contractors in ten years accumulating
from 50,000 to 60,000 rubles and more of clear profit. Some of the
contractors employ from

300 to 500 carpenters and have become real capitalists. . . . It is not
surprising that the local peasants say that ‘ nothing pays so well as trading in carpenters .’” [22]

It would be hard to give a more striking characterisation of the quintessence of the present organisation of the
industry! “Carpentry has left a deep impress upon the whole of
peasant life in this locality. . . . The peasant carpenter devotes less
and less time to agriculture, and eventually gives it up
altogether.” Life in the cities has laid the impress of culture on
the carpenter: he lives a much cleaner life than do the surrounding
peasants, and is conspicuous for his “cultured appearance,”
for “his relatively high mental development.” [23]

The total number of building workers in European Russia must be very
considerable, judging from the fragmentary data available. In Kaluga
Gubernia the number of building workers in 1896 was estimated at 39,860,
both local and migratory. In Yaroslavl Gubernia there were in
1894-95—according to official data—20,170 migratory. In
Kostroma Gubernia there were about 39,500 migratory. In 9 uyezds of Vyatka
Gubernia (out of 11), there were about 30,500 migratory (in the 80s). In 4
uyezds in Tyer Gubernia (out of 12), there were 15,585, both local and
migratory. In Gorbatov Uyezd, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, there were 2,221,
both local and migratory. The number of carpenters alone who left Ryazan
Gubernia every year to work in other districts was, according to official
figures for 1875 and 1876, not less than 20,000. In Orel Uyezd, Orel
Gubernia, there are 2,000 building workers. In 3 uyezds of Poltava Gubernia (out of 15), there are
1,440. In Nikolayevsk Uyezd, Samara Gubernia, there are

1,339. [24]

Judging by these figures, the number of building workers in European Russia must
be not less than one million . [25]

This figure must rather be considered a minimum, for all the sources show
that the number of building workers has grown rapidly in the post-Reform period. [26]

The building workers are industrial proletarians in the making, whose
connection with the land—already very slight today [27]

—is

becoming slighter every year. The conditions of building workers are very
different from those of lumber workers and are more like those of factory
workers. They work in large urban and industrial centres, which, as we
have seen, considerably raise their cultural standards. While the
declining lumber industry typifies weakly developed forms of a capitalism
that still tolerates the patriarchal way of life, the developing building
industry typifies a higher stage of capitalism, leads to the formation of
a new class of industrial workers, and marks a deep-going differentiation
of the old peasantry.

---
Notes:
[1]
Industries of Vladimir Gubernia , I, 61.— Lenin

[2]
Ibid ., IV, 80.— Lenin

[3]
Zhbankov, The Influence of Industries Employing Migratory Workers on the Movement of the Population , Kostroma, 1887, p. 25.— Lenin

[4]
Productive Forces . Russia’s Foreign Trade, p. 39. Timber
exports in 1902—55.7 million rubles; in 1903—66.3 million
rubles. ( Note to 2nd edition.—Ed )— Lenin

[5]
Military Statistical Abstract , pp. 486-487.— Lenin

[6]
Statistical Survey of Railways and Inland Waterways , St. Petersburg, 1893 (published by Ministry of Communications), p. 40.— Lenin

[7]
Ibid .,
p. 26.— Lenin

[8]
Assuming that it amounted approximately to 1/5, of total railway freights
( Military Statistical Abstract , p. 511; cf. 518-519).— Lenin

[9]
Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia , Vol. VII, Pt. I,
Sec. 2. Frequently in this country no distinction is made in lumbering
between masters and workers, the latter also being described as lumber
industrialists.— Lenin

[10]
Transactions of the Handicraft Commission , XI, 397.— Lenin

[11]
Hired Labour. — Lenin

[12]
Calculated from Transactions of the Handicraft Commission .— Lenin

[13]
Loc . cit ., pp. 19-20 and 39. Cf. a quite analogous opinion in Transactions of the Handicraft Commission , XII, 265.— Lenin

[14]
Transactions of the Handicraft Commission , VIII, pp. 1372-1373,
1474. “Thanks to the requirements of the lumber industry there have
developed in Tikhvin Uyezd the blacksmith, tanning, fur and partly the
boot trades; the first makes boat-hooks, and the others boots, sheepskin
coats and mittens.” Incidentally, we see here an example of how the
making of means of production (i.e., the growth of Department I in
capitalist economy) gives an impetus to the making of articles of
consumption (i.e., Department II). It is not production that follows
consumption, but consumption that follows production.— Lenin

[15]
Transactions of the Handicraft Commission , XI, pp. 399-400, 405,
147. Cf. the numerous references in the Zemstvo Returns for Trubchevsk
Uyezd, Orel Gubernia, to the fact that “agriculture is of secondary
importance,” and that the principal part is played by industries,
particularly lumbering ( Statistical Returns for Trubchevsk Uyezd ,
Orel, 1887, particularly remarks on villages).— Lenin

[16]
Das Kapital , I 2 , S.

