TSEK AND ARTEL.
The obstacles which lie in the way of a peasant wishing to become a
townsman are very great. After he has freed himself from his
obligations to the commune and the crown, and arrived at the gates of
Moscow, with his papers in perfect order, how is a rustic to live in
that great city? By getting work. That would be the only trouble of a
French paysan or an English plough-boy. In Russia it is different. The
towns are not open and unwalled, so that men may come and go as they
list. They are strongholds; held, in each case, by an army, in the
ranks of which every man has his appointed place.
No man--not of noble birth--can live the burgher life in Moscow, save
by gaining a place in one of the recognized orders of society--in a
tsek, a guild, or a chin.
A tsek is an association of craftsmen and petty traders, such as the
tailoring tsek, the cooking tsek, and the peddling tsek; the members
of which pay a small sum of money, elect their own elders, and manage
their own affairs. The elder of a tsek gives to each member a printed
form, which must be countersigned by the police not less than once a
year. A guild is a higher kind of tsek, the members of which pay a tax
to the state for the privilege of buying and selling, and for immunity
from serving in the ranks. A chin is a grade in the public service,
parted somewhat sharply into fourteen stages--from that of a certified
collegian up to that of an acting privy-councillor. A peasant might
enter a guild if he could pay the tax; but the impost is heavy, even
for the lowest guild; and a man who comes into Moscow in search of
work must seek a place in some cheap and humble tsek. He need not
follow the calling of his tsek--a clerk may belong to a shoemaker's
tsek, and a gentleman's servant to a hawker's tsek. But in one or
other of these societies a peasant must get his name inscribed and his
papers signed, under penalty of being seized by the police and hustled
into the ranks.
Every year he must go in person to the Office of Addresses, a vast
establishment on the Tverskoi Boulevard, where the name, residence,
and occupation of every man and woman living in this great city is
entered on the public books. At this Office of Addresses he has to
leave his regular papers, taking a receipt which serves him as a
passport for a week; in the mean while the police examine his papers,
verify the elder's signature, and mark them afresh with an official
stamp. Every time he changes his lodging he must go in person to the
Office of Addresses and record the change. A tax of three or four
shillings a year is levied on his papers by the police, half of which
money goes to the crown and half to the provincial hospitals. In case
of poverty and sickness, his inscription in a tsek entitles a man to
be received into a government hospital should there be room for him in
any of the wards.
To lose his papers is a calamity for the rustic hardly less serious
than to lose his leg. Without his papers he is an outlaw at the mercy
of every one who hates him. He must go back at once to his village; if
he has been lucky enough to get his name on the books of a tsek, he
must find the elder, prove his loss, procure fresh evidence of his
identity, and get this evidence countersigned by the police. Yet when
a rustic comes to Moscow nothing is more likely than that his passport
will be stolen. In China-town there is a rag fair, called the Hustling
Market, where cheap-jacks sell every sort of ware--old sheep-skins,
rusty locks and keys, felt boots (third wear), and span-new saints in
brass and tin. This market is a hiring-place for servants; and lads
who have no friends in Moscow flock to this market in search of work.
A fellow walks up to the rustic with a town-bred air: "You want a
place? Very well; let me see your passport." Taking his papers from
his boot--a peasant always puts his purse and papers in his boot--he
offers them gladly to the man, who dodges through the crowd in a
moment, while the rustic is gaping at him with open mouth. A thief
knows where he can sell these papers, just as he could sell a stolen
watch.
Having got his name inscribed in a tsek, his passport signed by his
elder and countersigned by the police, the peasant, now become a
burgher, looks about him for an artel, which, if he have money enough,
he proceeds to join.
An artel is an association of workmen following the same craft, and
organized on certain lines, with the principles of which they are made
familiar in their village life. An artel is a commune carried from the
country into the town. The members of an artel join together for their
mutual benefit and insurance. They elect an elder, and confide to him
the management of their concerns. They agree to work in common at
their craft, to have no private interests, to throw their earnings
into a single fund, and, after paying the very light cost of their
association, to divide the sum total into equal shares. In practical
effect, the artel is a finer form of communism than the commune
itself. In the village commune they only divide the land; in the city
artel they divide the produce.
The origin of artels is involved in mist. Some writers of the
Panslavonic school profess to find traces of such an association in
the tenth century; but the only proof adduced is the existence of a
rule making towns and villages responsible, in cases of murder, for
the fines inflicted on the criminal--a rule which these writers would
find in the Frankish, Saxon, and other codes. The safer view appears
to be, that the artel came from Asia. No one knows the origin of this
term artel--it seems to be a Tartar word, and it is nowhere found in
use until the reign of those tartarized Grand Dukes of Moscow, Ivan
the Third and Ivan the Fourth. In fact, the artel seems to have been
planted in Russia with the commune and the serf.
The first artel of which we have any notice was a gang of thieves, who
roamed about the country taking what they liked with a rude
hand--inviting themselves to weddings and merry-makings, where they
not only ate and drank as they pleased, but carried away the wine, the
victuals, and the plate. These freebooters elected a chief, whom they
called their ataman. They were bound to stand by each other in weal
and woe. No rogue could go where he pleased--no thief could plunder on
his personal account. The spoil was thrown into a common heap, from
which every member of the artel got an equal share.
