factory production. There is also a considerable increase in the peasants' purchasing power, as well as a constantly growing demand among them for goods of industrial production.
The report discusses in detail two Russian industries, viz., the metal industry and the textile industry. The development in the first of these is due largely to the government war orders. It is noticed that the available supply of labor is inadequate for the needs of the industry. This is especially true in the case of skilled labor.
An interesting phase of the matter is that this increased activity is noticeable mostly among larger enterprises. The smaller ones are often compelled to go out of business altogether. While the report offers no explanation of this phenomenon, it is most probably due to the present conditions of the Russian money market. These conditions are highly unfavorable for a successful existence of smaller enterprises.
Together with the increased productive activity of those metal works which are adapted for the production of war materials, there is a noticeable decrease in the activity of works producing agricultural implements. The difficulty again lies in the financial side of the enterprises. Lack of free capital, the increased cost of iron and coal, and the impossibility of shipment by rail, especially over long distances, as to Siberia, for example,—all these conspired to reduce very considerably the productivity of these factories.[1]
Again, due to the introduction of temperance, the machine shops, which formerly produced apparatus for alcohol refining and for beer brewing, found themselves in great difficulties. Many small shops, whose chief work consisted in repairing such apparatus, have also been compelled to shut down. This condition is especially noticeable in the Baltic provinces, where a large part of Russia's supply of alcoholic drinks was formerly produced.
Yet, the increase in the productivity of the whole industry, due mainly to war orders, has been more than sufficient to overbalance these difficulties. The statistics concerning the metal
- ↑ It is interesting to note, in this connection, that at the beginning of the War, the majority of enterprises in the Russian machine industry in general, and in the agricultural implement industry in particular, found themselves in great financial difficulties. They petitioned the government for assistance, but, before their request was finally granted, over a half a year after it was made, almost eighty percent of these works had either shut down, or had already been transformed into munition works.
