ing that these
foreigners should teach his subjects well, and conceal from them none of
the secrets of the craft, he created in the Ural a great iron industry,
which still exists at the present day. Finding by experience that State
mines and State ironworks were a heavy drain on his insufficiently
replenished treasury, he transferred some of them to private persons,
and this policy was followed occasionally by his successors. Hence the
gigantic fortunes of the Demidofs and other families. The Shuvalovs, for
example, in 1760 possessed, for the purpose of working their mines and
ironworks, no less than 33,000 serfs and a corresponding amount of land.
Unfortunately the concessions were generally given not to enterprising
business-men, but to influential court-dignitaries, who confined their
attention to squandering the revenues, and not a few of the mines and
works reverted to the Government.

The army required not only arms and ammunition, but also uniforms and
blankets. Great attention, therefore, was paid to the woollen industry
from the reign of Peter downwards. In the time of Catherine there
were already 120 cloth factories, but they were on a very small scale,
according to modern conceptions. Ten factories in Moscow, for example,
had amongst them only 104 looms, 130 workers, and a yearly output for
200,000 roubles.

While thus largely influenced in its economic policy by military
considerations, the Government did not entirely neglect other branches
of manufacturing industry. Ever since Russia had pretensions to being
a civilised power its rulers have always been inclined to pay more
attention to the ornamental than the useful--to the varnish rather than
the framework of civilisation--and we need not therefore be surprised
to find that long before the native industry could supply the materials
required for the ordinary wants of humble life, attempts were made to
produce such things as Gobelin tapestries. I mention this merely as an
illustration of a characteristic trait of the national character,
the influence of which may be found in many other spheres of official
activity.

If Russia did not attain the industrial level of Western Europe, it was
not from want of ambition and effort on the part of the rulers. They
worked hard, if not always wisely, for this end. Manufacturers were
exempted from rates and taxes, and even from military service, and some
of them, as I have said, received large estates from the Crown