ich they are enabled to render to the Fatherland are
appreciable. And they rendered them willingly. As extenders of
Germany's economic power in the Empire they merited uncommonly well of
their own kindred. Thus of Russia's total imports in the year 1910,
which were valued at 953,000,000 roubles, Germany alone contributed
goods computed at 440,000,000. These consisted mainly of raw cotton,
machinery, prepared skins, chemical products, and wool.

How steadily our rivals kept ousting the British out of Russian
markets by those means may be gathered from the following comparative
tables. The percentage of Russia's requirements supplied by the two
competing nations varied, during the fifteen years between 1898 and
1913, as follows--

_Year._ _Germany supplied._ _Britain supplied._

1898-1902 34.6 per cent. 18.6 per cent.
1903-1907 37.2 " 14.8 "
1908-1910 41.6 " 13.4 "
1911 45.4 " 12.2 "
1912 47.5 " 12.6 "
1913 49.6 " 13.3 "

In the year 1901 Germany supplied 31 per cent. of the total value of
Russia's imports; in 1905 her contribution was 42 per cent.; and the
increase went steadily forward, reaching over 50 per cent. in the year
1913. If we add to this the net profits of German industrial and
commercial undertakings in the Russian Empire, we may form a notion of
the appropriateness of the comparison which likened the Tsardom to a
vast German colony. The entire economic system of the country was
rapidly approaching the colonial type. And to these economic results
one should add the political.

It is fair to assume that at the outset the main motive of this
industrial invasion was the quest of commercial profit. Subconsciously
political objects may have been vaguely present to the minds of these
pioneers, as indeed they have ever been to the various categories of
German emigrants in every land, European and other. But in the first
instance the creation of German industries in Russia was part of a
deliberate plan to elude the heavy tariffs on manufactured goods. It
has been aptly described by an Italian publicist[41] as legal
contraband, and it supplies us with a striking example of German
enterprise and tenacity. It attained its object fully. About
three-fourths of the textile and metallurgical production in the
Tsardom, the entire chemical industry, the breweries, 85 p