"The history of the development of refractory plants in the 19th - early 20th centuries, an attempt to analyze and study it - the most valuable thing in this small book. In our opinion, this is the first attempt to study the history of the emergence of the capitalist enterprise of the Bakhmut region (for Bakhmut was then the administrative, economic, trade and cultural and educational center of a huge county), the role of foreign investment, the system of activity of joint-stock enterprises in the mining and metallurgical industry."