THE WORKMEN’S HOME
The Schlüsselburg road runs nearly all the way beside the great stream
of the Neva, which was still pouring down in flood in those November
days, though it sounded incessantly with the whisper of floating ice.
The road leads from St. Petersburg along the whole course of the
river up to that ill-omened fortress in the Ladoga lake, where so
many of the martyrs of freedom have enjoyed the imprisonment or death
with which Russia rewards greatness. For six or seven miles the road
passes through a series of villages, now united into one long and
squalid street, inseparable from the city, though only a few hundred
yards behind the mills and workmen’s dwellings lie flat fields, and
woods, and dull but open country. This is the largest manufacturing
district of the capital. Its factories had already become historic with
bloodshed, and it was here that the workmen’s party was organized, and
the Council of Labour Delegates first formed.
The mills stand on both sides of the river, but as a rule the
work-people live on the south or left bank, where the road runs; for
there is no passable road on the other side. In summer they pay a
farthing toll to steam ferry-boats. In winter they walk across the ice
to work, guided by little rows of Christmas trees stuck on the ice, as
is the Russian way. But between whiles, twice a year, there come a few
days when they cannot go to work at all. Those days ought to have come
by the time I visited the region first, but the frost was late.
Everything was strange that year. For months together no work had
been done, and though some of the mills had just re-opened after the
second general strike, the road was crowded with shabby men and women,
who gathered at the corners, or trampled up and down in the filth, or
sat stewing in the dirty tea-rooms, quieting their hunger with drink.
Fully 60,000 of them were out of work, for in answer to the strike many
masters had declared a lock-out.
Backwards and forwards among them marched little sections of six or
seven soldiers, their bayonets fixed, their rifles loaded, their warm
brown overcoats paid for by the work-people and the peasants. Groups
of four or five Cossacks clattered to and fro with carbine and sword,
while on the saddle, ready to the right hand, hung the terrible nagaika
or Cossack whip, paid for by the work-people and the peasants. It is
heavy and solid, with twisted hide, like a short and thicker sjambok;
at the butt is a loop for the wrist, and near the end of the lash a
jagged lump of lead is firmly tied into the strands. When a Cossack
rises in his stirrups to strike, he can break a skull right open, and
any ordinary blow will slit a face from brow to chin, and cripple a
woman or child for life.
The Manifesto had not changed the Cossack nature. A week before, at a
workmen’s meeting held to discuss the strike, it was proposed to stop
the steam trams which run along the road. But the Cossacks had received
orders not to allow the trams to be stopped. So down they trotted to
the meeting; a pistol shot is said to have been heard somewhere in the
darkness, and in a moment the horses were plunging through the midst
of a confused and helpless crowd, while swords and nagaikas hewed the
people down. The number of killed and wounded was variously given, as
is usual in massacres.
On one of my later visits down the road, I became acquainted with a
man who had survived a scene even more terrible. As a small patrol of
Cossacks was riding by, a little boy of eight, who had come to the mill
with his mother, shook his tiny fist at them from a window. By command
of their officer, the men rode into the mill yard, dismounted, entered
the machinery rooms, bayoneted the child, and began firing at random
upon the people at their work. Eight were killed where they stood.
The man who told me of the deed escaped through a side door, and hid
himself under the boilers till the soldiers rode away elated with
victory. Then the workmen dragged out the dead, and the boy’s body was
given to his mother.
Tired of being slaughtered like fowls, the workmen themselves were
collecting arms, and had organized a kind of volunteer service, or
“militia,” as they called it. Armed groups crept through the fields and
back lanes from one point of vantage to another. Even in the daytime,
firing was common in the streets, and almost every night the workmen
met the soldiers in sharp encounter. The factories, whether at work or
not, were all guarded by sentries inside and out. The Alexandrovsky
ironworks, which belong to Government, and had been shut down the day
before I was there, were at once filled with troops, and the hands,
some five thousand in number, remained outside to increase the shabby
and indignant crowd upon the street.
[Illustration:
_Art Reproduction Co._
AN AUTUMN IDYLL.
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_).]
The ironworkers were the best paid of all the workmen in the district.
The works are in an old red-brick factory, built originally for making
guns, but long used for the locomotives on the straight line from St.
Petersburg to Moscow. Many charming personages in Russian society had
justly regarded that factory as the source of human happiness. But in
their trepidation to enjoy, they had neglected the fount of enjoyment,
and the place had long been sliding down to ruin. Already it was much
cheaper to buy new locomotives from Germany, Belgium, or Zurich, in
spite of the high tariff, than even to repair the old engines here. At
last, I suppose, just the one inevitable day had come when the thing
became too ludicrous even for a Government’s methods of industry. The
gates were shut, and the five thousand hands turned out to meditate on
the source of human happiness.
