THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 251 
trench coats, stretchers, wagon covers, buckets, camp furniture, and 
so on. The value of goods manufactured by this factory in the 
course of its first year was nearly 8,000,000 rubles. 
A factory of sanitary equipment commenced operations almost 
simultaneously with the tent factory, in October, 1915, and on a 
similarly modest scale. Beginning with not more than seventy-two 
workers, it repaired water boilers, kettles, apparatus for bathhouses 
and laundries, and similar articles. In the third year of the War the 
buildings of the factory already covered an area of over five acres, 
consisting of eight separate buildings and three warehouses. The 
number of workers had now risen to more than seven hundred. Dur- 
ing the first three months the plant produced finished goods valued 
at 126,000 rubles; during the second quarter the output had risen 
to 561,000 rubles; during the third it amounted to 793,000 rubles; 
and the total production for the entire year was valued at 2,500,000 
rubles. The articles manufactured by this plant included field 
kitchens, disinfection chambers, laundry machinery, hot-water 
boilers, portable bathhouses, and various dishes and kitchen utensils. 
The acute shortage of drugs and medicines, and the difficulty of 
obtaining sufficient quantities from abroad, forced the Central Com- 
mittee of the Unions to undertake the manufacture of such goods. A 
brewery was bought by the Moscow zemstvo in the vicinity of the 
:ity, and in August, 1916, it was set to work as chemico-pharma- 
ceutical works. The scope of production was gradually increased. 
The aim of the Union was to establish the new industry on a perma- 
nent basis and to maintain home production of the medical goods 
required by the zemstvo hospitals in peace time as well as in war. 
The works were provided with up-to-date scientific equipment. It 
was placed under the general supervision of the medical bureau of 
the Central Committee of the Union. The latter also found it neces- 
sary to increase considerably the Russian output of thermometers 
and to organize a special X-ray bureau to meet the demand for 
X-ray apparatus and appliances. 
The factories and workshops of the Zemstvo Unions were rather 
modest undertakings and fell far short of the European and Ameri- 
can standards, for by the end of 1916 merely 2,500 hands were em- 
ployed in the whole of them. The manufacture of articles of military 
:quipment and munitions developed on a much bigger scale but this 
will be discussed in Chapter XIII.