FACTORY CHILDREN: CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1780-1914 Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was made in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. _____________________________________________ Boris Borisovich Gorshkov Certificate of Approval: _____________________________ _____________________________ Rafe Blaufarb Daniel Szechi, Chair Associate Professor Professor History History ______________________________ _____________________________ Jane Burbank Alice K. Pate Professor Associate Professor History, New York University History, Columbus State University ____________________________ Stephen L. McFarland Dean Graduate School FACTORY CHILDREN: CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1780-1914 Boris Borisovich Gorshkov A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama December15, 2006 FACTORY CHILDREN: CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1780-1914 Boris Borisovich Gorshkov Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon the request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author receives all publication rights ________________________________________________ Signature of Author ________________________________________ Date of Graduation iii VITA Boris Borisovich Gorshkov was born July 1, 1966, in Moscow, Russia. He entered Auburn University in January 1993 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in March, 1996. In September 1996 he entered Graduate School, Auburn University, and graduated with a Master of Arts degree in history in 1999. He is the author of A Life under Russian Serfdom (Central European University Press, 2005) and many articles and essays on peasants, child labor, and labor laws. iv v DISSERTATION ABSTRACT FACTORY CHILDREN: CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1780-1914 Boris Borisovich Gorshkov Doctor of Philosophy, December 15, 2006 (M.S. Auburn University, 1999) (B.A., Auburn University, 1996) 272 Typed Pages Directed by Daniel Szechi Children comprised an extremely significant segment of the industrial labor force in Russia in Imperial Russia. In the mid-nineteenth century the average number of children aged sixteen and under employed in industry accounted for about 15 percent of all industrial workers, varying, however, in individual businesses from 0 to 40 percent. With the rapid development of the economy during the following decades, industry?s reliance on child labor became even greater. This dissertation investigates child industrial labor in Russia from the late eighteenth century until the outbreak of World War I, focusing particularly on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The major questions this dissertation attempts to vi answer are: What were the origins of child labor? What was the impact of industrialization on the employment and labor of children? What were the extent and dynamics of child labor in the era?s factories? What factors made child labor so attractive to industries? What was the social composition of children employed in industries, their workday, wages, and working conditions? How did factory labor affect the health of working children? What impact did children?s employment have on contemporary attitudes toward and debates about the issue and how did these debates affect tsarist social legislation? And finally, what was the impact of labor protection laws on child labor and children?s welfare? In more general terms, the dissertation seeks to explore a little known subject of Imperial Russia?s labor history. Additionally, through the lens of child labor, this dissertation explores certain tendencies in the late imperial Russian state and society. A major thesis of this dissertation is that during the late nineteenth century the widespread and intensive industrial employment of children, with resulting exploitation and decline of health, produced a transformation of attitudes about child labor from initial broad acceptance to condemnation, in particular among the ruling elites. The growing state and public concern about working children helped form new approaches to the issue especially among the state bureaucracy. This resulted in new legislative regulation of children?s employment, education, and welfare. All these developments provided an important foundation for general social legislation in Russia during the early twentieth century. AKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank the Graduate School of Auburn University for research funding and allowances for trips to Moscow, Russia. Thanks to Professor Daniel Szechi, my PhD supervisor at Auburn for his patient support. Most especially I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Michael Melancon for more than a decade of inspiration and repeatedly helping to light the way. vii Style manual used: Chicago format (The Chicago Manual Style, 13th ed. Chicago University Press, 1982) Computer software used: Microsoft Word 2003 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTIONN 1 CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR: CHILD LABOR BEFORE INDUSTRIALIZATION 16 Child Labor in the Countryside 17 Child Labor in State and Manorial Factories 32 Early Tsarist Laws Regulating Children?s Employment and Work 48 CHAPTER 2. CHILDREN IN INDUSTRIES: THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXT 68 Statistics and Dynamics of Child Factory Labor during Russian Industrialization 70 Causes of Child Factory Employment during Industrialization 80 Employment, Work, and Living Conditions of Factory Children 90 The Impact of Factory Labor on Children?s Health 107 CHAPTER 3. LEGISLATIVE AND PUBLIC EFFORTS AND DEBATES ABOUT CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR 126 Early Legislative Proposals to Regulate Child Labor in Industries and the Discussion about Child Labor 128 Later Legislative Proposals and Public Debates 147 CHAPTER 4. FACTORY CHILDREN: STATE PROTECTION, EDUCATION AND INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICAL LIFE 179 The 1882 Child Labor Law and its Implementation 180 Later Imperial Russian Laws on Employment, Labor, and Welfare and their Placement among Other Industrializing Countries in Europe 190 The Impact of Child Labor Laws on Children?s Employment, 202 Education of Factory Children 218 Children?s Socialization and Involvement in Political Life 226 CONCLUSION 245 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 248 APPENDIX 257 ix LIST OF TABLES 1.1. Number of Children in Peasant Families in the Kubenskii Region of Vologda province in 1717 21 2.1. Workers employed in Moscow Industries in 1879 73 2.2. Workers and Children employed in St. Petersburg industries in 1878 74 2.3. Number and Percent of Workers and Children Employed in Various Reported Industries in 1883 76 2.4. Ages of Child Workers in Workshops of Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill (1882) 96 x 1 INTRODUCTION In childhood?s golden times, Everyone lives happily ? Effortless and lighthearted With fun and joy. Only we don?t get to run and play in the golden fields: All day the factory?s wheels We turn, and turn, and turn... N. A. Nekrasov, ?Children?s Cry?1 The extract from Nekrasov?s verse captures the harsh realities of child labor in nineteenth-century Russian factories. Child industrial labor outraged many great writers of the era, including Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, and Fedor Dostoevski.2 The extent of children?s employment suggests role children an enormous played in the development of the Russian industrial economy. Children comprised an extremely significant segment of the industrial labor force. Some were urban children of the cities? poor or inmates of foundling homes. Most were rural residents and came to industrial areas with their parents or relatives, or were recruited in the countryside by employers. Throughout the country, industries employed children usually in various unskilled and auxiliary tasks. In the textile industry, for instance, children assisted adult workers by carrying bobbins, cleaning equipment and floors and sometimes worked as spinners and weavers. In sugar 2 plants they worked inside boilers scaling and cleaning them. In mines children fueled kerosine lamps and carried mining equipment. A late nineteenth century observer wrote that in order ?to see the conditions of children in the mines, one needs to enter the machine plant, or the lamp workshop, where the atmosphere is suffused with the smell of gasoline used for lamps, which causes headache and nausea. Inside [the mine] one can see an entire chain of small boys, moving around the gasoline lamps wiping and fueling them.?3 In addition to auxiliary work, children sometimes performed regular tasks normally done by adult workers. In the mid-nineteenth century the average number of children aged sixteen and under employed in industry accounted for about 15 percent of all industrial workers, varying, however, in individual businesses from 0 to 40 percent. With the rapid development of the economy during the following decades, industry?s reliance on child labor became even greater. The labor of children was remunerated at one third of the lowest rate of the adult male worker and the workday lasted for 12 and even more hours. Deprived of their childhood, factory children learned early on all the responsibilities and grievances of adult life. They shared all burdens with their parents and became an important element in family survival strategies. By the late nineteenth century, child labor became a matter of serious concern for many governmental officials, reformers and intellectuals. The historiography of industrializing England, France, Germany and North America has produced a very rich body of sometimes controversial studies about child factory labor.4 They range from accounts that, on the one hand, portray child factory labor 3 as the worst evil spawned by nineteenth-century capitalist modernization and view children as its victims5 to, on the other hand, studies that emphasize the Industrial Revolution?s positive implications for children?s lives. Perhaps the grimmest picture of child abuses during industrialization emerges from Walvin?s study of childhood in England. According to Walvin, ?children were beaten awake, kept awake by beating and, at the end of the day, fell asleep, too exhausted to eat.?6 In his seminal Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson claimed that ?exploitation of little children . . . was one of the most shameful events in [British] history.?7 In contrast, a few historians offer more favorable assessments of child labor during industrialization.8 They maintain that working conditions for children during the Industrial Revolution were no worse and in many cases even better than those before industrialization or those which existed in the countryside. Clark Nardinelli, for instance, suggested that the exploitation of children did not originate in the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, according to Nardinelli, the new job options created by industrialization and the competitive labor market offered children opportunities to escape the even heavier exploitation at home in cottage industry or in agriculture. ?Industrialization,? Nardinelli writes, ?far from being the source of the enslavement of children, was the source of their liberation.?9 Nevertheless, more recent studies of child labor concur in the older views and offer less optimistic evaluations of the industrial revolution?s impact on child labor. For example, Nardinelli?s argument has been questioned by two economic historians from Cambridge University who have insisted that the Industrial Revolution indeed led to the harsh exploitation of child workers.10 4 The employment of children in late nineteenth century Russian factories, an issue no less compelling than in other industrializing countries of the time, remains largely unexplored. Despite the wealth of literature on the worker?s movement, only a few historians have addressed child factory labor. Late imperial scholars of child labor explored the issue without any analytical or methodological framework. Their monographs on child labor tended to replicate large citations from published and unpublished primary sources. Among several late imperial studies of child factory labor, E. N. Andreev?s collection of primary sources on the issue stands out as the most significant and coherent publication. Most, if not all, late imperial scholars were highly critical of children?s employment, which they portrayed as morally unacceptable.11 V. I. Gessen?s two 1927 monographs, with all the limitations of the period?s priorities, agendas and methodologies, still remain the only the major Russian-language studies on the topic.12 Highly critical of capitalism, Gessen emphasized the harsh exploitation of children in imperial era industries and the general lack of state concern for children?s welfare. Although some English language histories of labor in Russia mention the issue of children?s industrial employment, the subject has not yet received specific attention in its own right. The persistence of child labor in imperial Russia?s factories is noted in the works of Reginald E. Zelnik. For example, his Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia outlines the tsarist government?s early legislative efforts to constrain children?s employment in industries and his Law and Disorder on the Narova River, which analyses the 1872 Kreenholm strike, provides an account of conditions for working children at the 5 Kreenholm cotton mill.13 Michael Melancon?s Anatomy of a Massacre provides valuable data about child gold mine workers in Siberia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.14 Aside from these studies, which serve to introduce the question, the child industrial labor issue remains a virtual blank page in western historiography of Imperial Russia. This dissertation attempts to fill that page. It investigates child industrial labor in Russia from the late eighteenth century until the outbreak of World War I, focusing particularly on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The major questions the dissertation attempts to answer are: What were the origins of child labor? What was the impact of industrialization on the employment and labor of children? What were the extent and dynamics of child labor in the era?s factories? What factors made child labor so attractive to industries? What was the social composition of children employed in industries, their workday, wages, and working conditions? How did factory labor affect the health of working children? What impact did children?s employment have on contemporary attitudes toward and debates about the issue and how did these debates affect tsarist social legislation? And finally, what was the impact of labor protection laws on child labor and children?s welfare? In more general terms, the dissertation seeks to explore a little known subject of Imperial Russia?s labor history. A major thesis of this dissertation is that during the late nineteenth century the widespread and intensive industrial employment of children, with resulting exploitation and decline of health, produced a transformation of attitudes about child labor from initial broad acceptance to condemnation. The growing state and public concern about working 6 children helped form new approaches to the issue that resulted in new legislative regulation of children?s employment, education, and welfare. All these developments provided an important foundation for general social legislation in Russia during the early twentieth century. The dissertation utilizes a vide array of surviving primary documents, as well as published sources, governmental materials, laws, and secondary studies. It incorporates data from many previously unpublished archival documents, published memoirs, and the era?s periodical publications. Published sources include government reports and reports of factory inspectors, health records, labor statistics, business reports, and journalistic accounts. For scholars of child labor, as for any student of labor history in general, sources and their reliability remain a crucial problem. Therefore whenever possible I have tried to integrate and balance all available evidence. Chapter One traces the origins of child labor. It begins with the exploration of child labor in the countryside?in agriculture and in domestic industries. It discusses popular views on child labor and widespread acceptance of children?s engagement in productive labor. Traditionally, the use of children in productive labor had been widely accepted and practiced, particularly among the lower social classes. The initiation of children into some kind of work was viewed as a form of upbringing and education aimed at preparing children for adult responsibilities. The extent of child labor depended on the economic condition and size of the family. Most families in pre-industrial Russia depended for economic survival on the labor input of all family members with the 7 exception of very little children and those unable to work. The types of work children performed differed in accordance with the child?s gender and age. Chapter One also discuses child labor in state and manorial factories and explores the earliest legislative measures to regulate child labor. Initially the state concurred in the view that children?s involvement in productive labor served as an education and apprenticeship for adult occupations. Long before the nineteenth century, the apprenticeship of children had been an established and entirely legal practice. With the purpose of having children ?learn a profession,? the government sanctioned sending hundreds of urban and rural children to state and manorial factories. Reality, however, often differed from intentions. Alongside apprenticeship or even instead of it, many entrepreneurs employed children for regular work, over long hours and even at night. The government undertook some fragmentary measures limited to certain industries and factories to cope with the abuses of child labor. The most important legislative act was the 1845 law which prohibited night work for children under the age of twelve. For the most part, however the early laws lacked uniformity and were quite specific: they aimed only at concrete situations. Thus, by the mid-nineteenth century, the starting point of Russian industrialization, child productive labor had been a widespread traditional and legalized practice, welcomed by most social classes and supported by state laws. In addressing child labor in the countryside, this chapter draws mostly on Russian-language secondary studies by anthropologists and ethnographers and a few primary sources. The discussion of child labor in state and manorial factories and the early factory laws draws on both primary and secondary sources. 