ABSTRACT
The Association's entire strategy for national economic development would promote the attainment of a firmly favorable balance of trade. The backwardness of Russia's political and legal system and the ineptitude of its government also provided explanations for industry's difficulties. Russia's handicap transcended economics, however. Its backwardness in the most common amenities of civilization tended to discourage investment. The very process of industrial development, by balancing increases in demand and in productive capacity as the need arose, might itself provide a solution to the dilemma. In proposing the limitation of imports and the expansion of exports as the dual objectives of an ideal national commercial policy, the Association remained acutely conscious of numerous obstacles. The industrialists continued to complain of lagging domestic demand and the inability of the domestic market to absorb the growing output of cotton cloth and similar products.
