itiative, namely, to
the government's railway-building policy. The government built the
railways for strategic and fiscal reasons but incidentally created a
unified internal market which made mass-production of articles of common
consumption profitable for the first time. But, even after Russian
capitalism was thus enabled to stand on its own feet, it did not unlearn
the habit of leaning on the government for advancement rather than
relying on its own efforts. On its part the autocratic government was
loath to let industry alone. The government generously dispensed to the
capitalists tariff protection and bounties in the form of profitable
orders, but insisted on keeping industry under its thumb. And though
they might chafe, still the capitalists never neglected to make the best
of the situation. For instance, when the sugar producers found
themselves running into a hole from cut-throat competition, they
appealed to the Minister of Finances, who immediately created a
government-enforced "trust" and assured them huge dividends. Since
business success was assured by keeping on the proper footing with a
generous government rather than by relying on one's own vigor, it stands
to reason that, generally speaking, the capitalists and especially the
larger capitalists, could develop only into a class of industrial
courtiers. And when at last the autocracy fell, the courtiers were not
to be turned overnight into stubborn champions of the rights of their
class amid the turmoil of a revolution. To be sure, Russia had entered
the capitalistic stage as her Marxians had predicted, but nevertheless
her capitalists were found to be lacking the indomitable will to power
which makes a ruling class.

The weakness of the capitalists in the fight on behalf of private
property may be explained in part by their want of allies in the other
classes in the community. The Russian peasant, reared in the atmosphere
of communal land ownership, was far from being a fanatical defender of
private property. No Thiers could have rallied a Russian peasant army
for the suppression of a communistic industrial wage-earning class by an
appeal to their property instinct. To make matters worse for the
capitalists, the peasant's strongest craving was for more land, all the
land, without compensation! This the capitalists, being capitalists,
were unable to grant. Yet it was the only sort of currency which the
peasant would accept in payment for his political supp