8 Chapter Two explores child labor in factories during the late imperial period when Russia experienced rapid industrialization. It addresses the causes and extent of child labor during that period. It also explores labor conditions for children and the impact of industrial labor on children?s health. The accelerating tempo of the capitalist economy during the second half of the nineteenth century created a massive demand for semi- skilled and unskilled labor. This was complemented by rapid population growth and changes in the rural economy after the 1861 reform, both of which led millions of rural residents to seek factory work. Because of the broad popular acceptance of child labor as a means of education and apprenticeship and because of the dependence of most families on the labor of all family members, parents were willing to send their offspring to new factories when the opportunity appeared. Simultaneously, manufacturers viewed children as more adaptable to the new factory regime (work hours and discipline) and more capable of learning to work with new machinery and technology than adults. The conjunction of these factors made children an important source of industrial labor. This chapter examines the statistics on child labor and the dynamics of child labor within industries and individual factories. With economic expansion, the absolute number of children employed in factories grew rapidly. Most children worked in the textile industry, in particular in cotton processing. As noted above, Chapter Two also explores the impact of factory labor on children?s health. The exhausting industrial environment and long work hours had a negative impact on the health of working children. In fact factory employment led to their outright physical decline. Unlike labor in traditional agriculture and in cottage industry, 9 where work was usually conducted under parental supervision, labor in the new mechanized factories subjected children to the rapid pace of machinery and exposed them to moving belts, shifting parts, intense heat and noise, and hazardous conditions associated with dust and the use of toxic chemicals. In addition to general illnesses caused by the new industrial environment, children were prone to work-related injuries. The number of such heavily exceeded that among adult workers. This chapter utilizes various published and unpublished primary sources including government reports, reports by factory inspectors, and archival materials from Russian federal and local archives, as well as secondary literature. The increasingly ill health among factory children and its potential consequences aroused concern among many statesmen and public activists. Chapter Three examines public debates about child labor and the resulting legislative proposals to regulate child labor. The appeal for child labor protection laws initiated by concrete state and local bureaucrats produced an important discussion of industrial labor among state officials, industrialists, academicians, and reformers. During the early 1860s, the government organized various commissions to inspect and review existing factory legislation in order to work out new provisions. Ultimately, these provisions came together in a first legislative proposal. In 1860-61 this proposal went to provincial governments and industrialists? associations for review and discussion. The ongoing discussion about child labor reform broadened lawmakers? perceptions of the entire phenomenon of child labor. As time went by, the legislative approaches became more and more complex. For instance, later initiatives addressed such issues as children?s education and welfare that 10 had been entirely absent from previous versions. Debates about children?s employment in industry during the 1860s and 1870s did not result in significant legislation. Nevertheless, these discussions lay an important conceptual foundation for laws of a decade or so later that aimed at regulating child labor and promoting children?s education and welfare. Equally as important, they facilitated the actual introduction of these laws. Chapter Four discusses the tsarist laws that eventually tackled the issues of child labor and children?s education and welfare. Starting with the introduction of the 1882 law, the state progressively restricted children?s employment in industry and introduced compulsory schooling for working children. This chapter measures the laws? impact on child labor and on children?s welfare. It also undertakes to examine the question of the education of children employed in industry. Finally, it evaluates working children?s increasing involvement in Russian social and political developments, such as labor protest and strikes. Chapter Four utilizes primary sources (published laws, factory inspectors? reports, statistics, unpublished archival documents and periodicals of the period), periodical publications, and secondary literature. It pays especially close attention to the records of the district factory inspectors, which provide systematic accounts of children?s employment and of their working and living conditions. In summary, this dissertation analyses a completely new topic in Russian social history. The dissertation provides a scholarly contribution to the question of child labor in Russia and offers fresh new approaches to important questions of governance in late imperial Russia. It suggests a new interpretation of child productive labor in pre-industrial times by exploring the influence of the transition from the pre-industrial to industrial 11 economy on practices and the extent of child labor. It also contributes to a new understanding of the ?pre-industrial? concept of childhood. In addition, the dissertation suggests a new understanding of the Russian late imperial state and society and the relations between them, especially as regards the processes of imperial lawmaking and the participation of society in these processes. It offers a new way of viewing and interpreting the dynamics of society of this and the influence of these dynamics on the Russian late imperial state. 12 NOTES: 1. N. A. Nekrasov, Sobranie sochinenii v vos?mi tomakh, 8 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1965), 1:359. 2. Child factory labor is described in A. Chekhov?s story ?Spat? Khochetsia?; in Maksim Gor?kii?s novels Mat?, V liudiakh, and other works; in E. Nechiaev?s poem ?Gudok?; in novels of A. Kuprin, (V nedrakh zemli), L. Serafimovich (Pod prazdnik) and in works of many other poets and writers of the time. 3. Cited in K. A. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie rabochego klassa v Rossii, 2 vols. (Petrograd: Byloe, 1923), 2:28. 4. For discussion of child industrial labor in general, see Child Labor: A World History Companion, Sandy Hobbs ed. et al (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1999). On child labor in England, see Pamela Horn, The Victorian and Edwardian Schoolchild (Gloucester, UK: Sutton, 1989); Clark Nardinelli, Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990); Children?s Work and Welfare, 1780- 1890, Pamela Horn, ed. (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Tuttle Carolyn, Hard at Work in Factories and Mines: The Economics of Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1999) and Peter Kirby, Child Labour in Britain, 1750-1870 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003). On child labor in France see Colin Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-Century France: 13 Work, Health, and Education among the Classes Populaires (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Lee Shai Weissbach, Child Labor Reform in Nineteenth-Century France: Assuring the Future Harvest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). For a bibliography on child labor in the United States, see Hugh D. Hindman, Child Labor: An American History (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2002). On child labor in the developing world, see Child Work, Poverty and Underdevelopment, Gerry Rodgers and Guy Standing, ed., (Geneva: International Labor Organisation, 1981); and David Post, Children?s Work, Schooling and Welfare in Latin America (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 2001). 5. For this interpretation see, for example, Raymond Fuller, ?Child Labor? in E. R. A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1930); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963); and J. L. Hammond and B. Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760-1832: The New Civilization (London: Longmans, 1966). 6. James Walvin, A Child?s World: A Social History of English Childhood, 1800-1914 (Harmonddsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1982), 64. 7. Thompson, Making, 349. 8. For these views, see R. M. Hartwell, The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth (London: Methuen, 1971). 9. For more discussion, see Nardinelli, Child Labor, 98. Citation from ibid, 102. 14 10. See Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, ??The Exploitation of Little Children?: Child Labor and the Family Economy in the Industrial Revolution? in Explorations of Economic History 32 (1995):485-516. 11. E. N. Andreev, Rabota maloletnikh v Possii i zapadnoi Evrope vypusk I (St. Petersburg, 1884). Other late imperial historians also explore some aspects of child factory labor. For example, Tugan-Baranovskii discusses the 1845 child labor law. See Mikhail I. Tugan-Baranovsky, Russian Factory in the nineteenth Century, transl. Arthur Levin and Claora S. Levin (Homewood, Ill, 1970); for Russian-language edition, see M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika v proshkom i nastoiashchem: Istoricheskoe razvitie russkoi fabriki v XIX veke (St. Petersburg: O. N. Popovoi, 1898). See also E. M. Dement?ev, Fabrika, chto ona daet naseleniiu i chto ona u nego beret (Moscow: Izd. D. I. Sytina, 1897). 12. V. Iu. Gessen, Trud dtei i podrostkiv v Rossii. Ot XVII veka go Oktiabr?skoi Revoliutsii (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel?stvo, 1927) and idem, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva o trude rabochei molodezhi v Rossii (Leningrad: Izdatel?stvo leningradskogo Gubprofsoveta, 1927). Child labor in Imperial Russian is also discussed in V. A. Zaitsev, Polozhenie truda podrostkov i ego oplata v promyshlennosti (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1924) and A. Kirov, Na zare iunosheskogo gvizheniia v Rossii (Kharkov: Proletarii, 1926). The issue of children?s employment in industries is also mentioned in many Russian-language studies on workers and the labor movement. In this literature, the issue however did not receive any specific analysis. The only recent 15 Russian-language account of child labor is an assay by N. I. Enalieva. This seven-page general overview of child labor and apprenticeship in Imperial Russia has been translated into English. See N. E. Enalieva, ?Child Labor and Industrial Apprenticeship in Russia? Russian Education and Society (November 1995):11-18. 13. See Reginald E. Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Peterburg (Stanford: University of California Press, 1971); and idem, Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 26, 72,132, 169, 174, 228-229. 14. Michael Melancon, The Lena Goldfields Massacre and the Crisis of the Late Tsarist State (Texas A&M University Press, 2006) 16 CHAPTER ONE ORIGINS OF CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR: CHILD LABOR BEFORE INDUSTRIALIZATION Eighteenth century travelers to Russia often commented on child labor in their descriptions of what they saw. When the German geographer Johann Georg Gmelin visited the Demidov Nizhne-Tagil?sk metallurgical works of western Siberia in 1742, he noted with some admiration that ?in the wire shop children from ten to fifteen years old performed most jobs and even not worse than adult [workers].? In the Nev?iansk mill the geographer observed how seven and eight years old boys made copper cups and various kitchen ware and ?were rewarded according to their work.? Gmelin claimed that in some workshops the number of children even exceeded that of adult workers.1 Another famous German traveler, Peter S. Pallas, who visited the Ural?s mines and metallurgical works (western Siberia) during the 1770s, wrote that he was ?highly delighted to see that young ten and twelve year-old children work in the blacksmith shop and receive a salary? on a par with adult workers. Pallas pointed out that the number of children employed in the works reached the thousands.2 As troubling as they may appear to modern sensibilities, these almost adoring portrayals of the phenomenon of working children reflect widespread contemporary perceptions of child productive labor. 17 It would be a mistake to assume that child labor in late nineteenth-century Russian factories was a product of industrialization. Child labor had existed well before modernized factories began to appear on Russia?s pre-industrial landscape. From time immemorial, children had worked in agriculture, as well as in cottage and all other types of domestic manufacturing. In addition, Russian children worked in manorial and state factories and mines. The use of child labor in production had been a widely accepted and common practice, aimed at teaching children adult occupations and thus preparing them for adult life. How did child productive labor emerge? What was its nature and extent before industrialization? This chapter tracks the origins of child labor. It explores the role of child labor in the countryside and children?s employment in state and manorial enterprises. It traces popular notions of childhood and the influence of these notions on state policies regarding children. It also examines early state attitudes to child labor and the earliest attempts of the state to regulate children?s employment in industry. Child Labor in the Countryside Most historians of child labor suggest that the use of child labor in production everywhere reflected traditional beliefs about and practices of child-rearing and education.3 The same was true for Russia. In most social strata, particularly in peasant families and the lower urban orders, initiation of children into some kind of productive labor ?appropriate to their strength and ability? was perceived as a form of education and 18 apprenticeship and aimed at preparing children for adult responsibilities. Ethnographers note that in peasant families, teaching household activities and agricultural occupations was considered the most essential duty in the upbringing and education of children. In those cases, for instance, when foster-parents reported to the village commune about fulfillment of their parental duties, they were usually careful to underscore their efforts to teach the children they adopted all common household and agricultural occupations. Peasants believed that ?if a child is not initiated into productive work from an early age, it would hardly develop an ability for work in the future.?4 Nevertheless, in addition to its crucial educational aspect, the acceptance of child labor also signified the extent to which most families of pre-industrial Russia depended for their economic functioning on labor contributions from all family members, including children and elders. Here, however, is where I differ from scholarly views that emphasize the impoverishment of peasant families as the primary cause of child labor in the countryside.5 Not poverty, but rather the origins and development of the local peasant economy within the context of the family influenced the use of children in production. Of course, the economic conditions of the individual family affected the extent of children?s involvement in productive labor. They were not, however, its major cause. Simply put, the family was the basic unit of production of the pre-industrial economy. The character of the peasant household economy and the conditions of its maintenance required the labor input of all family members, with the exception of very small children, usually under the age of five, and very old people. Thus, child labor was essential for the family economy of every peasant household in pre-industrial Russia, regardless of its economic 19 conditions. The upbringing and education of children went side by side with the real productive economic activity of the peasant family.6 An old peasant custom of calling juveniles by names according to the labor task they performed illustrates the wide popular acceptance of child productive labor. For example, boys between ages seven and ten who engaged in helping to plow or harrow were called pakholki, paorki, or boronovolki (plowboys or harrow boys); those who helped to pasture animals were called pastushki (herds boys). Girls of the same ages were called variously nian?ka (nanny-girl), pestun?ia (mentor girl), or kazachikha (maids who worked as domestic servants in other families) and so on, all names that reflected occupational activities. ?Our plowboy,? ?our herds boy,? or ?our nanny girls? were habitual terms parents used to address their children.7 Did peasants distinguish childhood from other stages of life? Beginning with Philippe Aries, scholars have widely viewed childhood as a cultural invention of modern times. Exploring European arts, Aries asserted that pre-modern Europe ?did not know childhood [and] did not attempt to portray it. . . . The idea of childhood did not exist.?8 Following this approach, many scholars have argued that pre-industrial society did not see children as persons in a unique and separate stage of life but rather perceived them as ?miniature,? under-aged adults. This conclusion seems to be at odds with some recent studies and the findings of Russian-language ethnographers and anthropologists. Russian- language scholars suggest that peasants, in general, distinguished three major periods of the life cycle, which included childhood, adulthood, and old age, with a complexity of subdivisions, stages, and phases within each period.9 These divisions not only rested upon 20 popular attitudes about human biology but were also embedded within a broad range of cultural assumptions and social roles. According to I. I. Shangina, in the countryside the criteria for transitions from childhood to adulthood and to old age were relative and depended on the individual?s physiological condition and readiness to undertake one or another responsibility.10 In general, these divisions usually corresponded with the individual?s ability to work and clearly reflected peasant practices of distributing labor duties among family members. Labor duties in peasant families were carefully defined according to the age, gender, and physical abilities of family members. The full working age depended on the life span and normally ranged from about seventeen to sixty-five, a group that comprised roughly 60 to 64 percent of the peasant population.11 Very small children, under the age of five or six, and people over sixty-five usually did not work. Children between ages eight and fourteen were considered ?half-workers of little strength? (polurabochie maloi pomoshchi), whereas juveniles between fourteen and sixteen years of age were -- ?half- workers of greater strength? (polurabochie bol?shei sily).12 In the countryside, the age of peasants when they received ?full labor duty? (tiaglo) varied from province to province. On average, starting from the age of seventeen or eighteen peasants carried full labor duty until somewhere between sixty-one and sixty-five. The full state poll tax was assessed on adult peasants starting from the age of eighteen. Juveniles of fifteen to seventeen years of age were subjected to half labor duty.12 In impoverished families, or in families in which one of the adults was absent or deceased, children fulfilled all adult responsibilities at an earlier age.13 21 Various studies of rural youth indicate that children under age fifteen constituted a significant portion of the peasant population, about one third. According to Baklanova?s findings, children under age five accounted for about 14 percent of the peasant population of northern Russia; children between ages six and ten constituted about 11 percent and those aged between eleven and fifteen -- about 9 percent.14 During the nineteenth century, children of age seven and below accounted for about 17.5 percent of the population of European Russia. (In 1858 the population of European Russia was 59.2 million of which about 49 million were peasants.15) Infant and child mortality rates, however, were high. During the nineteenth century, only about 50 percent of children survived to age ten.16 Such a high mortality rate among infants and young children was typical for most of pre- industrial Europe. For example, in mid-nineteenth century France, about 25 percent of infants died before one and only 50 percent survived to age five.17 Table 1.1. Number of Children in Peasant Families in the Kubenskii Region of Vologda province in 171718 Number of Children Peasant Families Number Percent Number of Children Peasant Families Number Percent 1 2 3 4 5 6 238 22.4 292 27.4 208 19.5 84 7.9 49 4.6 22 2.1 7 8 9 10 11 No Children Total 10 0.9 5 0.5 3 0.3 1 0.1 1 0.1 150 14.2 1064 100 22 Table 1.1 displays the number of children in peasant families in 1717 in the Kubenskii region of Vologda province (northern Russia). The figures show that about 47 percent of peasant families had 2 or 3 children. In Russia extended two generational families with two adult male and two adult female members predominated.19 Anthropologists maintain that because of the high death rate among children, as well as their significance as future household and agricultural laborers, children were highly valued in peasant families. One popular peasant saying holds that ?Our own harrow-boy (boronovolok) is much more valuable than any one else.?20 The adult population in village communes in general provided children with love and care, as well as toleration for some of their mischief. Children were considered to be young and silly and therefore were easily forgiven for pranks and minor misdeeds. This, however, did not exclude punishment applied within the individual family.21 When punishment occurred, parents were careful not to cause serious physical harm to their children. A former serf from