The article analyzes the industrial activities of burghers in the cities of the Tomsk province of the Russian Empire, the pre-reform period. Consistent review is given to its diversity. The author gives a description of the legal status of the Siberian tradesmen, their rights and obligations in this field of activity. The article describes the features of the leather industry in the cities of the South-Western Siberia, as the most developed industry. The attention is paid to such issues as features of leather production, its quality, profitability, and working conditions. The author of the article states that the leather industry of the burghers was at the low stage of development with small artisanal enterprises, where production was carried out in a primitive way. The paper also gives statistics on such parameters as the dynamics of the burghers’ middle class leather industrial activity in the prereform period. The research is made of the features of the leather industry of burghers in different cities of the Tomsk province, as well as the challenges that lay in wait for them. It is shown that there was uneven development of this activity in provincial cities, and the scale of activity depended on climatic, geographic and socio-economic conditions of the accommodation. The most beneficial in this regard was the Tomsk region.