Here again the orthodox economists find reason for congratulation, because big factories and workshops are the cheapest and most productive form of manufacturing industry; and again, the observant traveller cannot shut his eyes to ugly facts which force themselves on his attention.  He notices that this cheapest and most productive form of manufacturing industry does not seem to advance the material and moral welfare of the population.  Nowhere is there more disease, drunkenness, demoralisation and misery than in the manufacturing districts.

The reader must not imagine that in making these statements I wish to calumniate the spirit of modern enterprise, or to advocate a return to primitive barbarism.  All great changes produce a mixture of good and evil, and at first the evil is pretty sure to come prominently forward.  Russia is at this moment in a state of transition, and the new condition of things is not yet properly organised.  With improved organisation many of the existing evils will disappear.  Already in recent years I have noticed sporadic signs of improvement.  When factories were first established no proper arrangements were made for housing and feeding the workmen, and the consequent hardships were specially felt when the factories were founded, as is often the case, in rural districts.  Now, the richer and more enterprising manufacturers build large barracks for the workmen and their families, and provide them with common kitchens, wash-houses, steam-baths, schools, and similar requisites of civilised life.  At the same time the Government appoints inspectors to superintend the sanitary arrangements and see that the health and comfort of the workers are properly attended to.

On the whole we must assume that the activity of these inspectors tends to improve the condition of the working-classes.  Certainly in some instances it has that effect.  I remember, for example, some thirty years ago, visiting a lucifer-match factory in which the hands employed worked habitually in an atmosphere impregnated with the fumes of phosphorus, which produce insidious and very painful diseases.  Such a thing is hardly possible nowadays.  On the other hand, official inspection, like Factory Acts, everywhere gives rise to a good deal of dissatisfaction and does not always improve the relations between employers and employed.  Some of the Russian inspectors, if I may credit the testimony of employers, are young gentlemen imbued with socialist notions, who intentionally stir up discontent or who make mischief from inexperience.  An amusing illustration of the current complaints came under my notice when, in 1903, I was visiting a landed proprietor of the southern provinces, who has a large sugar factory on his estate.  The inspector objected to the traditional custom of the men sleeping in large dormitories and insisted on sleeping-cots being constructed for them individually.  As soon as the change was made the workmen came to the proprietor to complain, and put their grievance in an interrogative form:  “Are we cattle that we should be thus couped up in stalls?”