Yaroslavl? province of central Russia recalled that when he was a child in the early nineteenth century, he was beaten by his father ?only on rare occasions,? because, as he explained, his parents were concerned about his health. His ?grandmother would not let anyone beat [him], because [he] was the only child they had.?22 As mentioned, evidence illustrates that Russian peasants distinguished childhood as a unique stage of life. Researchers of popular culture have noted that peasants considered childhood to last from the moment of ?coming into this world? until the age of fifteen of seventeen. Depending on locality, this upper limit of childhood ranged from age thirteen to nineteen.23 Peasants considered infants and very young children, from the day 23 of birth to five or six, as neutral or without gender. Collective names for children of this age did not reflect their gender, although personal names were given according to a child?s biological sex. Regardless of their sex, both male and female infants were variously called ditia, rebenok, mladen?, mommzik, which all can be translated as ?baby? or ?child.? Small children were also called kuviaka or kuvatka (those who cry), sligoza (those who drool), popolza (those who crawl), and so on, depending on locality.24 These names do not reflect the child?s biological sex but rather either suggest the child?s age (ditia and rebenok) or behavior associated with that age, such as crying, crawling, and so on. The clothing of very young children also did not distinguish their biological sex. Peasant children of both sexes usually wore long linen shirts until five or six years of age. Until that age, young boys normally did not wear pants. In most peasant families, children?s clothing was produced from old worn-out adult clothes and was passed from elder children to younger ones.25 Peasants believed that the child?s biological, or as they called it, ?natural? sex did not automatically translate into the proper social behavior normally attributed to the given biological sex. Parents utilized various customs and activities associated with magic and popular religion in order to ?fix? the child?s biological sex. In other words, peasants carried out certain activities to encourage the development of their children in a way appropriate to their biological sex. This process of ?fixing? started early, right from the day of birth. For example, in many northern provinces of Russia parents tied the navel strings of new-born baby boys 24 over an object which they associated with traditional male occupations, such as a hammer or an axe, whereas they tied those of baby girls over objects associated with female occupations, such as spindles, yarn, and so on. These objects related not only to male or female spheres of activity but also to the occupations that parents desired for their children? future. For example, depending on the parents? desires, the daughter?s omphalos was cut over a spindle or a thread, whereas the son?s upon a hammer, axe, a form for making peasant bast shoes, and so on.26 Some practices of ?fixing? biological sex involved magical manipulation of the child?s placenta. For example, in Orlov province in south-central Russia, a mother would take a piece of her baby?s placenta and put it in a place or upon an object she associated with the child?s desired future occupation. In Vologda province of northern Russia, the father would hang the placenta of his baby son in the stables while saying ?the child grows up with the horse.?27 The different places chosen for boys and girls clearly indicated that peasants had distinguished male and female spheres of productive activity. By magically associating children with one or another sphere, the parents tried to stimulate behavior appropriate to the child?s biological sex.28 In general, with a few exceptions, initiation of children into agricultural, household, and other productive labor started early, usually from age five or six and involved very simple tasks. As children grew up and became stronger, parents gradually taught and assigned them more complicated and serious tasks. The process of initiation in some cases was accompanied by additional ritualistic activities and rites. Anthropologists believe that the latter symbolized the transition from childhood to adolescence.29 For 25 example, in Smolensk province in western Russia, for the first time in her life a girl of five or six was assigned to spin a single thread. Then the thread was burned and the girl was supposed to consume its ashes with water and bread. This ritual was accompanied by a saying: ?eat and you will become a good spinner.?30 In other areas of Russia, boys and girls aged five to seven began to wear pants and skirts, modes of dress that also symbolized their transition to a new stage of life.31 Thus, the transition to adulthood began from the age of five or six with the symbolic introduction of children into productive activities and continued for the next several years. During these years, the children were characterized as ?undergrown,? ?under-aged? (podrostkovye), or juvenile. This observation modifies the scholarly belief that the period from birth to six years of age contained a full transition to adulthood. In this view, from the age of six peasant children began to carry out all adult responsibilities.32 Findings from the Russian countryside suggest that rather than being completed by the age of six, the transition to adulthood started from between the ages of five and seven and continued for several years after that. In order to facilitate the initiation of very young children into one or another productive activity, parents developed various treats and rewards or assigned simple labor tasks in the form of play. Many games and recreational activities engaged in by children between the ages of six and fourteen imitated adult occupational and social activities. For example, in some areas peasant children played konople, a game that mimicked certain labor tasks in hemp cultivation.33 In the words of an investigator of children?s recreational activities, ?a game was a particular way of preparing children for adult life.?34 26 Sometimes, in order to wake up small children early in the morning for hay-moving or plowing, parents used one or another kind of special treat. For example, as recorded by an ethnographer in 1856, peasants in the Altai region (western Siberia) put baked eggs by a sleeping boy and said, ?wake up little Peter (Petushok), the hen has already laid two little eggs by your head for you.?(In the Russian language, petushok also refers to a young rooster.)35 In general, children performed various types of work according to their gender, strength, and ability. Boys were usually launched into activities traditionally fulfilled by adult male peasants. Young sons were expected to help their fathers to sow and thresh and to cart manure to the fields. For example, in Narymsk province of western Siberia, at the age of five or six year boys began to assist adult peasants in manuring soil. The most widespread communal function for six- or seven-years-old-boys was the herding of animals. Boys who engaged in herding were called podpasok or pastushok (herd boy, shepherd boy, or cowboy). At about the same age, in many provinces, boys also began to learn how to ride on horse back. In most cases, young boys worked under the supervision of their fathers or older male children.36 As boys grew older and gained more physical strength and ability, parents gave them greater responsibilities and assigned them more complicated tasks. At the age of seven, eight, or nine, boys began to help adult peasants with land cultivation. In the Shadrinsk district of western Siberia, boys of this age and occupation were called pakholki and boronovolki (plow boys and harrow boys). Their work involved leading horses during ploughing and harrowing. From the age of nine or ten, boys began to carry 27 out various other activities: accompanying the cows to water, feeding animals, carting manure, harrowing, helping adults in ploughing and harvesting, and carrying provisions for adult males who worked away from the village (in local forests or on nearby rivers, ponds, and so on).37 From the age of thirteen to fourteen, the male peasant was supposed to work with the scythe, sickle, thresher, and axe, and began to learn how to work with the plough. At the age of fifteen, the son became, as he was called, a ?full assistant? (polnyi pomoshchnik) of his father and could replace him in case of the father?s absence or sickness.38 Girls? activities involved helping mothers to maintain the household, caring for the younger children, and carrying out all agricultural responsibilities of adult female peasants. These responsibilities included raking, strewing, reaping, binding sheafs, gleaning, and so on. Depending on the province, girls also learned various crafts and cottage industries, which in Russia were predominantly female endeavors. Girls? occupations were usually within the household or the local community, whereas boys? activities were inside as well as outside the village. Nevertheless, the occupational roles of boys and girls were sometimes interchangeable. In families without male children, girls helped with agricultural tasks normally performed by boys and, vice-versa, in families with no female children boys helped with female work.39 Regional economic variations also determined the character of children?s occupations. In areas where agriculture predominated -- southern, western, and central agricultural areas, the Volga provinces, and Siberia -- children performed mostly agricultural tasks. During the non-growing season in agricultural areas, children also 28 engaged in various domestic industries and types of work not associated with farming. While girls usually stayed at home helping female peasants, boys often migrated with fathers and worked away from the village. By the late nineteenth century, with the growth of industry, seasonal migration of rural children to industrial centers increased significantly.40 In addition to farming activity, in areas where hunting and fishing was a part of the local economy, boys helped parents in these activities as well. From the age of eight or nine boys were taught how to use the bow and how to set up nets on lakes and ponds for catching wild life. The initiation into fishing and hunting at first started as play, which gradually took more realistic forms. Finally, as they grew older, boys were invited to engage in real hunting and fishing, beginning with simplest and easiest assignments and then going on to the more complicated and difficult ones.41 In regions where the local economy was mixed or predominantly non-agricultural, children engaged in cottage industries and crafts. In central non-agricultural provinces, children learned textile-making and other crafts that characterized the local economy.42 Here girls engaged in various cottage industries, whereas boys were initiated into various commercial activities or worked outside the village. For example, Savva Purlevskii, a serf from Yaroslavl?, a non-agricultural province in central Russia, recalled in his memoirs that from an early age he engaged in petty trade. At the age of eleven (in 1811) Purlevskii lost his father and from that time on had to earn his living. In his own words, at the age of eleven ?the laboring part of [his] life began.? Serfs in his village traditionally pursued non-agricultural occupations. Purlevskii bought flax and locally produced peasant goods and transported them to Moscow or local markets where he sold them.43 In Vladimir 29 province, famous for its non-agricultural economy, the ofeni, local male peasants who engaged in commerce, took their children to Ukraine, Volga, Siberia, and everywhere else where they engaged in trade.44 In areas with mixed economies, girls usually remained at home and learned various crafts and trades. In Russia peasant cottage industry was virtually a women?s sphere. According to a 1787 observer, ?women of [Nikitskii district of Moscow Province], as is usual everywhere [in central Russia], spin flax and wool and weave canvas and cloth for household use and for sale.? This observer recorded similar activities among women in other non-agricultural provinces of central Russia.45 By a certain age, peasant boys and girls were supposed to have learned how to accomplish a certain number of occupational tasks. These who could not learn how to do work appropriate to their age were subjected to mockery. For instance, a girl who could not learn how to spin by a certain age was called a ?no spinner? (nepriakha); if by the age of fifteen, a girl could not weave cloth, she was called a ?no weaver? (netkakha). Boys who had not learned how to make bast shoes were called ?shoeless? (bezlapotnik). As a contemporary observer noted, in this last case, male peasants who could not make peasant shoes were not respected by fellow villagers and were generally viewed as ?losers.?46 In summary, most evidence suggests that Russian peasant children made the transition to adulthood, at least in terms of occupation, at about fifteen years of age. In addition to a given child?s age, gender, strength, and ability, village children?s occupations and the extent of their engagement in productive labor depended on economic and demographic factors. The economic status of the family, its size and the 30 number of adult workers were perhaps the most important ones. Various studies illustrate that in families with no adult male workers, all responsibilities fell upon women and children. That was especially true for nuclear families where male members were in the military or deceased. Children?s labor input in these families was greater and the area of responsibilities larger than in families with two or more adult workers. According to Bernshtam, ?the scarcity of men?s hands in a family led to its economic decline, whereas the absence of men in a nuclear family led to poverty.? Labor pressure on older children was also heavier in nuclear families with small dependent children. Most families in pre- industrial Russia, however, were ?traditional extended? with two or more adult males. Studies by anthropologists suggest that living conditions for children in these families were better than in Russian nuclear families.47 Historians of child labor in pre-industrial Europe emphasize the poor living conditions of most peasant children before the industrial revolution. Many children had to start their laboring lives as early as four years of age and therefore had, in the words of Mary Lynn McDouglass, a ?short childhood.?48 Scholars suggest that in European nuclear families children were often treated with indifference and neglect. About 25 percent of children died before age one and 50 percent before they attained five years of age.49 One study of Manchester workers in 1842, for instance, asserts that ?more than 57 percent? of the children of the city?s ?laboring classes? died before age five.50 It may be assumed that before industrialization the condition of children in Russia?s extended families were perhaps better than those of most of their European counterparts who lived in small nuclear ones. 31 Was there exploitation of child labor in the countryside before the Industrial Revolution? This question provokes highly contradictory responses from historians of child labor. I assume that the extent of exploitation of children in the countryside depended on the specific time and place in which they lived. As scholars suggest, in small nuclear families and in families with no adult males, child labor might prove to be more economically significant and the labor burden placed upon children therefore heavier than in extended families. Furthermore, capitalization of the rural economy in Russia during the nineteenth century as the market economy intensified may also have led to an increasing labor burden on children in individual families. (See Chapter Two for further discussion.) Nevertheless, it is probably safe to suggest that the purpose and nature of children?s involvement in productive activities in the Russian countryside differed from our expectations. It was not for the sake of profit or the value of children?s productivity that parents put their children to productive work. Historians of child labor suggest that children?s productivity in agriculture was usually low and greatly lagged behind their consumption until children attained the age of thirteen or fifteen. The same was true for the non-agricultural sector of the rural economy.51 Child labor in the countryside had the purpose of teaching and apprenticing children. As we have seen, in general the introduction of children into productive labor was a gradual process that usually took several years until a child grew up and was finally assigned an adult work load. Moreover, children were given work tasks according to their gender, physical strength, and abilities, and they worked under the supervision of their parents or other adult 32 members of the family. Thus, the ultimate goal of child productive activities in the countryside was to prepare children for adult life, to help them become full functioning members of an individual family and community. During the second half of the nineteenth century, as industrialization began to occur in Russia, production switched from the family and from the individual household to mechanized factories where work practices involving child and family labor received wide acceptance. Child Labor in State and Manorial Factories Long before industrialization, besides their involvement in productive labor in the countryside children worked in state and manorial industries. A brief description of state and manorial factories will help situate child labor in these enterprises in a historical context. Manorial (known in Russia as votchinnye) and state-owned (kazennye) factories dominated Russian industry in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. They relied largely, although not exclusively, upon the labor of hereditary serfs. The latter were wage laborers juridically bound to the enterprise where they worked and which they could not leave without permission from the authorities. In the late eighteenth century, hereditary serf labor prevailed in the mining, wool, linen, glass, and paper-making industries and in metallurgy.52 Most of these industries were in fact traditionally organized craft workshops, with low levels of mechanization. Thus they heavily relied on manual labor. From the end of the eighteenth century, the number of hereditary serf workers in these 33 enterprises began to decline, giving way to freely hired contracted labor.53 The imperial decrees of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries allowed owners or managers of manorial and state factories to set free their hereditary serfs.54 In 1839 Finance Minister Count E. F. Kankrin proposed a gradual elimination of unfree labor in manorial and state factories and its replacement by contracted labor. The State Council approved this idea.55 Subsequently, hereditary serf labor declined steadily through the 1840s and 50s and fully disappeared with the 1861-64 reforms. In addition, many state enterprises were privatized. The tsarist state concurred in the popular view that children?s involvement in domestic industry, agriculture, or any other productive labor served as an education and apprenticeship for adult occupations. State officials viewed the use of child labor as a normal practice and believed that children above ten or twelve years of age should engage in one or another kind of productive work ?according to the child?s age, gender, and strength.? The following example illustrates this attitude. In 1811, a state official inspecting the Krasnosel?skaia state textile mill, found it ?unacceptable? that the mill workers? sons under fifteen years of age ?did not work at all.? His inspection resulted in the issuance of a special Senate decree for this mill that obliged male children of mill workers to obtain an apprenticeship by age twelve.53 The state not only embraced popular views on child productive labor but also accepted popular perceptions of childhood, a characteristic that finds its reflection in state decrees and regulations regarding children. For example, legal documents and decrees often distinguished three categories of children based on age: children under age eight, 34 children between the ages of eight and twelve, and children between twelve and eighteen. Children between ages eight and twelve were called ?under-aged? (maloletki), whereas those between twelve and eighteen ? juveniles (podrostki). The regulation on the maintenance of serf workers? living conditions in the Ekaterinoslav State Mill, for instance, considered workers? children under eight as completely dependent on their parents. Their food allowance was given to their parents, whereas children between eight and ten received their own food rations. As they reached the age of ten, serf children became apprentices and, in addition to, or sometimes instead of, food allowances, they received wages.54 Evidence from other enterprises also suggests that hereditary serfs? children received food allowances until they attained eleven or twelve years of age. After that age they were expected to start an apprenticeship.55 Some state enterprise regulations provided children under twelve with small monthly allowances in cash.56 The state also seemed to adhere to the popular pattern in the matter of the initiation of children into productive labor. Following the practice of giving children more serious and complicated tasks beginning between the ages of ten and twelve, the state accepted this age as suitable to start an apprenticeship that would last until children reached the ages of sixteen or eighteen. The new 1847 statute for the mining industry, for instance, obliged eight year-old children of serf workers to attend mine schools. In two years, after completing a two-year course, they were supposed to became apprentices in the mines or were sent to a higher-level district school. It is interesting to note that children between ten and fifteen, with the agreement of their parents, could be assigned ?light? ancillary work, ?according to the children?s age and strength.? Those who attained 35 eighteen years of age, became regular mine workers.57 Expressions such as ?according to children?s age and strength? or ?work that fitted children?s age and ability? appear over and over again in legal documents that addressed children?s employment. State attitudes about childhood, which in many instances echoed popular notions, influenced its policies toward children. By the end of the eighteenth century, the apprenticeship of children in state and manorial industries was already a firmly established practice sanctioned by law. The earliest decrees of apprenticeship date back to the reign of Peter the Great, who famously strived to facilitate Russia?s economic development and promote industry.58 With the purpose of having children ?learn a craft? and ?gain a professional education,? the state sanctioned sending hundreds of urban and rural children, including the inmates of foundling homes, to state and manorial factories. For example, in 1804 the Imperial Senate issued a decree that sent twelve to fifteen year-old orphans and poor children of St. Petersburg to the Aleksandrovsk Textile Mill ?to learn the textile craft.?58 Many such decrees about apprenticeship appeared during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On the one hand, some decrees on industrial apprenticeship suggest the distinctly important status given to it. These decrees stipulated that admission to apprenticeship was carried out on a selective basis. The decree?s provisions maintained that only those children who displayed ?the ability to learn? and ?had not shown any [tendency toward] bad behavior? could be accepted as apprentices.59 On the other hand, other decrees sanctioned sending to factories ten to fifteen year-old children who were attending 36 schools but displayed no ?capacity to learn.?60 Most early Russian enterprises, which suffered from a constant need for workers, seemed to accept anyone who wanted to become an apprentice. Apprenticing poor children was sometimes used as a means of providing welfare. It aimed at combating poverty and crime among the lower classes. For example, a 1722 Senate decree stated that children of Moscow and Riazan? who ?wander about on the streets begging? are to be sent into apprenticeship in the cities? factories until they attain their majority.61 Another decree (1744) allowed the apprenticeship of soldiers? children who had lost one or both parents and who did not have the means of survival ?so that [they] would not perish.?62 As noted above, the involvement of children from impoverished nuclear families in productive labor was high. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many owners and managers of manorial and state factories concluded formal agreements with imperial orphanages to provide apprenticeships for their inmates. Factories promised to teach children crafts and industrial skills, as well as to provide them with food and board at present and in the future. For example, in 1798 a textile entrepreneur asked the Imperial Orphanages to transfer some 300 orphans to his mill as apprentices.63 In 1822 S. G. Gesse, an owner of a cotton mill, asked the Emperor?s Orphanage to hand over twenty teenagers between the ages of twelve and fourteen for apprenticeship in his mill.64 As suggested by numerous such agreements between factory managers and orphanages, during this period orphanages became a sort of labor supplier for state and manorial industries by forwarding hundreds of their inmates to factories.65 37 In order to find children for their enterprises, employers sometimes traveled around local villages and towns looking for potential recruits. For example, an account from the Altai region?s iron ore mines and metallurgical works stated that ?beginning in the early spring, employers recruited [seven to twelve year old] children [to work] in the mines and mills. Centers of this recruitment were the cities of Zmeinogorsk and Salair, from where children were sent out to various mines and factories [of the region]. In Zmeinogorsk about 500-800 boys were recruited each year.? The account maintained that during the spring and summer children engaged in ore sorting and other ?easy? tasks, whereas during winter they were supposed to attend the mines? schools.66 In some cases, entrepreneurs especially preferred hiring children. For instance, in the late eighteenth century a group of owners of Moscow textile mills stated that they had a great need of ten to fifteen year-old children and requested that the government provide them with the children. The entrepreneurs insisted that without children?s labor input certain operations could not be completed and the whole business would come to a halt.67 The government also provided state and manorial factories and mines with the legal basis for using the labor of the workers? children ?according to the children?s age, gender, and strength.?68 Numerous imperial decrees allowed state and manorial factories and mines to employ ten to twelve years old sons of workers for labor ?that fit the children?s age and physical ability.? Workers? daughters, however, could not be required to work without their parents? agreement until they attained eighteen years of age; after eighteen their employment would depend upon their own or their family?s desires and needs.69 For example, a statute ?On the improvement of the Pavlovskaia Wool and the 38 Ekaterinoslav? Leather mills? stated that all male children of the mill workers above ten years of age were supposed to work in these factories and be assigned ?appropriate tasks.?70 According to a 1799 statute on the Urals mines and metallurgical plants, hereditary workers? sons who attained twelve years of age and unmarried daughters at the age of eighteen, with the agreement of their parents, could be assigned work, as the laws constantly reiterated, ?according to their strength.?71 Seeking to increase their revenues, landlords who owned hereditary serfs in some cases made agreements with local factories and, according to these agreements, farmed out their indebted serfs, including children, to these factories. Some landlords possessed manufacturing establishments on their estates and employed serf children from indebted families who failed to pay rent. In order to pay off their debts or to fulfill other feudal obligations to the landlord, indebted serfs were supposed to work in factories for a certain period of time. In these cases, workers? wages or substantial portions thereof went directly to landlords. Available evidence on such agreements indicates that landlords sometimes received from 10 to 42 rubles a year for each child sent to a factory.72 In 1823 and 1825, the state introduced a series of decrees that banned forced out-farming of labor, forbade any agreements between landlords and employers regarding serfs, and introduced penalties for transgressors. Forcefully out-farmed serfs could bring lawsuits that sought their freedom from serfdom.73 Landlords, however, often evaded the law by stating that out-farmed serfs were sent as apprentices to ?receive a professional education.?74 In addition, the government authorized sending to state industries juveniles who had been accused of committing crimes, of engaging in prostitution, and those defined by 39 the state as strays or neglected ones (?prazdnoshataiushchiesia?). For example, in 1755 a sixteen year-old peasant boy, Vasilii Fedoseev, had been charged with the rape and murder of an eight year-old girl. The Imperial Senate, which reviewed Fedoseev?s case, sentenced him to ?harsh punishment with whips,? and exiled him to the Nerchinsk mills (Siberia) for life. As a matter of fact, Siberian industries often used the labor of children of persons serving life terms at exile or hard labor in Siberia. For example, in 1840 the Iletsk Salt Mines employed 232 children of prisoners sent to the region. The 1849 decree prohibited any further employment of prisoners? children in industries.75 In general, according to the laws, the employment and apprenticeship of children, with the exception of children of workers who were attached to state and manorial factories, was to be carried out with the agreement of the child?s parents or, if none existed, with the agreement of local courts or juvenile authorities. Sons under age 12 and daughters under 18 of hereditary serfs also could not be employed without their parents? consent.76 Employees, in turn, were required to teach each working child a profession, support the children ?according to their social estate,? provide them with clothing and food allowances, and pay each child or his or her parents a certain amount of money monthly, annually, or upon the completion of apprenticeship. For example, the statue on the Pavlovskaia Wool and Ekaterinoslav? Leather mills obliged the administration to pay their employed children in money and in kind, the latter of meaning meant food consisting of various cereal crops.77 After the completion of the apprentice program, children received 25 rubles. Their further work in these mills depended on the mutual agreement of the two parties (children and factory administration).78 40 Although children?s employment in most cases required their parents? agreement, contemporaries noted that parents were quite often willing to put their children to work. In such cases, children could earn their own money and contribute to family budgets or themselves pay the poll taxes, which for children from seven to seventeen year graduated from 0.15 to 1.6 rubles a year.79 In one surviving petition written in 1803, workers of the Iakovlev Linen Mill complained that their children performed ancillary work and were supposed to receive 4 kopecks a day. The manager, however, graded children?s daily payments according to a scale of three, four, and five kopecks a day which created discontent among the children?s parents and caused complaints. The manager responded that ?if workers are dissatisfied with these various rates, let them keep their children at home and support them until they are at least fifteen years of age.? In their petition, the workers stated that they had no means of supporting their children other than their employment in the mill.80 Terms of apprenticeship and employment conditions in state industries were regulated by statues on state industries and mines. The 1736 statute on state industries, for instance, required employers to teach worker?s children skills in industrial trades and crafts so that ?they could become competent masters and foremen in the future.? According to the Mining Statute of 1806, children of mine workers were paid 50 kopeks a month if they attended mine schools and were not employed in mines and one ruble a month if ?they performed work in mines according to their age.? In addition, the mining children received 16-20 kilos (40-50 pounds) of flour each month.81 41 In manorial or private businesses, terms of apprenticeship were specified in agreements between employers and those responsible for the children (parents, guardians, orphanages, and so forth). Of interest is a surviving formal agreement concluded in 1822 between the entrepreneur S. G. Gesse and the administration of the St. Petersburg Foundling Home, which sent a number of its inmates to Gesse?s mill. The orphanage was supposed to provide the children with clothing and shoes during their first year in the mill, after which these were to be supplied by the mill itself. The mill was also obliged to furnish the children with ?healthy, well-prepared meals? and look after their health and morals. The agreement required Gesse to pay each child from .5 to 2.5 rubles a month depending on the child?s behavior and diligence. After they had gained all the required skills, children?s monthly wages were to increase to 5 or 9 rubles a month.82 To what extent did state and manorial factories actually use child labor? What work did children in fact perform? It is difficult to estimate the numbers and proportions of children apprenticed and actually employed in state and manorial factories since only fragmentary statistics from single industries and factories are available. Nevertheless these surviving figures offer certain insight into the extent of children?s employment in individual state and manorial factories. According to a 1737 report, the nobleman Goncharov?s Maloiaroslavets Textile Factory (central Russia) used the labor of 1719 workers, both contracted and hereditary. Among these individuals, 432 (25 percent) were children under eight and 211 (12.3 percent) were between nine and fifteen years of age. 83 In 1797, out of the 1119 workers of the nobleman Osokin?s Wool Mill in Kazan? (Volga Region), 430 (38.4 percent) were children and teenagers.84 The Pereiaslavl?-Zelesskii 42 Cotton Mill employed 792 workers, including 183 (23.1 percent) children.85 In 1812, in the state-owned Sestoretsk Armory in St. Petersburg there were 195 children recorded as apprentices, at a time when the factory employed 1244 workers.86 According to the records of the Altai region mines and metallurgical works, by the end of the eighteenth century these enterprises employed 19,522 workers, out of which 1,118 (5.7 percent) were children under thirteen and 603 (3 percent) were between thirteen and fifteen.87 An 1858 description of the Perm? State Copper Works noted that it employed 7562 workers, of which 3377 (44.6 percent) were ?under-aged? children between ten and twelve years of age and 508 (6.7 percent) were juveniles between fifteen and eighteen.88 Thus, these statistics suggest the likelihood that all state and manorial factories employed children and many of them depended heavily on the labor of under-aged workers. It would be misleading, however, to assume that all children ascribed to a certain mill actually worked, although many doubtless did. This is particularly true about children recorded in statistics as apprentices or as ?children of hereditary serf workers.? Such categories reveal very little about the children?s real activities in these factories. Moreover, available data often did not specify the children?s ages, designating them all as ?under-aged? or ?undergrown? (maloletki), a broad category that might include very young children, as well as those between twelve and sixteen years of age. Many early Soviet historians of child labor tended to count all children ascribed to an enterprise as ?factory workers,? assuming that they all engaged in the production process. This tendency prompted scholars to perhaps exaggerated conclusions about the extraordinarily high proportions of working children in state and manorial factories. For example, 43 Vladimir Gessen, the premier Soviet historian of child labor, claimed that ?during the first half of the nineteenth century the labor of children between eight and fifteen reached a very large scale . . . making up to 25 percent of the total number of workers.?89 Evidence suggests, however, that by no mean all hereditary serf children juridically attached to a factory actually worked there. For example, as we have seen, sons of hereditary factory workers began their employment or apprenticeship between the age of ten and twelve, whereas daughters could not be employed without their parents? agreement until they attained eighteen years of age. Nonetheless, all male children under age ten and female children under eighteen were reflected in factory records as the ?children of serf workers.? In reality many children mentioned in the statistics on state and manorial factories--and especially very young children--did not work at all. In his highly respected 1923 study of workers, the historian K. A. Pazhitnov argued that ?no more than half? of hereditary serfs who were ascribed to the Altai region mines and metallurgical works actually performed any labor in the enterprises. The same calculation would have applied to their children. Furthermore, according to Pazhitnov, children under age eleven were normally employed in state factories only on exceptional occasions. Child labor there took on a ?sporadic or seasonal? character.90 This observation seems to be accurate. As mentioned, most of Russia?s manorial and state industries relied on manual, traditionally organized labor. An average ?factory? usually consisted of a number of artisan workshops. Most tasks were performed by skilled artisans, master foremen who were assisted by their apprentices. Many of these industries, especially the manorial ones, worked on a seasonal basis for only six-eight month a year, 44 during the non-growing season. According to Pazhitnov and other students of early Russian industries, the number of working days a year in these factories was about 250- 260.91 Some factories worked during daytime and at night. An average workday in these factories lasted between 11 and 12 hours and workers worked in two 5.5 hour shifts. Other factories worked only daytime, starting at 5 in the morning and continuing until 8 p. m. with a 1-2 hour break for lunch. The workday in these enterprises was long and could last for 13 and more hours.92 Certainly, the seasonal character of these enterprises, as well as the workshop type of labor organization, determined the labor conditions of the children who worked there. It would probably be safe to assume that before industrialization, the majority of children employed in such businesses worked on an irregular basis and mostly performed ancillary tasks. The extent of child labor and children?s exploitation was perhaps higher in manorial factories than in state industries, especially when the market-oriented economy began to expand. For the most part, manorial factories remained free from state control and legal regulations. Thus, their workers, most of whom were unfree, increasingly had to depend upon the will of the owner. As mentioned, some landlords who owned manorial factories sent whole families of indebted serfs to work in these enterprises and thus fulfill the dues and obligations they owed.93 According to some observers, because of the absence of state regulations, child labor in manorial factories sometimes took abusive forms. Evidence from manorial enterprises illustrates that in some instances, alongside apprenticeship, or even instead of it, enterprises employed children for long hours and as regular workers. During the first half of the nineteenth century, most incidents of labor 45 protest occurred in manorial factories. For example, in 1840 in the Wigel Textile Factory in Voronezh (central Russia) workers protested against children?s employment at the enterprise. The children, especially juveniles, performed regular adult work and together with adult workers began work at 3 a.m.in the morning and worked until 9 p.m. with a four- hour break for lunch and rest. On average, children worked about 15-16 hours a day and received very low wages. The cheap labor of children