These bandit artels must have been strong and prosperous, since the
principle of their association passed with little or no change into
ordinary city life and trade. The burghers kept the word artel; they
translated ataman into elder (starost); and in every minor detail they
copied their original, rule by rule. These early artels had very few
articles of association; and the principal were: that the members
formed one body, bound to stand by each other; that they were to be
governed by a chief, elected by general suffrage; that every man was
appointed to his post by the artel; that a member could not refuse to
do the thing required of him; that no one should be suffered to drink,
swear, game, and quarrel; that every one should bear himself towards
his comrade like a brother; that no present should be received, unless
it were shared by each; that a member could not name a man to serve in
his stead, except with the consent of all. In after times these simple
rules were supplemented by provisions for restoring to the member's
heirs the value of his rights in the common fund. In case of death,
these additional rules provided that the subscriber's share should go
to his son, if he had a son; if not, to his next of kin, as any other
property would descend. So far the estate was held to be a joint
concern as regards the question of use, and a series of personal
properties as regards the actual ownership. All these city artels took
the motto of "Honesty and truth."
An artel, then, was, in its origin, no other than an association of
craftsmen for their mutual support against the miseries of city life,
just as the commune was an association of laborers for their mutual
support against the miseries of country life. Each sprang, in its
turn, from a sense of the weakness of individual men in struggling
with the hard necessities of time and place. One body sought
protection in numbers and mutual help against occasional lack of
employment; the other against occasional attacks from wolves and
bears, and against the annual floods of rain and drifts of snow. An
artel was a republic like a commune; with a right of meeting, a right
of election, a right of fine and punishment. No one interfered with
the members, save in a general way. They made their own rules, obeyed
their own chiefs, and were in every sense a state within the state.
Yet these societies lived and throve, because they proved, on trial,
to be as beneficial to the upper as they were to the lower class; an
artel offering advantages to employers of labor like those offered by
a commune to the ministers of finance and war.
If an English banker wants a clerk, he must go into the open market
and find a servant, whom he has to hire on the strength of his
character as certified from his latest place. He takes him on trial,
subject to the chance of his proving an honest man. If a Russian
banker wants a clerk, he sends for the elder of an artel, looks at his
list, and hires his servant from the society, in that society's name.
He seeks no character, takes no guaranty. The artel is responsible for
the clerk, and the banker trusts him in perfect confidence to the full
extent of the artel fund. If the clerk should prove to be a rogue--a
thing which sometimes happens--the banker calls in the elder,
certifies the fact, and gets his money paid back at once.
These things may happen, yet they are not common. Petty thieving is
the vice of every Eastern race, and Russians of the lower class are
not exceptions to the rule; yet, in the artels, it is certain that
this tendency to pick and steal is greatly curbed, if not wholly
suppressed. "Honesty and truth," from being a phrase on the tongue,
may come at length to be a habit of the mind. A decent life is
strenuously enjoined, and no member is allowed to drink and game; thus
many of the vices which lead to theft are held in check by the public
opinion of his circle; yet the temptation sometimes grows too strong,
and a confidential clerk decamps with his employer's box. Another
merit of these artels then comes out.
A robbery has taken place in the bank, a clerk is missing, and the
banker feels assured that the money and the man are gone together.
Notice is sent to the police; but Moscow is a very big city; and
Rebrof, clever as he may be in catching thieves, has no instant means
of following a man who has just committed in a bank parlor his virgin
crime. But the elder knows his man, and the members, who will have to
suffer for his fault, are well acquainted with his haunts. Setting
their eyes and tongues at work, they follow him with the energy of a
pack of wolves on a trail of blood, never slackening in their race
until they hunt him down and yield him up to trial, judgment, and the
mines.
Bankers like Baron Stieglitz, of St. Petersburg, merchants like
Mazourin and Alexief, in Moscow, have artels of their own, founded in
the first instance for their own work-people. On entering an artel, a
man pays a considerable sum of money--the average is a thousand
rubles, one hundred and fifty pounds--though he need not always pay
the whole sum down at once. That payment is the good-will; what is
called the buying in. He goes to work wherever the artel may appoint
him. He gets no separate wages; for the payment is made to the elder
for one and all. So far this is share and share alike. But then the
old rule about receiving presents has been much relaxed of late; and a
good servant often receives from his master more than he receives as
his share from the general fund. This innovation, it is true, destroys
the old character of the artel as a society for the mutual assurance
of strong and weak; but in the progress of free thought and action it
is a revolution not to be withstood, and hardly to be gainsaid.
One day, when dining with a Swede, a banker in St. Petersburg, I was
struck by the quick eyes and ready hands of my host's butler, and, on
my dropping a word in his praise, my host broke out, "Ha, that fellow
is a golden man; he is my butler, valet, clerk, cashier, and master of
the household--all in one."
"Is he a peasant?"
"Yes; a peasant from the South. I get him for nothing--for the price
of a common lout."
"He comes to you from an artel?"
"Yes, he and some dozen more; he is worth the other twelve."
"You pay the same wage for each and all?"
"To the artel, so; but, hist! We make up for extra care and service by
a thumping New-Year's gift."
"Then the artel is beginning to fail of its original purpose--that of
securing to the weak, the idle, and the stupid men as high a wage as
it gave to the strong, the enterprising, and the able men?"
"Can you suppose that clever and pushing fellows will work like
horses, all for nothing, now that they are free? A serf might do so;
he lived in terror of the stick; he had no notion of his rights; and
he had worked for others all his life. An artel is a useful thing, and
no one (least of all a foreign banker) wishes to see the institution
fail; but it must go with the times. If it can not find the means of
drawing the best men into it by paying them fairly for what they do,
it will pass away."
An artel is a vast convenience to the foreign masters, whatever it may
be to the native men.