The capacities of the Russian domestic industrial workers for co-operative organisation would be worthy of more than a passing mention. As to the cheapness of the produce manufactured in the villages, which is really astonishing, it cannot be explained in full by the exceedingly long hours of labour and the starvation earnings, because overwork and very low wages are characteristic of the Russian factories as well. It depends also upon the circumstance that the peasant who grows his own food, but suffers from a constant want of money, sells the produce of his industrial labour at any price. Therefore, all manufactured goods used by the Russian peasantry, save the printed cottons, are the production of the rural manufacturers. But many articles of luxury, too, are made in the villages, especially around Moscow, by peasants who continue to cultivate their allotments. The silk hats which are sold in the best Moscow shops, and bear the stamp of _Nouveautés Parisiennes_, are made by the Moscow peasants; so also the “Vienna” furniture of the best “Vienna” shops, even if it goes to supply the palaces. And what is most to be wondered at is not the skill of the peasants--agricultural work is no obstacle to acquiring industrial skill--but the rapidity with which the fabrication of fine goods has spread in such villages as formerly manufactured only goods of the roughest description.[182] As to the relations between agriculture and industry, one cannot peruse the documents accumulated by the Russian statisticians without coming to the conclusion that, far from damaging agriculture, the domestic trades, on the contrary, are the best means for improving it, and the more so, as for several months every year the Russian peasant has nothing to do in the fields. There are regions where agriculture has been totally abandoned for the industries; but these are regions where it was rendered impossible by the very small allotments granted to the liberated serfs, the bad quality or the want of meadows in the land allotted to the peasants, and by the general impoverishment of the peasants, following a very high taxation and very high redemption taxes for the land. But wherever the allotments are reasonable and the peasants are less over-taxed, they continue to cultivate the land, and their fields are kept in better order; besides, the average numbers of live stock are higher where agriculture is carried on in association with the domestic trades. Even those peasants whose allotments are small, find the means of renting more land if they earn some money from their industrial work. As to the relative welfare, I need hardly add that it always stands on the side of those villages which combine both kinds of work. Vorsma and Pavlovo--two cutlery villages, one of which is purely industrial, while the inhabitants of the other continue to till the soil--could be quoted as a striking instance for such a comparison.[183]