in turn reduced the wages of adult workers, a development that caused the outbreak of workers? protest.94 In another incident, in 1842-43 about 300 serfs, including many children, were ostensibly sent by their landlord to the Voskresensk Cotton Mill in the Dmitrov district of Moscow province in order to ?learn the spinning industry.? They in fact conducted ancillary work without any payment, as was testified to by the factory?s workers when a strike occurred.95 The employer and landlord insisted that ?the children live [in the factory] in a quiet building, have healthy food, and perform effortless work suitable to their ages. . . . They have fresh faces, are laughing, and healthy.? The provincial officials found, however, that the children, who ?still needed parental care,? toiled at the mill day and night. Most of these children worked in 5.5 hours shifts that followed a six-hour break so that their total workday lasted about 11 hours.96 The investigation of this strike revealed that the serfs involved belonged to the nobleman Dubrovin of the Massal?sk district in Kaluga province, who had signed an agreement with Lepeshkin, the mill owner, and had received 40 rubles for each out- farmed person. In their testimony, the serfs stated that they were not gaining any training or education in the mill but engaged in regular labor for which they received no wage. For 46 example, Iakov Safronov testified that he had paid the landlord the entire 1844 rent of 70 rubles. The landlord, however, sent him and his ?under-aged? niece to the mill and promised that he would get 400 paper rubles for every year that he worked in the mill. Lepeshkin, however, paid nothing, stating that he had already paid the landlord for all workers. In the end, the landlord, in order to reach a compromise with the serfs, agreed to return some children back home and promised to compensate others 25 paper rubles a year for each child. Although prohibited by the 1823 and 1825 decrees, according to contemporaries the practice of farming out serfs and particularly serf children was commonplace until 1861. Trying to evade the law, landlords indicated in legal documents that they had sent serfs and their children to factories as ?apprentices to receive a professional education and training.?97 These and many other such incidents occurred in private and manorial factories. But episodes of child labor abuses occurred in state-owned industries as well. For example, in the state mines eight year-old children and elders over sixty, who, according to the law, were not supposed to work at all, sometimes engaged in ?easy work,? such as sorting and concentrating ore, carrying wood, and so on. According to the 1859 Orenburg provincial governor?s report (Northern Russia), the Pod?iachii Metallurgical Works used the labor of young children, elders, and persons with physical disabilities.98 Although evidence on labor abuses and conflict in state factories and mines is scanty, many such episodes must have occurred. In addition, it was not unusual for employers to assign apprenticed children to perform ?ordinary? work done by adult workers.99 Evidence from textile mills, for 47 instance, illustrates that juveniles often worked as spinners and weavers. Their wages, however, were lower than these of adult workers, even when some teenagers performed the same kind and volume of work.100 In the Ekaterinoslavl? Stocking Mill, children were assigned the same work as adult workers and paid the lowest wage.101 In the Altai region mines and metallurgical works, children under age fifteen engaged in making copper cups for which they received only 6 rubles a year. For similar tasks, those between fifteen and seventeen years received 12 rubles annually, plus a daily bonus of 2 or 3 kopeks, much lower than the wages of adult workers. Of course, in general children?s productivity could not match that of adult workers, but their wages were significantly lower than their productivity. This was especially the case as regards teenaged workers. Nevertheless, the production process in most industries involved numerous secondary and ancillary operations and it was precisely these tasks that most children performed. In the Altai iron ore mines, for instance, relatively few children engaged in cup production, whereas most children worked as auxiliary workers engaged in sorting and concentrating ore or other work ?that suited their strength.?102 Although historians debate the total number of hereditary serf workers employed in state and manorial factories, it is clear that from the beginning of the nineteenth century, prior to the 1861 reforms, this form of labor declined rapidly in favor of freely contracted laborers. This development affected many thousands of serf children. After the 1861 reforms, many such children moved from the countryside to become contract laborers in rapidly growing newly mechanized industries. 48 Early Tsarist Laws Regulating Children?s Employment and Work As noted, during the early nineteenth century, state officials quite influential in the process of imperial law-making viewed child labor as a normal practice aimed at apprenticeship and at preparing children for the responsibilities of adult life. As we have seen, child labor in state and some manorial industries was regulated by specific statutes and decrees that usually applied to a single state or manorial factory. To the contrary, Mining Statutes governed labor in all mines and metallurgical works. Meanwhile,most manorial and other private factories, namely those that had not been a subject of specific decrees, remained unregulated by any law at all. For the most part, existing statutes dealt with bound or semi-bound serf labor. Moral acceptance of child labor was reflected in all these decrees, especially as regards the practice of sending orphans, the urban poor, and hereditary serf children to state and manorial factories in order to promote their education and welfare. The earliest Russian decree that dealt in a general way with freely-hired factory labor appeared in 1835. It was aimed at meeting the challenges of a rapidly expanding free market economy and securing a free labor force within the context of existing serfdom. The 1835 legislation demarcated the relationship between the employer and the employee. It indicated that the employment of all workers in private industries rested upon the conclusion of a written personal contract between the two parties that clearly indicated the responsibilities of both sides. Although no provisions of this law concerned the employment of children directly, the law actually specified no age distinction and 49 therefore applied to all persons, children as well as adults, who sought factory employment. Initially limited to Moscow and St. Petersburg and their districts, by the early 1840s the government extended the decree to most Russian industrial provinces.101 During the 1830s, the government also introduced a series of decrees aimed at facilitating peasant mobility, which in turn helped bring a large number of rural children to factories.102 Thus, the earliest decrees that dealt with free factory labor in effect legitimized the labor of children. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, only a few humanitarian voices denounced child factory labor. During the 1810s and 30s, the Russian government undertook some fragmentary steps, limited to certain industries and even to single factories, to regulate children?s employment. For example, in the late 1810s the Minister of the Interior O. P. Kozodavlev proposed to outlaw the work of wives and children of workers in state factories.103 The local offices of the interior ministry were often the first ones to deal with labor related issues, hear about workers? complaints, and record work- related accidents. Therefore the Interior Minister?s concern for working children in all likelihood reflected his awareness of poor labor conditions for women and child workers. In 1835, in a message to Nicholas I, Finance Minister E. F. Kankrin suggested the need to require employers to avoid employing juvenile workers for hard, laborious tasks and to limit their workday.104 With the approval of the tsar, Kankrin issued a number of circular letters to the industrialists? associations requiring them to ?provide welfare and education and not to exhaust [their working children] with laborious tasks and take into account the gender and age of each [child].? In 1835 the Moscow branch of the 50 Manufacturing Council discussed Kankrin?s suggestions and appointed a commission to inspect Moscow?s factories.105 In 1838, the mining regulation reasserted that twelve-year- old children could be used only for auxiliary work and only those of eighteen years of age could be employed as regular workers.106 Again in 1843 the government issued a circular letter instructing employers to attend attention to conditions in workshops and provide workers with living quarters and areas for rest. The letter required owners to assign working children easy tasks, appropriate to their physical strength and gender. It also suggested the need to take care about schooling of working children.107 During these decades most state measures to improve labor conditions in industries were merely advisory, lacking any provisions for implementation. Consequently, for the most part, they did not produce significant results. Obviously, these solitary acts were insufficient to restrict child labor decisively, especially in view of the fact that most state officials still viewed such labor as a form of education and apprenticeship.108 In reality, most government officials did not see the use of children in factories as a serious issue. In 1840, the British ambassador to Russia requested information from the Russian government about Russian laws regarding child factory labor. The government replied that ?since mechanized factories have not had substantial development in Russia, there are not many children working in the industries and there is no urgent need for labor regulation laws.?109 The need for the introduction of a basic law regulating child labor gradually became evident as government officials learned about the widespread abuses of child labor in industry. The introduction of this legislation was actually provoked by the above 51 mentioned workers? uprising at the merchant Lepeshkin?s Voskresensk Cotton Mill in 1844. The events at the Voskresensk Mill motivated the Moscow province civil governor Ivan Kapnist to inspect the large factories of the province. Concerned government officials found that child labor was a common practice in most Russian industries and particularly in cotton spinning factories.110 During 1844-45, the Moscow government inspected 23 cotton and 10 wool mills. According to its report, these factories employed about 2,100 children under the age of fifteen who worked day and night 12 hours a day. In his report, the governor wrote that ?although the machines make labor easier, night work cannot be easy for workers, and for children in particular, because of the character of the industry.?111 Consequently, on August 7, 1845, the government restricted child labor in factories by prohibiting work between midnight and six a.m. for children under twelve years of age (see Appendix 1). The legislators placed the responsibility for the implementation of this law upon local officials and factory owners and, unfortunately, did not introduce any penalty for its violation. Owners of businesses were obliged to sign memoranda in which they promised to comply with the law?s provisions.112 According to the historian Tugan-Baranovskii, employers in fact continued to evade the law, especially because the legislators and local officials refused to establish an effective inspection system.113 Additionally, this law made no provisions to provide juvenile workers with a school education. The regulations of 1847 for state mines and metallurgical mills limited the workday for all children under fifteen in these industries throughout the country to eight 52 hours. The regulations required that these enterprises use the labor of children only in cases of exceptional necessity and assign them to easy work, according to their age and ability. Nevertheless, this law did not apply to private and manorial factories where state control and regulations were lacking and where, according to some commentators, the workday for all workers, including children, could last 16 and more hours.114 These partial measures, limited to certain factories and industries, were largely the reaction of the government to particular incidents of disturbances among manorial workers, which increased during the 1830s and 1840s. Consequently, there was no uniformity in these regulations of child labor. They remained fragmented and specific. For the most part, the new laws focused on employment, ages, and hours. They addressed no other forms of labor protection nor working conditions in general. In essence, the early tsarist decrees on child labor depended on the particular needs of concrete situations. One problem arose from the fact that the early laws provided loose and quite flexible definitions of who was considered to be a child. For example, the law regulating the Urals mining industry specified that ?male children? under fifteen years of age were considered to be ?under-aged? (maloletki) whereas fifteen to eighteen year olds were teenagers (podrostki). At the same time, legislation for the Altai mines defined children under the age of twelve as ?under-aged,? whereas it defined those between twelve and eighteen as teenagers. These differences were important since the definition affected the actual employment of children. This legal flexibility resulted from concrete labor force needs. To take only one example, the Altai mines, according to contemporary 53 commentators, ?had much work for children,? a factor that explains the region?s less restrictive view of who was or was not underaged.115 Regarding the minimum age for employment, the working hours, and work loads, more definite definitions were established. For example, according to the statute of the Ekaterinoslavl? Mill the workday for children was limited to 12 hours in two 6 hours shifts. The statutes of the Tel?minsk State Wool Mill stated that children of the mill?s workers should begin work in the mill at the age of ten and perform work ?according to their strength? and that fifteen year old children should accept regular full time work.116 Thus one may conclude that during the early nineteenth century the standard age for beginning industrial employment in Russia was between ten and twelve, whereas the age of fifteen demarcated fulltime employment, and the standard workday was roughly 12 hours. How do these early Russian laws on child labor compare with those of other industrializing nations of the period? Elsewhere in industrializing Europe, the first laws regulating children?s employment were introduced in 1815 in Zurich, in 1819 and 1833 in Brirish, in 1839 in Prussia, in 1841 in France, and in 1843 in the northern parts of Italy. In 1852 Sweden and in 1859 Austria introduced similar legislation. The laws set the minimum employment age (usually eight or nine, such as the British, French and Prussian statutes), banned children of various ages from night work, limited their daily work hours, and introduced factory inspectors to supervise the laws? implementation. The 1819 British act, which limited the employment age to nine and introduced factory inspectors, originally concerned only children employed in cotton mills. In 1833 it was extended to 54 the entire textile industry. By the mid-1850s child labor laws became common for most of industrializing Europe. Like the Russian 1845 law, most of these early European laws lacked sufficient provisions for their enforcement and were evaded by employers, as confirmed by historians of labor legislation.117 Within the broader comparative context of European nations, the early labor laws dealt especially with child factory labor, while leaving aside other social groups of workers. With the exception of Britain, where the 1842 and 1844 laws prohibited underground work for children under the age of ten and restricted night work for women and where the 1847 law limited the work day for women in the textile industry to ten hours, in general, the employment of women did not yet become a subject of a specific concern. The early Russian decrees also did not address women?s employment. Thus, the Russian 1844 law and the earlier legislative measures place Russia within this general European tendency to protect working children only. The 1835 Russian statute, which introduced the employment contract and addressed other labor questions reflected Russia?s socioeconomic uniqueness in that the decree?s provisions mediated between an emerging free market and serfdom. Overall, in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, the early factory legislation failed to establish uniformity in industrial labor legislation. For the most part, the laws remained fragmented and specific, addressing specific industries or social categories of workers. Nor did these laws dealt with education and social welfare for all workers, except as regards certain unenforced statutes on child labor. Despite obvious shortcomings, the earliest European legislation, including the Russian variants, had a positive side. First, it 55 signified the readiness of politically diverse states to intervene in labor relations. Second, as will become clear in the following chapters, during the following decades, beginning with the child labor protection acts, industrial labor in general became an issue of discussion for state authorities and concerned social reformers. Both in Russia and elsewhere, the issue of workers? education and welfare dominated these debates. Although the Russian law of 1845 had limited direct impact on children?s employment, it signified the beginnings of a transformation of government officials? attitudes towards child industrial labor. Doubtless, all these early attempts to regulate child labor had relatively little immediate affect on children?s employment. The number of children working in industries continued to grow relentlessly, as did the number of new businesses that used child labor. In 1844, for example, there were about 3,000 children working in the industries of Moscow province, two thirds of whom worked in the cotton industry.118 By the end of the 1850's, as peasant migration accelerated, the number of children employed in the industries of the province increased to 10,184 and accounted for 15.2 percent of the province industrial workers.119 Thus, well before rapid industrialization in Russia child labor had been a widespread practice, welcomed by most social classes and supported by state laws. Because children?s involvement in productive labor had been a morally accepted custom and because of the valuable contribution of children?s wages to family income, parents were willing to send their offspring to emerging factories. Simultaneously, manufacturers viewed children as more adaptable to the new factory regime and more able to learn to 56 work with new machinery and technology than adults. The conjuncture of these factors insured that children would remain an important source of labor for late nineteenth century Russian industrialization. These aspects of child labor will be explored in the next chapter. 57 NOTES: 1. Johann Georg Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien von dem Jar 1733 bis 1743 (Gottingen: Velegts Anram, 1751-1752), cited in K. A. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie Rabochego klassa v Rossii, 2 vols (Petrograd: Byloe, 1923)1: 56. 2. P. S. Pallas, Puteshestviia po raznym provintsiiam Rossiiskago gosudarstva (St.Petersburg, 1788), cited in Pazhitnov, Polozhenie,1:56. 3. For discussion of origins of child labor in France, see Weisbach, Child Labor Reform, ch. 1; Colin Heywood, Childhood, 34. 4. M. M. Gromyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1991), 106. 5. For example, Colin Heywood emphasizes poor conditions of peasant families in France as a principal source of child labor in the French countryside. See Heywood, Childhood, 38. 6. M. M. Gromyko, Trudovye traditsii pusskikh krest?ian Sibiri, XVIII pervaia polovina XIX v. (Novosibipsk: Nauka, 1975), 4?5; N. A. Minenko, Russkaia krest?ianskaia sem?ia v Zapadnoi Sibiri, XVIII?pervoi poloviny XIX v. (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1979), 117. 