THE CONQUEST OF BREAD by P. Kropotkin CHAPTER I Our Riches I THE human race has traveled far since, those bygone ages when men used to fashion their rude implements of flint, and lived on the precarious spoils of the chase, leaving to their children for their only heritage a shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils--and Nature, vast, ununderstood, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched existence. During the agitated times which have elapsed since, and which have lasted for many thousand years, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, pierced the forests, made roads; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it has made a servant of steam. And the result is, that now t...
The growth of industry in Russia will be best seen from the following:- 1880-81. 1893-94. 1910. Cwts. Cwts. Cwts. Cast iron . . . . . 8,810,000 25,450,000 61,867,000 Iron . . . . . . . 5,770,000 9,700,000 (iron and steel) 61,540,700 Steel . . . . . . . 6,030,000 9,610,000 Railway rail . . . 3,960,000 4,400,000 10,408,300 Coal . . . . . . . 64,770,000 160,000,000 530,570,000 (imports of coal) from 80,000,000 to 100,000,000 Naptha . . . . . . 6,900,000 108,700,000 189,267,000 Sugar . . . . . . . 5,030,000 11,470,000 28,732,000 Raw cotton, home grown 293,000 1,225,000 3,736,000 (cont.) Cottons, gray, and yarn 23,640,000 42,045,000 86,950,000 Cottons, printed . 6,160,000 7,720,000 37,680,000 1900. 1908. All cottons . . . . . £56,156,000 £94,233,000 All woolens . . . . . 19,064,000 25,388,000 Linen . . . . . . . . 7,076,600 9,969,000 Silk . . . . . . . . . 3,335,000...