on the
understanding that the serfs should be employed as workmen. At the
same time they were protected from foreign competition by prohibitive
tariffs. In a word, the manufacturing industry was nursed and fostered
in a way to satisfy the most thorough-going protectionist, especially
those branches which worked up native raw material such as ores, flax,
hemp, wool, and tallow. Occasionally the official interference and
anxiety to protect public interests went further than the manufacturers
desired. On more than one occasion the authorities fixed the price
of certain kinds of manufactured goods, and in 1754 the Senate, being
anxious to protect the population from fires, ordered all glass and iron
works within a radius of 200 versts around Moscow to be destroyed! In
spite of such obstacles, the manufacturing industry as a whole
made considerable progress. Between 1729 and 1762 the number of
establishments officially recognised as factories rose from 26 to 335.

These results did not satisfy Catherine II., who ascended the throne in
1762. Under the influence of her friends, the French Encyclopedistes,
she imagined for a time that the official control might be relaxed, and
that the system of employing serfs in the factories and foundries might
be replaced by free labour, as in Western Europe; monopolies might be
abolished, and all liege subjects, including the peasants, might be
allowed to embark in industrial undertakings as they pleased, "for
the benefit of the State and the nation." All this looked very well on
paper, but Catherine never allowed her sentimental liberalism to injure
seriously the interests of her Empire, and she accordingly refrained
from putting the laissez-faire principle largely into practice. Though
a good deal has been written about her economic policy, it is hardly
distinguishable from that of her predecessors. Like them, she maintained
high tariffs, accorded large subsidies, and even prevented the export of
raw material, in the hope that it might be worked up at home; and when
the prices in the woollen market rose very high, she compelled the
manufacturers to supply the army with cloth at a price fixed by the
authorities. In short, the old system remained practically unimpaired,
and notwithstanding the steady progress made during the reign of
Nicholas I. (1825-55), when the number of factory hands rose from
210,000 to 380,000, the manufacturing industry as a whole continued to
be, until the serfs w