7. For further examples of children?s collective names, see T. A. Bernshtam, Molodezh v obriadovoi zhizni russkoi obshchiny XIX - nachala XX v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988), 25, 122. 58 8. Phillippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. R. Baldick (New York: Knopf, 1962), 47. 9. For discussion of this issue, see Bernshtam, Molodezh, 24-25. 10. I. I. Shangina, Russkie deti i ikh igry (St. Peterburg: Iskusstvo, 2000), 7. 11. E. N. Baklanova, Krest?ianskii dvor i obshchina na russkom Severe, konets XVII? nachalo XVIII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 23. 12. Baklanova, Krest?ianskii, 23, 41. 12. Baklanova, Krest?ianskii, 41?42; V. A. Aleksandrov, Sel?skaia obshchina v Rossii, XVII?nachalo XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 206?207; Vladimir Il?ich Lenin, Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii in V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 55 vols, (Moscow: Izd. Politicheskoi literatury, 1967-1970), 3: 325. 13. Bernshtam, Molodezh,123. 14. Baklanova, Krest?ianskii, 22, see Table 6. 15. B. N. Mironov, Sotsial?naia istoriia Rossii, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: D. Bulanin, 2000) 1: 20, 129, 180. 16. Mironov, Sotsial?naia, 199-200; Baklanova, Krest?ianskii, 23. 17. Wanda Minge-Kalman, ?The Industrial Revolution and the European Family: The Institutionalization of ?Childhood? as a Market for Family labor? Conparative Studies in Society and History, 20 (July 1978): 454-468. 59 18. This data is based on the 1717 census of 1064 families of serfs and monastery peasants of Kubenskii region of Vologda province, northern Russia, cited in Baklanova, Krest?ianskii, 22. 19. Minenko, Russkaia, 51-52. 20. Gromyko, Mir, 107. 21. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 57-58. 22. Boris B. Gorshkov, A Life under Russian Serfdom: The Memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii, 1800-68 (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2005), 55, 58. 23. Shangina, 7. 24. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 25. 25. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 57. 26. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 56. 27. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 55. 28. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 56. 29. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 53. 30. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 58. 31. For further discussion of children?s clothing, see G. S. Maslova, Narodnaia odezhda v vostochnoslavianskikh traditsionnykh obychaiakh i obriadakh XIX - nachala XX veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), 106. 32. Aries, Centuries of Childhood. 60 33. Gromyko, Mir,108. 34. For further discussion of rural children?s games, see Shangina, Russkie deti i ikh igry. 35. Cited in Minenko, Russkaia, 118. 36. Bernshtam, Molodezh,122-123. 37. Minenko, Russkaia,118. 38. Minenko, Russkaia, 118. 39. Bernshtam, Molodezh, 25, 122. 40. For discussion of peasant seasonal migration before 1861, see Boris B. Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move: Peasant Seasonal Migration in Pre-reform Russia, 1800-61" Kritika (Fall 2000): 627-56. 41. Minenko, Russkaia,120. 42. This area, known as the Central Industrial Region, included the provinces of Yaroslavl?, Tver?, Kostroma, Kaluga, Moscow, Vladimir, Nizhnii Novgorod, and usually Tula and Riazan?. 43. Gorshkov, A Life under Russian Serfdom, 64. 44. Bernshtam, Molodezh,123. 45. Thesis, 34. Kh. Chebotarev, Istoricheskoe i topographicheskoe opisanie gorodov Moskovskoi gubernii s ikh uezdami (Moscow, 1787), 119-348. 46. M. M. Gromyko, Traditsionnye normy povedenia i formy obshchenia russkikh krest?ian XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1986). PAGE# 61 47. Bernshtam, Molodezh,123. 48. Cited in Minge-Kalman, ?The Industrial Revolution,? 455. 49. Mingle-Kalman, ?The Industrial Revolution,? 456. 50. Cited in Kirby, Child Labour in Britain, 15 51. See discussion in Nardinelli, Child Labor, 51-57. 52. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1:40. 53. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the number of hereditary serfs of manorial and state factories declined throughout Russia because of the shift to contracted labor and the growth of private enterprise owned by non-nobles. In 1825, in the cotton and silk industries, owned predominantly by non gentry individuals, free laborers composed respectively 83.1 and 94.8 percent and, in 1857, approached 100 and 97 percent respectively. In the wool industry, which traditionally relied heavily on serfs, in 1825, serfs accounted for 82.6 percent and by 1857 they declined to 49 percent of the industry?s workers. For further discussion of state and manorial enterprise, see Tugan- Baranovsky, Russian Factory, 82-131; Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 16-52; Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 308-325; G. S. Isaev, Rol? tekstil?noi promyshlennosti v genezise i razvitii kapitalizma v Rossii, 1760-1860 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970) 118-169; B. N. Kazantsev, Rabochie Moskvy i Moskovskoi gubernii v seredine XIX veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 75-76; and Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move.? 62 54. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century state decrees in certain cases allowed owners of hereditary serf workers to set the latter free. Hereditary serf workers, as the laws specified, could enter into either the merchant?s or townsman estates (gorodskie sosloviia). See Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1st series, 1649-1825 [hereafter PSZ 1] (St. Petersburg: Tip. 2-go otdeleniia EIV Kentseliarii, 1830), vol. 20, no 14991; ibid, vol. 23, no 16899; ibid, vol. 40 (1825) no 30311; Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, 2nd series 1825-1879 [hereafter PSZ 2] (St. Petersburg: Tip. 2-go otdeleniia EIV Kentseliarii, 1885), vol. 6 (1831), no 4687. For discussion of the issue, see Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1:41. 55. The State Council suggested that ?now it has become more profitable for entrepreneurs to have freely-hired workers rather than their own hereditary serfs,? cited in Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 41. 53. Tugan-Baranovsky, Russian Factory, 138. 54. PSZ 1, vol. 35, 1818, no. 27438 55. ?Donesenie upravliaiushchego peterburgskim liteinym zavodom? in Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v 1800-1860 gg. , 205. 56. PSZ 1, vol. 29, 1806, no. 22099. See also Gessen, Trud, 32. 57. Gessen, Trud 39. 58. Kirov, Na zare, 9-10. 63 58. PSZ 1, no. 21368. 59. M. Balabanov, Ocherki po istorii rabochego klassa v Rossii (Kiev: Sorabkop, 1924), 27; Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 14. 60. Gessen, Trud, 29. 61. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 14; PSZ 1, vol. 6, no. 4006. 62. Kirov, Na zare, 9. 63. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 29. 64. T. M. Kitanina, Rabochie Peterburga v 1800-1861 gg. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991), 170. 65. Gessen, Trud, 34. 66. Cited in Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 57 and Kirov, Na zare, 10. 67. Gessen, Trud, 22. 68. For example, state decrees stated that children of the factory workers were supposed to take employment, according to their ?age, gender and strength.? PSZ 1, nos. 22099, 27438. 69. Gessen, Trud, 25. 70. PSZ 1, nos. 22099, 27438. 71. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 56. 72. Tsentral?nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Moskvy [hereafter TsGIAM], fond 16, opis? 34, delo 48, list 1-25; Gessen, Trud, 35; 196-197. 73. PSZ 1, no. 26416; Tugan-Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika, 95. 74. Gesen, Trud, 33. 64 75. Gessen, Trud, 40, 41. 76. PSZ 1, no 18965; Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 56. 77. PSZ 1, nos. 22099, 27438. 78. PSZ 1, no. 21368. 79. All male peasants were obliged to pay the state poll tax. Children aged from seven to seventeen paid from .15 to 1.60 rubles a year, depending on their age. Gessen, Trud, 26. 80. ?Prosheniia rabochikh bol?shoi Yaroslavskoi Manufactury? in Rabochee dvizhenie, 161. 81. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 56-57. 82. Kitanina, Rabochie, 170. 83. The data is cited in V. Bukhina, ?Maloiaroslavetskaia fabrika do zakreposhcheniia, 1718-1737" in Istoriia proletariata SSSR A. M. Pankratova, ed. in chief, vol 2 (Moscow: Kommunisticheskaia Akademiia, 1930), 2:115-147. 84. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 28. 85. Gessen, Trud, 33. 86. Kitanina, Rabochie,169. 87. Gessen, Trud, 38; Kirov, Na zare, 11. 88. Gessen Trud, 39. D. Planer, Istorikosisticheskoe opisanie Permskikh Kazennykh medeplavil?nykh zavodov, 12 89. Gessen, Trud, 33. 65 90. According to Pazhitnov, only 391thousand out of the 195thousand hereditary serfs of the Altai region mines and metallurgical plants recorded in the tenth census (1857) actually worked in the enterprises. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 34, 60. The observation about labor of children in state industries also finds support in Kirov. Kirov?s 1924 study of child labor suggests that children under the age of 10 were rarely employed in manorial and state factories. Kirov, Na zare, 12. 91. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1:84. 92. Gessen, Trud, 121. 93. [Cite A. M. Pankratova, on possessionnye factories.] 94. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 42; Trud, 120. 95. TsGIAM, fond 16, delo 48, opis? 34, list 1-25. 96. TsGIAM, fond 16, delo 48, opis? 34, list 1-25. 97. TsGIAM, fond 16, delo 48, opis? 34, list 1-25; Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 59; Gessen, Trud, 35, 198; Idem, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 50. 98. Gessen, Trud, 38-39. 99. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie,1:56. 100. P. Brandenburgskii, ?Zheleznye zavody v Tul?skom, Kashirskom and Aleksinskom uezdakh v XVII stoletii, Oruzheinyi Sbornik books 1-4 (St. Petersburg: Tip. Artill. Zhurnala, 1875). 101. Gessen, Trud, 26. 66 102. Gessen, Trud, 38. 101. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF), fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (2), listy 25-30. For discussion of the 1835 law, see Boris B. Gorshkov, ?Toward a Comprehensive Law: Tsarist Factory Legislation in European Context, 1830-1914" in Russia in European Context: A Member of the Family Susan P. McCaffrey and Michael Melancon, ed., (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2005), 54. 102. For discussion of this issue, see Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move.? 103. Gessen, Instoria zakonodatel?stva, 38. 104. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (2), listy 25-26; Gessen, Trud, 168. 105. Gessen, Trud, 34. 106. Tugan-Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika, 173; Gessen, Trud, 64. 107. Laverychev, Tsarism i rabochii vopros, 16. 108. Tugan-Baranovsky, Russian factory, 141. 109. Cited in Bukhina, ?Iz istorii,? 117-118. 110. TsGIAM, fond 16, delo 48, opis? 34, list 1-25; Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 50. 111. TsGIAM, fond 16, delo 48, opis? 34, list 1-25; Tugan-Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika, 175; Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 59; Gessen, Istoriia, 50. 112. PSZ 2, no 19262; Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 60. 113. Tugan Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika ,139. 114. Kirov, Na zare, 12. 115. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 64-65. 67 116. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 1: 29. 117. For discussion of early labor laws in Europe, see Bob Hepple, ed., The Making of Labor Law in Europe: A Comparative Study of Nine Countries up to 1945 (London and New York: Mansell Publishing, Ltd., 1986), chapter 2; and Weisbach, Child Labor Reform, 123. 118. Tugan-Baranovsky, Russian factory,144. 119. TsGIAM, fond 17, opis? 34, delo 48, list 244. 68 CHAPTER TWO CHILDREN IN INDUSTRIES: THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXT Great changes occurred in the Russian economy during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. By 1850, a new capitalist mode of production had began to challenge traditional manufacturing systems. Manorial and state factories showed the first signs of decline, whereas free market enterprise began to expand.1 The cotton industry experienced the most remarkable development. The mechanization of the industry during the 1840s and 50s characterized early stage of Russia?s industrialization.2 The rapid development of the new capitalist forms of production provoked important changes in the employment system. In contrast to state and manorial factories, where hereditary serf labor dominated and, unlike domestic forms of manufacturing, which relied on the labor of family members, new capitalist enterprises employed contracted wage workers. By the 1850s free labor became the prevailing type of industrial employment.3 During the second half of the nineteenth century, Russian industrialization entered a new, more dramatic phase. The accelerating tempo and intensification of the capitalist economy during this period, coupled with mechanization and technological innovation, created a massive demand for industrial labor. These developments were complemented 69 by rapid population growth and changes in the rural economy after the 1861 reform that led millions of rural residents, adults and children, to seek industrial employment.4 The population of the empire increased from 73.6 million in 1861 to 131.7 million in 1900. The most significant growth occurred in European Russia.5 The urban population grew from 5.7 million in 1857 to 26.3 million in 1914.6 This rapid increase in the urban population resulted mostly from peasant migration from the countryside. Facing economic hardship in the village, some peasant families moved to industrial centers where they hoped to find employment or better opportunities. According to the demographic historian A. G. Rashin, the number of industrial workers grew from 706,000 in 1865 to 1,432,000 in 1890. Frequently cited, such figures for the late nineteenth century cover only workers reported by the factory inspectors and do not include large work forces in state metallurgical, mining, textile, and military industries, on railroads, in small factories and workshops, and so on. According to the 1897 census, industrial and agricultural wage workers accounted for 9,144,000 persons, including about 1,100,000 children under fifteen.7 Thus, children comprised a considerable part of factory labor. During 1879-85 about 33 percent of Moscow province?s factory workers began their employment under the age of twelve and 31 percent between the ages of twelve and fourteen.8 What factors influenced children?s factory employment during industrialization? What changes did industrialization bring to the traditional practices of child productive labor? Why did owners of new mechanized industries employ children and what kinds of work did children typically perform in mechanized factories? This chapter attempts to 70 answer these questions. It explores the dynamics of child labor overall, as well as in individual industries, and analyzes the impact of industrialization on the employment and labor of children. It also traces labor conditions in industries and measures the impact of factory labor on children?s health. Statistics and Dynamics of Child Factory Labor during Russian Industrialization A medical doctor, N. F. Mikhailov, wrote in 1882, ?when one approaches the factory building, this giant 1,613-yards-long beast, one cannot even think that the mouth of this animal absorbs a huge mass of children.?9 Mikhailov?s overly melodramatic statement nevertheless suggests that children represented a significant segment of the labor force. How many children actually entered factory labor during industrialization in Russia? What were the dynamics of children?s employment at the time? Estimating the numbers of children employed in industries during early Russian industrialization still presents a difficult task. Statistics on child labor are abundant but highly fragmentary and limited to certain industrial regions or to groups of individual factories. During the 1850s and 1860s, no statewide comprehensive survey of factory labor in Russia had yet been conducted. The absence of systematic data and regular surveys of child labor suggests the government?s lack of coherent concern about children?s employment in industries at that time. The state did not view child factory labor as a serious social issue and continued to accept it as a means of teaching children industrial professions and preparing them for adult life. 71 The existing fragmented data from certain factories and some industrial areas suggest that in the mid-nineteenth century children of the age of sixteen and under comprised from about 12 to 15 percent of factory workers.10 It is clear that with the expansion of the capitalist economy during the following decades, the absolute number, if not the percentage, of children working in industries rose dramatically. Available figures for industries in Moscow province, for instance, demonstrate that by the end of the 1850s the number of child workers reached 10,184 or 15.2 percent of the province?s factory workforce.11 In about ten years, in 1871, the number of working children had almost tripled to 29,144 or 15.4 percent of Moscow province?s 88,853 workers.12 In 1859 the St. Petersburg government commission of A. F. Shtakel?berg studied labor conditions in St. Petersburg factories and gathered data on workers from 103 factories of the city and its district (uezd). These factories employed 16,224 workers, of which 1,282 (7.9 percent) were children of the age of fourteen and under. Most children, about 75 percent, were employed in textile factories and 48 percent of these children worked in cotton spinning mills. The proportion of children employed in the cotton industry was probably even greater because many textile enterprises were recorded as ?weaving? or ?dyeing? mills whereas some of them produced cotton goods. The children constituted 7.5 percent of cotton spinning mill workers and 12.5 percent of the weaving and dyeing enterprises? labor. The highest proportion of children to adult workers was in the type-foundry mills (21.9 percent) and in the bronze works (18.1 percent), whereas in metallurgy children accounted only for 1.6 percent of the industry?s workers.13 72 Perhaps the most accurate data on St. Petersburg?s factory workers for this period comes from the city?s 1869 census. The census recorded 139,290 workers in the city?s industries, among whom 13,587 (9.7 percent) were children of fifteen years of age and below. The figure on children included 451 (0.3 percent) children of age ten and under and 747 (0.5 percent) children of the age of eleven. Children between ages twelve and thirteen comprised 3.3 percent (4,636) and those aged between fourteen and fifteen accounted for 7,752 (5.6 percent). Juveniles between sixteen and nineteen comprised 14 percent (19, 694) of the St. Petersburg labor force. Most of the children recorded in the census worked in cotton and tobacco mills. Although these statistics on early industrialization specify children?s ages, they reveal little specific detail about the children?s gender and occupations.14 More detailed statistics on children?s employment in industries come from the 1870s when various state agencies and public associations began to gather data on child industrial labor. In 1874 the Commission for Technical Education of the Russian Technical Society made an independent empire-wide inquiry among industrialists and acquired considerable information regarding the employment of juveniles. Although most industrialists failed to respond to this inquiry,15 the commission received data from 135 businesses of various industrializing provinces throughout the empire. The 1874 data generally confirm the data gathered in the earlier surveys. In the responding businesses, 3,085 workers (17.8 percent of workers) were children and juveniles from six to eighteen years of age. The number of children employed in the surveyed enterprises ranged from 6 percent of the work force in a rope factory to 40 percent in a hat factory. The youngest 73 child worker was a six-year old boy. Children between ages six and nine comprised 1.4 percent (42) of all working children counted; children aged ten to twelve comprised 19 percent (574); children from thirteen to fifteen -- 37 percent (1,154); juveniles from sixteen to seventeen -- 27 percent (840) and eighteen years-old workers ? 