to
the front. In that branch, between 1861 and 1897, the number of hands
employed rose from 120,000 to 325,000, and the estimated value of the
products from 72 to 478 millions of roubles. In 1899 the number of
spindles was considerably over six millions, and the number of automatic
weaving machines 145,000.

The iron industry has likewise progressed rapidly, though it has not yet
outgrown the necessity for Government support, and it is not yet able to
provide for all home wants. About forty years ago it received a powerful
impulse from the discovery that in the provinces to the north of the
Crimea and the Sea of Azof there were enormous quantities of iron ore
and beds of good coal in close proximity to each other. Thanks to this
discovery and to other facts of which I shall have occasion to speak
presently, this district, which had previously been agricultural and
pastoral, has outstripped the famous Ural region, and has become the
Black Country of Russia. The vast lonely steppe, where formerly one saw
merely the peasant-farmer, the shepherd, and the Tchumak,* driving along
somnolently with his big, long-horned, white bullocks, is now dotted
over with busy industrial settlements of mushroom growth, and great
ironworks--some of them unfinished; while at night the landscape is lit
up with the lurid flames of gigantic blast-furnaces. In this wonderful
transformation, as in the history of Russian industrial progress
generally, a great part was played by foreigners. The pioneer who did
most in this district was an Englishman, John Hughes, who began life
as the son and pupil of a Welsh blacksmith, and whose sons are now
directors of the biggest of the South Russian ironworks.

* The Tchumak, a familiar figure in the songs and legends of
Little Russia, was the carrier who before the construction
of railways transported the grain to the great markets, and
brought back merchandise to the interior. He is gradually
disappearing.

Much as the South has progressed industrially in recent years, it still
remains far behind those industrial portions of the country which were
thickly settled at an earlier date. From this point of view the most
important region is the group of provinces clustering round Moscow; next
comes the St. Petersburg region, including Livonia; and thirdly Poland.
As for the various kinds of industry, the most important category is
that of textile fabrics, the second that of articles o