It was thought at the time that, like the master of finesse who pays
his tailor by ordering more clothes, the management would open again
soon, because one per cent. of the wages had always been stopped for a
pension fund. This fund was estimated at something like £2,000,000, and
the Government might well prefer to go on paying out several thousands
a year in dead loss rather than be called upon for a solid £2,000,000
when nothing more could be flogged out of the starving peasants, and
France was beginning to look twice at a sou before lending it. What
happened in the end I did not hear, but I passed down that road some
months later, and the works were still shut up.
Other mills, which did not rest upon State credit (that is to say,
on drink and the flogging of peasants), and were struggling not to
keep shut, but to keep open, were naturally in a different position.
There are cotton mills, wool mills, paper mills, and candle mills
along the river, many of them run by English capital, and managed by
English overseers. In most of the textile mills, the machinery is
also English, this being almost the only import in which England still
rivals Germany. There is a greater spaciousness about the buildings
and yards than in England, due, I suppose, to the cheapness of land;
though, in fact, our old economic theories of rent are valueless here,
for, in spite of the vast extent of uncultivated land in Russia, the
rents in the capital towns are far higher than in London. But, apart
from this spaciousness and a certain easy-going slackness in the
labour, one might imagine one’s self in a Lancashire or Yorkshire mill.
It was in mills like these that the labour questions arose which were
really the causes of the strike that shook the Russian despotism. Of
course, political questions came in--the war scandals, the demands for
home rule, amnesty, universal suffrage, and a constituent assembly. But
a revolution, like a war, goes upon its belly, and it is difficult to
get working men to move if they are fairly content with their food and
lodging. It is still more difficult to get working women to move.
Till ten years ago the hours in these mills were seventy-five a week,
or twelve and a half a day, not counting the dinner hours. They then
fell to sixty-seven, and the strike of last October brought them down
to sixty-two and a half. For the first week of November (just after the
manifesto), the hands proclaimed an eight-hours’ day, and walked out
of the mills when the time was up. After a week of that, the managers
shut the gates, preferring to pay the hands the fortnight’s wages to
which they are entitled on dismissal, and then to let the mills stand
idle. About a fortnight later, the textile managers agreed to come down
to sixty and a half hours a week, and on that arrangement the hands
came in again. Thus in ten years the workmen had reduced their hours by
nearly fifteen a week, and seven of these had been knocked off in two
months, simply by combination in strikes. As I said, the general strike
is a powerful weapon, though, unhappily, dangerous to those who use it.
At the time there was a general opinion that a nine-hours’ day would
be enforced by an Imperial ukase. Even the employers believed it,
and looked forward to making up the loss by increased duties on
imports, and higher prices for their goods. The workmen would probably
acquiesce, for a strike falls most heavily on themselves, and under the
Russian factory laws any one who incites to a strike or joins in it may
be imprisoned for four to eight months. Till December, 1904, all trade
unions and meetings of workmen were also illegal. During his period of
ill-omened power, Plehve had affected to encourage meetings in this
very district, but his sole object was to ascertain who were the real
leaders among the people, and who were the best speakers. When that was
known, in the middle of the night, knocking would be heard at a man’s
door. He would open it to a group of soldiers or police, and from that
moment he disappeared, spirited away, no one knew where. It was the
Government’s method of protecting vested interests.
Wages nearly always go by piecework, and they vary according to skill.
In the cotton mills a man may earn anything between 15_d._ and 4_s._
4_d._ a day, and a woman between 10_d._ and 2_s._ 4½_d._ In the woollen
mills a weaver makes about 3_s._ 5_d_. a day, and he has two assistants
(generally girls) who make from 1_s._ 10_d._ to 2_s._ 4_d._ each. The
ironworkers, as I said, get a rather higher wage, but the maximum, I
think, in no case is over 30_s._ a week, and I doubt if the average,
including women and girls, is over 15_s._
The mere amount of money in wages is unimportant. A handful of bay-salt
or three yards of cheap cotton may be good wages to an African native.
All depends on what the payment can buy and what work it represents,
and I am inclined to think from what 1 have seen in many lands that in
reality the wage of the working class is much the same all the world
over. The standard of tolerable existence certainly varies a little,
but the wage is always regulated by the lowest standard that will be
endured. Wherever I have consulted an overseer or mill-owner as to
the standard of living in Russia, he has almost always told me that I
must not judge by English ideas, “because the people here are quite
satisfied with black bread and cucumbers.” By cucumbers he meant the
small pickled gherkins in barrels, such as form one peculiar ingredient
in the smell of Petticoat Lane. At the same time all English overseers
were agreed that the Russian workman’s standard of work is far lower
than the English. A Russian will mind only two looms, they told me,
where an Englishman will mind four or even six. It had not occurred to
them that there might be some connection between the standard of food
and the standard of work, nor, indeed, did that concern them much, for
in the end they obtained about the same amount of work for the same
amount of wage.