15.6 percent (480). The youngest female workers were two eight years old girls. In the reporting enterprises, girls accounted for 21 percent (649) of the 3,085 working children.16 These data, although more detailed than in previous decades, remained fragmented and must be used along with information from later surveys. Table 2.1. Workers employed in Moscow Industries in 1879. Number of Children Number Percent Industry Number of Mills Number of workers under 12 12-15 Total under 12 12-15 Total Textiles Metallurgy and machine making Food Paper making and tannery Other Industries 306 111 69 38 124 35347 5777 5569 2373 4342 1724 54 167 46 86 2833 532 504 245 514 4557 586 671 291 600 4.9 0.9 3.0 2.0 2.0 8.6 9.2 9.0 10.3 11.8 12.9 10.0 12.0 12.3 13.8 Total 648 53408 2077 4628 6705 3.8 8.7 12.5 During the 1870s, local and provincial governments began to conduct surveys of factory labor. A Moscow city government commission on factory labor organized in 1877 74 made inquiries about the city?s industrial workers and found that in 1879 out of the 53,408 workers in Moscow industries 2,077 (3.8 percent) were children under age twelve and 4,628 (8.7 percent) were juveniles between ages twelve and fifteen.17 Most of these children (4,557 or 68 percent), worked in the textile industry and they constituted 12.9 percent of the industry?s labor force. Table 2.1 represents the data gathered by the Moscow government commission and shows the number of workers and children employed in Moscow industries in 1879.18 Table 2.2. Workers and Children employed in St. Petersburg industries in 1878. Industry Number of workers Number of Children Percent of Children Metallurgy Textiles Ceramics Food Processing Lumber Chemicals Paper 9018 8507 2484 1067 1062 552 342 502 1405 96 26 56 27 77 5.5 16.5 4 2.6 5 5 22 Total 23033 2187 9.5 According to the data on St. Petersburg industries gathered in a similar survey in 1878 and presented in Table 2.2, out of 23,033 workers 2,187 (9.5 percent) were children between ages ten and fifteen. Observers noted that this data is incomplete and in fact represents only a small portion of the city?s industries. Nonetheless, it illustrates the 75 general tendency and dynamic of child labor in St. Petersburg.19 As in Moscow, the majority of these children (1,405 or 64 percent) worked in the city?s textile mills. Although the proportion of children in metallurgy remained small, their actual number and their percentage in comparison to most other industries was significant. Of interest is that by 1878 the percentage of children employed in St. Petersburg textile and metallurgical mills had increased significantly (to 16.5 and to 5.5 percent respectively) since 1859 when children constituted respectively 8.8 and 1.6 percent of these industries? workers (see page 64). By any measure, industrial growth during these decades was accompanied by a significant increase in children employment. The widespread use of child labor during the 1870s is also illustrated by data from individual businesses. For example, in 1878, the Morozov Textile Mill in Tver? province (central Russia) employed 4536 workers, including 736 children under age fifteen and 1198 juveniles between fifteen and eighteen (16.2 percent and 26.4 percent respectively). In the same year, 720 (20 percent) of the 3600 workers of the Rozhdestvensk Textile Mill (Tver? province) were children and juveniles.20 In the late 1870s, the Iartsev Textile Mill in Smolensk province (south-west Russia) had a workforce that consisted of almost 25 percent of children between the ages of seven and fourteen. Juveniles between 15 and 18 and comprised 26 percent and adults only 49 percent.21 Although, these proportions are significantly higher than percentages shown in general statistics, they may represent the proportion of children employed in the industry more accurately than the general surveys. 76 Table 2.3. Number and Percent of Workers and Children Employed in Various Reported Industries in 1883 Number of Number (%) of Children of the Age of: Industry Mills Workers under 10 10-12 12-15 Total Number (%)of Children Fiber processing: Cotton spinning Cotton weaving Cotton finishing Other cotton processing mills Linen spinning and weaving Other linen processing mills Wool washing Wool spinning Wool weaving Wool cloth making Other wool processing mills Silk weaving Other fiber processing mills Total fiber processing mills 27 40 76 31 18 20 16 22 32 103 10 18 89 507 14,935 22,929 36,279 80,779 22,251 1,987 4,872 3,568 10,092 25,135 899 4,288 9,719 237,733 56 (0.4) 99 (0.4) 25 (0.1) 68 (0.1) 46 (0.2) 0 (0.0) 128 (2.6) 3 (0.1) 14 (0.1) 44 (0.2) 0 (0.0) 7 (0.2) 24 (0.2) 514 (0.2) 406 (2.7) 534 (2.3) 446 (1.2) 1,371 (1.7) 738 (3.3) 2 (0.1) 207 (4.3) 115 (3.2) 142 (1.4) 537 (2.1) 0 (0.0) 53 (1.2) 167 (1.7) 4,718 (2.0) 2,666 (17.9) 2,087 (9,1) 3,423 (9,4) 7,645 (9.5) 2,948 (13.6) 76 (3.8) 570 (11.7) 995 (27.9) 659 (6.6) 2,417 (9.6) 22 (2.4) 288 (6.7) 1,143 (11.8) 24,939 (10.5) 3,128 (21.0) 2,720 (11.8) 3,894 (10.7) 9,084 (11.2) 3,732 (16.8) 78 (3.9) 905 (18.5) 1,113 (31.2) 815 (8.1) 2,998 (11.9) 22 (2.4) 348 (8.1) 1,334 (13.7) 30,171 (12.7) Mining and metall 709 145,053 55 (0.6) 404 (0.3) 7,208 (5.0) 7,667 (5.3) Food processing 811 105,726 154 (0.2) 848 (0.8) 5,456 (5.16) 6,458 (6.1) Minerals 209 15,003 142 (1.0) 688 (4.6) 1,767 (11.8) 2,597 (17.3) Lumber 240 17,649 46 (0.3) 114 (0.6) 933 (5.3) 1,093 (7.9) Printing, binding 79 3,536 0 17 (0.5) 609 (17.2) 626 (17.7) Chemicals 142 8,172 0 86 (1.1) 505 (6.7) 591 (7.8) Other industries 203 7,922 50 (0.6) 66 (0.8) 262 (3.3) 378 (4.8) Totals 2,900 540,794 961 (0.2) 6,941 (1.3) 41,679 (7.7) 49,581 (9.2) 77 The first coherent nationwide census of child labor in Russia was conducted in 1882. The Ministry of Finances department of commerce made inquiries through its local agencies and its newly created factory inspectorate (1881), about the employment of children in private industry. By August 1883 2,792 manufacturers across the empire had responded. Although the 1882 data did not by any means represent all private factories, it was nevertheless by far the most comprehensive survey of Russian private factory labor to date. Table 2.3 displays the number of workers and children employed in the 2,792 reporting factories in 1883.22 Although it is hardly possible to define the exact number of children employed in all Russian industries in 1883, the figures presented in Table 2.3 shed light on important aspects of child factory labor. The figures show that 49,581 (9.2 percent) of the 540,794 factory workers reported on were fifteen years of age and under. The overwhelming majority of these child laborers (30,171 or 60.9 percent) engaged in textile production and, in particular, in the cotton industry (18,826 children or 38 percent), a tendency suggested by earlier surveys. Cotton and wool spinning mills employed very high percentages of children, 21 and 31.2 percent respectively. Private mines and metallurgical works also employed large numbers of children (7,667 or 15.5 percent respectively). Many children also worked in food processing mills (6,458 or 13.1 percent). The data on child labor gathered in 1883 contain separate figures on boys and girls employed in the reported factories. The number of girls of age fifteen and below is significantly lower than the number of boys of the same ages. In Moscow?s factories, for instance, out of 1,756 children of age fifteen and under 1,451 (82.6 percent) were boys 78 and only 314 (17.4 percent) girls. For children of sixteen years and older, the gap in proportions between boys and girls somewhat decreases. For example, of 1,320 juvenile workers between sixteen and eighteen, 985 (75 percent) were males and 335 (25 percent) females, whereas men and women from ages of 19 to 50 accounted respectively for 6,214 (78 percent) and 1,746 (22 percent) of the work force.23 In Vladimir province, men comprised 63.7 and women 36.3 percent of the province?s workers.24 This tendency was also reflected in the data from the previous decades (see page 66). Most girls remained in the countryside. Others left to work in various domestic services.25 As noted in a previous chapter, many of those who remained in the village engaged in cottage industries in addition to their numerous household and agricultural activities. None of this labor appeared in statistics. Nevertheless, the statistics of Table 2.3 show children?s employment in large and medium-size private factories with sizable work workforces, that is, the ones that reported to the commissions and that were visited by factory inspectors. These statistics neglect entirely state-owned businesses and, perhaps even more importantly, small private enterprises and services that also employed numerous children. In addition, according to factory inspectors, they had no access to some distant enterprises, which therefore remained uncovered in these statistics. According to one of the chief factory inspectors, Ia. T. Mikhailovskii, the factory inspectors reported on only about 20 percent of all private businesses. These were, however, the large- and middle-sized mechanized enterprises that presumably employed the majority of workers.26 According to V. I. Lenin?s estimates, in the early 1880s businesses that employed more than 100 workers 79 accounted for about 5 percent of all businesses in Russia. These enterprises, however, used the labor of 67 percent of all wage workers. In 1890 large mechanized enterprises made up about 8 percent and employed 71 percent of factory workers.27 Thus, the majority of working children toiled in large and medium-size mechanized enterprises. Although it hardly represents all wage workers, historians often cite this figure ? about 2 million?to show the total number of factory workers in late nineteenth century Russia. According to the 1897 census, however, there were 9,144,000 wage workers in Russia. This figure included 238,000 (2.6 percent) children below twelve years of age. Children between the ages of thirteen and fourteen made up 363,000 (4.0 percent). Accordingly, children of the age of fourteen and below comprised 6.6 percent of wage workers. Teenagers between fifteen and sixteen years of age accounted for 644 thousand (12.9 percent) and juveniles between seventeen and eighteen totaled 1,181 thousand (12.9 percent).28 Thus, the proportion of children rises significantly with each incremental increase of children?s age. These statistics suggest that most if not all industries used child labor. It is likely that, in general, children aged fifteen and under constituted some 9-12 percent of Russia?s industrial labor. Depending on industry and individual enterprise, however, the percentage may have ranged considerably. With the growth of the capitalist economy during the late nineteenth century and the increased demand for wage workers, the actual number of children employed in industries grew rapidly. As mentioned previously, even in 1897, some 15 years after the enactment of the first decisive child labor law in 1883, 80 children of the age sixteen and under employed in businesses comprised about 1.2 million or 19.5 percent of workers. Causes of Child Factory Employment during Industrialization Why did so many children enter the factory labor force during industrialization? Why did industries employ children? In its formulation and analysis, Chapter One has shown that before industrialization child productive labor had been broadly accepted as a means of preparing children for adult life. Children usually engaged in productive labor in order to receive an apprenticeship and gain a professional education. Of course, such factors were also crucial in influencing children?s factory employment during industrialization. But industrialization itself produced new economic and social realities that spurred child industrial labor. Thus, answers to these questions probably lies, on the one hand, in the dramatic economic and social changes in the countryside during the second half of the nineteenth century, which included the acceleration of the market economy, the rapid growth of rural population, and the decline of the traditional extended family. On the other hand, rapidly growing industries created a massive demand for wage labor. In addition, these factors were complemented by the wide popular acceptance of child productive labor which, along with the absence of any efficient child labor regulations in private factories, made children easily an available and often even desirable source of labor for late nineteenth century industrialization. 81 For the most part, Soviet historians followed some nineteenth-century observers in emphasizing economic motives as the primary basis for child labor. This interpretation implied that capitalist enterprises mercilessly exploited low-paid child laborers in order to gain as much profit as possible. This view perhaps received its best reflection in the words of historian Vladimir Gessen, who stated in 1927 that ?the cheapness of child labor [was] the stimulus for its broadest exploitation.?29 Of course, economic exploitation may have been a crucial factor but it was by no mean the only cause of a phenomenon in which hundreds of thousands of children entered factory employment. Most contemporary observers of factory labor instead suggested multiple economic, technological, and social issues as the basis for widespread children?s employment. In their view, owners of factories preferred child labor for several interconnected reasons.30 Some commentators noted that mechanized factories favored the employment of children because, unlike in traditional crafts, work on the new machines often did not require specific skills or great physical strength. Mechanized production involved tasks that, in the eyes of many entrepreneurs, could be performed without special training or skill. If possible, they preferred to use child labor for such tasks.31 In addition, contemporaries remarked that manufacturers viewed children as more adaptable than adults to the new factory environment, better able to learn to work with the new machinery and technology, and often better fitted physically to perform certain operations. Some industrialists even claimed that without children?s input many production tasks could not be accomplished by adult workers at all.32 These assertions find support in many contemporary accounts. One observer, who watched children 82 employed as doffers in a spinning factory, wrote that ?this task was not difficult. When bobbins are full, the doffer replaces them. The bobbins are located low, suitable only for children?s height. Adult workers could hardly accomplish this task.? In this view, the new industrial technology and the growing number of mechanized factories created a huge demand for child laborers.33 Other contemporary commentators indeed emphasized economic motivations in the increased use of child labor. ?The mechanized factory is extremely interested [in child workers],? wrote A. Romanov, a physician who investigated factory labor in 1875, ?because it pays children less than adult workers. At the same time, [overall] wages can be lowered. Even adult workers have to accept these rates in the face of a strong competition from young workers. . . The factory administration forces out adult workers and replaces them with children. By keeping low labor rates, the owner tries to gain as much profit as possible.?34 Many factory inspectors shared this view. For example, Dr. P. A. Peskov, in his reports on factory labor in the Vladimir industrial district, maintained that the use of child labor in industries was caused ?mainly by economic reasons?by the cheapest labor of children.? Peskov stated that there was no other reason to use child labor in factories, ?because most of the tasks children performed could easily be accomplished by adult workers.?35 Peskov?s remark, however, contrasted sharply with other contemporary opinions that emphasized the new industrial technology and machines as one of the important causes of child factory employment. Soviet scholars of child labor suggested that the economic motive of hiring cheaper labor was particularly important for small traditionally organized workshops, 83 which relied mostly on manual labor. According to Gessen, ?given their low technological level, artisan workshops could compete successfully with the mechanized factory only by employing children and keeping wage rates down.?36 In order to support this assertion, Gessen pointed out that St. Petersburg industries employed fewer children than industries in Moscow because, in this version, the former were more technologically advanced and did not have a great need for hiring children.37 At first glance such an observation might appear to be correct. The data from 1878 and 1879 for Moscow and St. Petersburg cited in Tables 2.1 and 2.2 (pages 67-68) seem to support Gessen?s conclusion. The data show that in St. Petersburg children accounted for 9.5 percent of the city?s industrial workers, whereas in Moscow they made up 12.5 percent. But more detailed analysis of these figures raises doubts about this interpretation. The figures reveal, for instance, that textile factories of St. Petersburg employed 16 percent children, whereas in Moscow textile mills children accounted for only 12 percent of the mill work forces. Yet the textile mills of Russia?s ?northern capital? were the most technologically advanced in the country, surpassing textile mills in Moscow and the other central provinces.38 In addition, this difference in the total percentages of children for Moscow and St. Petersburg might be a result of the data?s incompleteness. Likewise, the 1883 data also indicates that many children worked in the cotton industry the most mechanized of all textile industries. Children, for instance, composed 21 percent of workers in cotton spinning mills (see Table 2.3). Thus, it perhaps would be more correct to assume that child labor was economically desirable for both new mechanized factories and traditional manufacturing workshops. 