Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/75

 it plays is that of a special system of technical training. The Russian peasants who followed industrial pursuits, before creating their own "domestic system" on the basis of which the true factory system was to develop, first of all passed through the school of the large factories which were based on Government privileges, on the utilization of serf labour, and on the industrial skill of other more advanced countries. On leaving these factories they took with them to their villages and communicated to the masses of the people a considerable body of technical knowledge and skill. The same happens in the case of the town handicrafts. In the eighteenth century it was a common practice for landowners to apprentice young serfs to the town handicraftsmen, who were then mostly foreigners. Thus the foreign craftsmen in the towns, who had found their way into Russia as early as the sixteenth