668. [29] — Lenin

[17]
Here is an illustration of this taken from the Report of the Members of the Commission of Inquiry into Factory Industry in the Kingdom of Poland (St. Petersburg, 1888, Pt. I). Coal in Poland costs half the
Moscow price. The average expense of fuel per pood of yarn in Poland is 16
to 37 kopeks, and in the Moscow area—50 to 73 kopeks. In the Moscow
area fuel is stocked for 12 to 20 months, in Poland for not more than 3
months, and in most cases for 1 to 4 weeks.— Lenin

[18]
Mr. N.–on, in dealing with the replacement of the lumber by the coal
industry ( Sketches , 211, 243), confined himself, as usual, to
mere lamentations. Our romanticist tries not to notice the trifling fact
that behind the capitalist coal industry stands the equally capitalist
lumber industry, which is marked by incomparably worse forms of
exploitation. But he dwells at length on the “number of
workers”! What are some 600,000 British miners compared to the
millions of unemployed peasants? —he asks (211). To this we reply:
that capitalism creates a relative surplus-population is beyond doubt, but
Mr. N.–on has absolutely failed to see the connection between this and
the requirements of large-scale machine industry. To compare the number of
peasants engaged in various occupations even casually and irregularly with
the number of specialist miners engaged exclusively in coal extraction, is
absolutely senseless. Mr. N.–on resorts to such devices only in order to
hide the fact of the rapid growth in Russia of both the number of factory
and mine workers, and of the commercial and industrial population in
general, since that mars his theory.— Lenin

[19]
As we have had occasion to state above, it is difficult to establish this
evolution because in our literature building workers in general are often
called “artisans,” wage-workers being quite incorrectly
classified in this category.—Regarding the analogous development of
the organisation of the building industry in the West see, for instance
Webb, Die Geschichte des britischen Trade Unionismus , Stuttgart,
1895,

S. 7. [30] — Lenin

[20]
In Yaroslavl Gubernia, for instance, Danilov Uyezd is particularly famous
for its stove builders, plasterers and bricklayers its different volosts
mainly supplying specialists in one or other of these trades. Quite a
large number of painters come from the Trans-volga part of Yaroslavl
Uyezd; carpenters come from the central part of Mologa Uyezd,
etc. ( Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia , Vol II, Yaroslavl, 1896,
p. 135 and others.)— Lenin

[21]
At the end of the 50s, about 10,000 carpenters used to leave the Argunovo
district (Argunovo Volost is the centre of the industry). In the 60s, out
of 548 villages in the Pokrov Uyezd, 503 were engaged in carpentry
( Industries of Vladimir Gubernia , IV, p. 161, and foll.).— Lenin

[22]
Ibid ., pp. 164-165. Our italics.— Lenin

[23]
Ibid ., 165-166. Similar descriptions may be found in other
sources. See Zhbankov: The Influence of Industries Employing Migratory Workers on the Movement of the Population of Kostroma Gubernia in 1866-1883 , Kostroma, 1887.— Urban Peasant Employments in Soligalich Uyezd, Kostroma Gubernia , in Yuridichesky Vestnik , 1890, No.9.— Women’s Country , Kostroma,
1891.— Essay in Drafting a General Programme for the Investigation of Peasant Outside Employments .— Industries Employing Migratory Workers in Smolensk Gubernia in 1892-1895 ,
Smolensk, 1896.— The Influence of Industries Employing Migratory Workers on the Movement of the Population , in Vrach
( Physician ), 1895, No. 25.—See also above-mentioned
Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia , Transactions of the Handicraft Commission , Statistical Survey of Kaluga Gubernia for 1896 ,
Kaluga, 1897; Agricultural Survey of Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia for 1896 , Nizhni-Novgorod, 1897, and other Zemstvo statistical
publications.— Lenin

[24]
Sources, apart from those mentioned in the preceding foot note, are
Zemstvo returns. Mr. V. V. ( Essays on Handicraft Industry , 61)
cites data for 13 uyezds in Poltava, Kursk and Tambov gubernias. The total
number of building workers (Mr. V. V. classifies them all; and wrongly so,
as “small industrialists”) is 28,644, ranging from 2.7% to
22.1% of the total adult male population of the uyezds. If we take the
average percentage (8.8%) as the standard, the number of building workers
in European Russia would be 1 1/3 million (counting 15 million adult male
workers). The gubernias mentioned occupy a position midway between those
where the building industries are most developed and those where they are
least developed.— Lenin

[25]
The census of January 28, 1897 ( General Summary , 1905), gives the
number of the independent population (those earning their own
livelihood) engaged in the building industry throughout the Empire as
717,000, plus 469,000 cultivators occupied in this industry as a side
line. ( Note to 2nd edition.—Ed .)— Lenin

[26]
Fire insurance figures may, to some extent, help us to gauge the
dimensions of the building industry. The value of buildings covered by
fire insurance amounted to 5,968 million rubles in 1884, and to 7,854
million rubles in 1893. ( Productive Forces , XII, 65.) This shows
an annual increase of 188 million rubles.— Lenin

[27]
In Yaroslavl Gubernia, for example, 11 to 20% of the total population, or
30 to 56%, of the male workers, leave their homes in search of work- 68.7%
of those who leave are away all the year round ( Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia ). Obviously, all these are “peasants only
by official designation ” (p. 117).— Lenin

[28]
Boatmen —workers who towed river craft by rope, or rowed
them. [p. 528]

[29]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, p. 642. [p. 529]

[30]
While in exile in the village of Shushenskoye, Lenin, assisted by
Krupskaya, translated volume one and edited the translation of volume two
of The History of Trade Unionism , by Sidney and Beatrice
Webb. Volume one of the Webbs’ book “translated from the
English by Vladimir Ilyin” (i.e., Lenin) was published in
St. Petersburg in 1900 by O. N. Popova. Volume two appeared in 1901. [p.
531]