When I became more acquainted with the work-people’s life and had
been into several of their homes, I found that, as long as they were
in work, most of them had soup every day, because bad meat was cheap.
Beyond the soup, black bread was the duty, pickled cucumber the
pleasure; and the drink was almost unlimited tea--very weak and without
milk, but syruppy with sugar--varied by an occasional debauch on the
State’s vodka, which pays the greater part of the tyranny’s expenses.
On the Schlüsselburg road the work-people live in wooden huts built up
wandering courts or lanes off the main street. I have not seen a family
occupying more than one room. If they rent two or three, they sub-let.
A room costs from 15_s._ to 22_s._ a month, and the larger
rooms are usually divided between two or more families. In some cases
each of the four corners is occupied by a different family, separated
by shawls or strings, and dwelling as though in tents, as used to be
the fashion in the East End. Till quite lately a very large proportion
of the work-people lived in special barracks built for them inside
the mills, but during that year of strikes most of the overseers had
cleared their work-people out because they were dangerously near to
themselves and the machinery, and I did not see the “living-in” system
really at work till I got to Moscow, where it was still general, though
probably soon to disappear.
In the work-people’s rooms there was hardly ever any furniture beyond
the bed, the table, some stools, and a chest for clothes. I never
saw washing things of any kind. Even in winter the family clothes
are washed in the river, the women cutting square holes in the ice
and dipping the clothes into the water below. As to the people, in
accordance with the one salutary rubric of the Orthodox Church, all men
(I am not quite sure about women) must wash before they go to service.
In preparation for this sacred duty, they pay a few pence at the public
baths, sluice themselves down with hot water, and then lie steaming on
shelves, brushing their skin with branches of birch. The effect is very
satisfactory, and the Russians as a whole are a cleanly people, both
in themselves and their houses, compared to ourselves.
The work-people have the further advantage of twenty-three
ecclesiastical holidays in the year, not counting Sundays, and the
masters are obliged to provide a hospital or to pay for medical
assistance, even for women with child. In an English mill across the
river, a clubroom for lectures, concerts, and amusements had just been
erected, but the revolution had arrested culture of that kind. It had
also arrested football, which was just becoming popular. Cricket had
been tried, but was found too mysterious and pedantic, too much like
the British Constitution with all its growths and precedents. The only
native amusements that I could find were cards, knucklebones, and
the fortnightly debauch in vodka when the wages are paid. But at the
time of my first visit, there was some chance that the vodka would be
dropped, for on the previous Sunday night the Strike Committee had
decided that the work-people should for the present give up spirits,
tobacco, and other Government monopolies, not for abstinence but to
deprive the Government of revenue. The truly Nationalist party has
urged the same course in Ireland.
There is one peculiarity which complicates the Russian labour question.
Some of the work-people have now lost all connection with the land,
but a great majority are still bound by the closest links of duty
and affection to their village, and to the little strips of earth
which have been allotted to their family. Probably most of the hands
in any mill have come there in hopes of paying the taxes on the land,
and keeping the family alive in the starving village at home. Between
the village and the factory they are continually passing to and fro.
Sometimes as many as half the hands in a mill will set off to their
villages during the year, and come back again. I have seen the books of
one factory, employing nearly 2000 hands, from which over 1000 had gone
and returned. If a working son on the land is called to the army, a
mill hand walks away to take his place. If labour is short at harvest,
they go. If the village community is re-dividing the land, they go. The
father of the house at home can always send for them, and they go. It
comes of that touching passion for the land which is the great motive
of the Russian people. Mercilessly robbed as they have been, nothing
has yet induced them to believe that land can belong to Tsar, or
Prince, or idle proprietor. Land, they say, cannot belong to people who
do not work it; of course it cannot. The land belongs to the peasants.
If only the good Tsar know what the people suffer because their land is
kept from them, he would give it them back. As Stepniak said long ago,
that simple faith is one of the tragedies of Russian life.[1]
DIARY OF EVENTS
On November 20th, a Peasant’s Congress met at Moscow. There
were 300 delegates including several women. Their main demands
were for a Constituent Assembly and Nationalization of the
land. Sixty followers of Tolstoy were present, and most of
the delegates spoke for revolution by peaceful means. Yet on
November 27th they were all arrested.
On November 26th, a serious mutiny broke out in the army and
fleet at Sevastopol, under the leadership of Lieutenant Schmidt,
who had already been expelled from the navy as a Socialist. For
a few days the Government suffered panic, but the mutiny was put
down without much difficulty.
On November 28th, the post and telegraph hands struck at Moscow
for the right of union. The strike extended through the service
and paralysed business and Government action. The average wage
of the assistants was £5 a month.