Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/42

 perhaps, more gigantic factories than the Poutiloff works, but nowhere, at least in the outskirts of any large capital, are there so imposing a number of enormous establishments, nor does there exist anywhere such a mass of workmen working in the interests of a mere handful of employers.

Were this statement but of technical interest, we should not insist on it, but we cannot blind ourselves to the gravity of its social influence. In the large Russian cities the classic conditions which accentuate the conflict of the classes and tend to aggravate it are present in their most acute form: vast agglomerations where revolutionary ideas foment; overcrowding of the population in the great works where physical contact, and still more, the community of work and suffering, make them conscious of their grievances and of their own strength; the contrast between the large numbers of those who obey and the small number of those who command.

Nor is that all. The population of the Petrograd factories is not a population of habitual town-dwellers, adapted to this