Viérotchka here offered, as an example, shoes and dresses. Let us suppose that from this the quantity of things bought is diminished by one-fourth; instead of four pairs of shoes, three are sufficient, or three dresses are worn as long as four used to be. This proportion is also too small; but see what results these proportions give:—
| The cheapness of the things purchased is reckoned as causing a saving of one-third part; that is, suppose that for three things two rubles are spent instead of three; but, according to our system, these three things satisfy as many necessities as in the old system would have been satisfied by not less than four: that is equivalent to saying that for our 200 rubles our seamstresses have as many things as, according to the old system, they got for 300 rubles; and that these things, according to our system, afford them as many comforts as in the old system would have been afforded by a sum of … | 400 | rubles |
“Compare the life of a family spending 1,000 rubles a year with the life of a family spending 4,000 rubles a year. Isn’t it true that you would find a great difference?” continued Kirsánof. “According to our system, there is just this proportion, if not even larger. With this system there are double receipts, and the profits are used to twice as great advantage. Is it surprising that you found the life of our sewing girls quite different from what seamstresses had according to the old system?”
Here is the marvel which I saw, my dear Paulina, and this is its simple explanation. I am so used to it now that it seems strange to me how it ever did seem strange to me that I did never expect to find such a state of things as I found. Write me, if ever you have the chance of devoting yourself to what I am getting ready to do; that is, the establishment of a sewing shop, or another shop on the same system.
It is so delightful, Paulina!
Part V
New People, and the Finale
I
Miss Pólozova, in her letter to her friend, referred to her gratitude to Viéra Pavlovna’s husband. To explain this it is necessary to explain what kind of a man her father was.
Pólozof was a retired cavalry captain, or second captain of horse,105 who, while in service, according to the custom of the olden time, had squandered and gambled away quite a large patrimonial estate. But after he had squandered it all, he resigned, and settled down to the creation of a new fortune. Having gathered the last crumbs which were left, he found that he had ten thousand rubles in assignats. He went into the retail grain business; he began to undertake all sorts of small contracts; he made the most of every profitable enterprise which was within his means, and at the end of ten years he had a good property. With the reputation of being such a substantial and enterprising man, with his rank and famous name in his neighborhood, he was able to choose from among the merchants’ daughters of the two districts where his business transactions were carried on; and he selected very discreetly one with a dowry of half a million, all in assignats. He was then fifty years old, and this was twenty years before we see his daughter entering into friendly relations with Viéra Pavlovna. Adding such a pile to his former wealth, he extended his business on a wider scale, and ten years later he became a millionaire in silver rubles, as at this time silver began to replace paper. His wife died. As she was used to provincial life, she had kept him from moving to Petersburg. Now he moved to Petersburg, “pushed up the hill” more rapidly still, and in ten years was regarded as the possessor of three or four million rubles. Girls and widows, young and old, set their caps106 at him; but he had no wish to marry the second time, partly because he preserved a genuine feeling for his wife’s memory, and, moreover, because he did not want to give Kátja, whom he loved very warmly, a stepmother.
Pólozof pushed and pushed up the mountain; he would have had not three, not four millions, but ten, if he had given himself to monopolies; but he despised them, and he considered contracts and supplies the only honest business. His confreres in the millionocracy laughed at such a slight and delicate distinction, and they were not wrong; but he, though he was not in the right, kept repeating his pet phrase, “I am a commercial man, and I do not want to get rich by robbery.” But a year or a year and a half before his daughter made Viéra Pavlovna’s acquaintance there appeared too clear proof that there was very little difference between his trade and monopoly, as far as the facts of the matter were concerned, though there was