84 Many contemporary observers also stressed that child labor resulted from the economic and social strategies of peasant families. They noted that, driven by economic and social goals, parents were frequently willing to put their offspring to work in factories. The Finance Ministry commission maintained in 1860 that the ?custom of putting children to work? is widespread.39 According to Romanov, ?the enormous proportion of children employed in the factory. . . suggests the strong need of the population; [parents] . . . have decided to take the opportunity to turn into profit the physical feebleness of their children . . . Children?s employment provides these families with a valuable financial contribution.?40 In 1878 the Vladimir provincial governor noted that some parents were ?tempted by small profits? they could gain by sending their children to factories.41 Likewise, some manufacturers emphasized parents? requests as an explanation of why they employed children. One factory owner claimed that he ?employed children only as a favor and deigned to concede their mothers? humble requests. . . . As for me,? he continued, ?I do not need them at all.?42 Whether this industrialist?s assertion of his humanitarian motivation was sincere or not, his remark about the parents? desires seems credible. Entrepreneurial motives aside, children?s factory employment usually reflected the desires, needs, aspirations, and decisions of their families and parents. Nevertheless, as before industrialization, some parents continued to send their children to factories as apprentices with the purpose of their gaining a professional education. In this case, parents concluded written or, more likely, oral agreements with employers that specified apprenticeship conditions. Apprenticeship usually lasted from 2 85 to 5 years and, in most cases, apprenticed children did not receive wages. Children gained training in various industrial professions such as engraving, drawing in pencil and on pantograph, and carving on wood in printing factories or gained skills in working on the lathe and other machines, and so on.43 For those parents, the major goal of employment of their children was preparation for adult life. Their children?s apprenticeship usually made no immediate financial contribution to the family. Nonetheless, during industrialization apprenticeship no longer seemed to serve as a crucial factor for most children?s entry into productive labor. Parents put their children to work in factories primarily because of the economic needs of their families rather than to train their children for an industrial profession. Both local government officials and late imperial scholars explored the economic conditions of lower social strata families and how these economic conditions influenced children?s employment. The St. Petersburg government, for instance, gathered data on a number of the city?s working families during the early 1880s. In most instances, children?s factory employment seemed to be determined by the economic needs of the families.44 In his seminal book on factory labor, the historian M. Balabanov cited the following example of a peasant family which had migrated to St. Petersburg in the late nineteenth century. The family consisted of six members including mother, father, and four children. The mother did not work because she took care of the youngest baby daughter. The father found employment in a calico factory where he earned 20 rubles a month. Balabanov noted that since the family could not sustain itself for a month on 20 rubles in St. Petersburg?a city where living was costly?the parents sent their older 86 daughter to the factory. She earned 7-8 rubles a month, which provided a significant contribution to the family budget.45 E. N. Andreev of the Russian Technical Society described a similar case of a peasant family which had moved to St. Petersburg in the early 1880s. This family included four members: father, mother and one male and one female child. The father and his twelve-years-old son worked in a factory where they together made 38 rubles a month, whereas mother and daughter stayed at home. The son?s share of the wages was about 8 rubles a month. The boy worked 12 hours a day and could no longer continue the schooling that he had received before the move to the city.46 Doubtlessly, not all families who put their children to factory work were needy. In some recorded cases, children from relatively well off working families worked in factories as well. For example, a St. Petersburg government inspector described a family of three members which included father, mother, and an eleven-year-old daughter. All three worked in a St. Petersburg mill and made a total of 46 rubles a month. The daughter?s monthly wage was about 6 rubles. This family spent about 35 rubles a month on its subsistence, whereas it accumulated about 10 or 11 rubles as savings. The family had a land allotment in the countryside but they granted the right to use it to one of their relatives, who in return was obliged to pay all local and communal dues and taxes for the family. The government inspector pointed out that this family had no acute economic necessity for sending their daughter to a factory but did it sheerly out of a desire to increase its income.47 Thus, for some families child labor resulted from certain aspirations for a better life in the present or in the future. 87 Regardless of the ?temptation for a little profit? and the desire for a better future life noted by some contemporaries, economic need and poverty were the driving force behind most parents decisions to send their children to factories. Contemporary scholars estimated that, in order to subsist in St. Petersburg, a family of two adults with two or three children needed an income of at least 25-30 rubles a month. Even the simplest foods were expensive. The monthly cost of basic food necessities in a large city in Russia during the late decades of the nineteenth century was 4 to 6 rubles per adult person.48 In addition, an individual family made outlays on board and other basic items, such as soap, kerosene, candles, and so on. The cheapest living space in St. Petersburg at the time cost about 1 silver ruble a month, whereas an average space could cost 3-4 rubles. Consequently, factory employment was crucial for older children of most families with dependent children, such as those cited above. One factory inspector recorded in his report that a family with ?many dependent mouths who could not work was happy to gain every little kopeck? earned by an older child.49 Scholarly studies have shown that nuclear families of two adults with children were not rare in rural Russia and, after the 1861-64 reforms, as the market economy accelerated in the countryside during the second half of the nineteenth century, their number grew considerably. Naturally, as concomitant, the traditional extended family began to decay. Anthropologists and historians of the family have noted the general decline of the traditional multigenerational household and the growth of nuclear families. According to the historian Milogolova, ?in these new conditions [created by capitalism], the small family which consisted of parents and children began to prevail.?50 88 Some late nineteenth-century observers suggested that unlike in the traditional multigenerational household, ?in a small nuclear family, persons can realize their essential desires for independent living and for working exclusively for the well being of their own families.?51 This desire to live independently and well increased the economic pressures on individual members of these families. As noted in Chapter One, even before industrialization, the labor pressure on children in nuclear families usually exceeded that in extended families. During industrialization, factory employment of children often made possible the survival of nuclear families, when, repelled by harsh economic conditions on the land, they moved from the countryside to industrial areas. The fall of the extended household and the rise of the nuclear seems to have affected the increase of children?s factory employment. In addition, the rapid growth of the rural population of the Russian empire during the second half of the nineteenth century affected the economic conditions of many peasant families. In 1858 the rural population of Imperial Russia (without the Kingdom of Poland and the Duchy of Finland) was 68 million and by 1897 it had increased to 116 million. In 1913 the population of rural Russia reached 163 million.52 According to the demographic historian V. M. Kabuzan, in European Russia this growth occurred because of a decline in mortality rates and the simultaneous rapid increase in birth rates. Some demographers even suggest general overpopulation, along with the increase of the proportion of children in the population, in the countryside.53 This resulted in a sharp rise of the number of families with small dependent children. Historians of child labor in 89 industrializing Europe and America have noted that the presence of small children in a nuclear family increased the pressure on older children to engage in wage labor.54 The rapid rural population growth spurred temporary peasant migration to urban centers, which were growing significantly by the late nineteenth century. Agrarian historians find that about 12.5 million peasants, including many children, annually migrated temporarily to industrial areas during 1900-1910.55 This figure, however, is based on the number of documents given to peasants for temporary leave and therefore may not fully represent the actual number of peasant migrants. In many cases, peasants migrated without these documents. In order to find employment outside the village, peasants moved individually or in work units known in Russia as arteli. Regarding their membership, these units usually included from 4 to 12 people, both male and female adults and children. Sometimes, however, they consisted of only one sex or only of children. Rural children usually migrated with their families, fathers, or other adults. In other cases they joined arteli led by older children.56 In fact many peasants did not have to leave their villages in order to get factory employment. According to economic scholars, most industries in Russia were located in the countryside. In Vladimir province, for instance, all factories were situated in the local districts (uezdy) or near villages rather than in cities. The city of Vladimir had no factories and only a few artisan workshops. The city?s nearest factory, Nikitin?s Cotton Mill, was located in the Lemeshki village, about 16 kilometers from the city.57 This tendency probably finds its best expression in V. I. Lenin?s words, when he noted that ?if the peasant does not go to the factory, the factory does go to the peasant.?58 Thus, the 90 rapid growth of the rural population created economic and social conditions that increased the pressure on children to seek factory employment. Furthermore, all these factors which influenced the entrance of children into wage labor during industrialization were complemented by the absence of labor regulation laws. As we have seen in Chapter One, children?s employment in private businesses remained largely unrestricted by law. In practice, the employment of children was as easy as the employment of adults. During industrialization children continued to be employed in factories much as they had long before the 1861 reforms. Employment contracts were often informal and oral. In many cases, children were hired not by the business administration but by factory foremen who worked under the administration. (This will be explored in more detail in the next section.) Thus, one may suggest that the participation of children in the labor force during industrialization resulted from a multiplicity of economic, social, and cultural factors. These included the broad popular acceptance of child labor, the economic and technological interests of entrepreneurs, the growth of the child population and the family economic pressures, and the absence of labor protection laws. All these factors worked together to make children an important part of the labor force during industrialization. Employment, Work, and Living Conditions of Factory Children How did industrialization affect children?s employment conditions? What tasks did children perform in factories? In fact, employment and labor of children in industries 91 seemed to have been determined by many factors, including the size and character of the business, its location, and various local and individual enterprise arrangements. By no means did industrialization bring about an immediate break with all the old customs of employment and work. Many traditional practices of children?s employment and family labor continued. During the late nineteenth century, some industries in Russia still primarily used manual labor. They were traditionally organized and operated on a seasonal basis, working only 6 or 8 months a year. Although the number of such enterprises was declining sharply to the advantage of new mechanized ones, the proportion of children to the total number of workers in these traditional enterprises was quite high, reaching sometimes 40-50 percent. As mentioned, most employed children, however, worked in mechanized businesses. Bast matting workshops, for instance, provide a fine example of employment practices and work organization of small businesses in Russia. These shops relied on family labor and operated only from 6 to 8 months a year, during the non-growing season. Workers were organized in teams called stany. Each team (stan) consisted of four people, usually members of one family and worked on one bast matting frame. An adult male, usually the father, who was called ?the standing person? (stoiachii), operated the machine. He was helped by an assistant (zarogozhnik), an adult man or more likely a boy of age fifteen to sixteen. They were further assisted by a helping boy (zavodiashka), a child between ten and fifteen years of age, who prepared the bast warp and performed other assisting tasks. The fourth team member, an adult women, usually the mother, carded the bast. She was called ?chernovakha.? She also prepared food for the team. 92 Thus, children and juveniles might constitute about half the workers in these bast matting mills.59 Although others probably existed, evidence indicates 9 bast matting factories in 1882 (including 5 in Moscow province), which employed over 2,000 workers, about 33 percent (660) of whom were children aged fourteen and under.60 Some descriptions specify that these enterprises also used the labor of very young children of five, six, and even three years of age.61 Labor organization in bast matting workshops remained much as it had been in the early nineteenth century. In 1897 E. M. Dement?ev described the work organization in one bast matting workshop in the following words: The whole team starts its work at 4 o?clock in the morning and makes its first round of 7 matts by 8 am. After that the team workers have their breakfast while still continuing to do some work. After 8 o?clock the stoiachii (standing person) takes a rest and the assistant takes his work place, while the helping boy (zavodiashka) stands in for the assistant. Having slept through the making of 5 matts (2.5 or 3 hours), the stoiachii again sets to work while the helper boy takes a rest also for 5 matts. By 2 pm. they finish the second round of 10 matts and then all have a 30 minutes lunch. Then the stoiachii and helping boy take a rest for 2.5 to 3 hours. From 8 pm all four work together and by 2 o?clock in the morning make 10 matts more. Then the team has its dinner and takes rest.62 93 Thus, the team in bast matting mills worked the whole day with three short 2.5 or 3 hour-breaks for each member of the team. The woman assistant (chernovakha) and the helping boy probably had more time for rest. The employment process in these factories was also carried out much as it had been during pre-industrial times. Dement?ev observed that owners of bast matting factories in Moscow province ?annually, at the end of summer or the beginning of autumn, send their personnel agents to the Moscow district where they in turn recruit their workers for next year through their trusted local agents (riadchik). . . . Employment agreements are concluded not with the individual worker but with the ?stoiachii? who would then need to locate and hire his own assistants.? The stoiachii usually employed members of his own family.63 This kind of family employment arrangement was not, however, unique to bast matting workshops. Evidence suggests that many children were in fact hired not by manufacturers or the factory administration where they worked but by individual workers whom they assisted. According to factory inspectors? reports, factory administrations sometime did not even know how many children were employed because the latter were recruited by foremen as individual workers, who hired their own children or the children of their relatives. For example, one Vladimir province cotton factory employed 29 dye grinders, children between eight and fifteen years of age, who assisted adult male hand dyers. Of the 29 children, 12 worked for their own fathers or other relatives (uncles or older brothers) and the remaining 17 worked for non-related adults.64 This practice also occurred in mechanized industries but to a lesser degree. In spinning mills, for instance, 94 some children helped their own fathers who worked as spinners. According to Dement?ev, about 50 percent of factory workers were sons and daughters of persons who worked in factories. He however clarified neither ages of these workers nor type of their work.65 Nonetheless, a majority of employed children evidently assisted non related adult workers. Thus, although a pre industrial tradition of family employment was in decline, it still persisted in some enterprises during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It needs to be mentioned that under this type of labor organization children usually worked under the supervision of their parents or other family members. Especially as regards small artisan-type enterprises, industrialization brought only slow change to practices of family labor as traditionally practiced in the countryside. Child labor there remained much as it had been for centuries. Regardless, the figures cited in the previous section demonstrate that many children worked in new mechanized industries where the majority of wage workers worked. The cotton industry, for instance, was far and away the most mechanized and, at one and the same time, employed the largest number of child laborers. According to the data gathered by the Commission for Technical Education of the Russian Technical Society in 1874, 22.4 percent of the cotton industry labor force consisted of child and juvenile laborers from six to eighteen years of age. The figures for 1883 presented in Table 2.3 suggest that about 61 percent of children employed in industries and reported by factory inspectors worked in textile factories. Children of fifteen years old and under accounted for 12.2 percent (18,826) of the industry?s workforce. As mentioned, 95 mechanized production included many operations that did not requite special skills or strength and could be performed by persons with little or no training. With the expansion of mechanized factories, the demand for those types of workers further increased. As noted by many contemporaries, most children who worked in factories engaged in ancillary activities including errands. The pervasiveness of child labor in textiles was by no mean confined to Russia; it was typical for all industrializing countries. For example, evidence from the British Parliamentary Papers for England show that in 1874 of the textile workforce, 12.5 percent were children between eight and twelve years of age, 8.4 percent were male juveniles between thirteen and seventeen, 54.4 percent were women of thirteen years and over, and 24.7 percent were men of eighteen years and over. Overall, the British cotton industry employed a larger number of children than did other industries.66 Likewise, in 1865 most of France?s child laborers (59.7 percent) were employed in textile (mostly cotton) mills.67 A very similar pattern existed in the Southern states of the United States during the late nineteenth century. More than 60 percent of working children were employed in southern cotton mills.68 What work did children typically perform in cotton mills? The profiles of child labor in the industry are suggested by Table 2.4, which presents data about child workers in the main workshops of A. Baranov?s Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill in 1882.69 The Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill was located in the Aleksandrovskii district (uezd) of Vladimir province, the center of Russia?s textile production. The mill had several main workshops, which included spinning, weaving, and finishing workshops, as well as secondary works - 96 - an iron foundry, metal workshop, brick-yard, and peatery. The total mill work force consisted of 3,496 workers, which included 2,221 (63.5 percent) male and 1,275 (36.5 percent) female workers, all local peasants. Of the 2,545 main workshops employees, 276 (10.8 percent) were children under fifteen years of age. Table 2.4. Ages of Child Workers in Workshops of Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill (1882) Number (%) of Child Workers of the Age of Number of All Workers under 10 10-12 12-15 Total Mill?s depart -ment M F Tot al M F Tot al M F Tot al M F Tot al Male Fem ale Total Spinning 1 2 3 6 13 19 90 12 102 97 27 124 342 236 578 Weaving 0 0 0 1 2 3 19 81 100 20 83 103 318 572 890 Printing 0 0 0 3 0 3 46 0 46 49 0 49 976 301 1277 Total 1 2 3 10 15 25 155 93 248 166 110 276 1636 1109 2545 Many children worked in the cotton industry because the cotton production process included many operations and tasks that required unskilled or semi-skilled labor, as well as ancillary activities. Table 2.4 illustrates that 45 percent of the Sokolvskaia Mill 97 children (124) worked in the spinning shop. These children performed auxiliary operations, including piecing together broken threads (19 children), setting up bobbins (62), sorting (13), and other secondary tasks such as cleaning machines and floors and so on. The new mechanized process of spinning associated with the introduction of the self- acting mule created a demand for semi-skilled and unskilled workers to assist spinners. All 32 spinners of the shop were male adult workers because the operation of the self- actor required strength. In the weaving shop, 51 child workers between ages twelve and fifteen were weavers and 52 children - secondary workers. The printing and dyeing department of the Sokolovskaia Mill involved 49 children. Most children who worked in those departments also performed auxiliary tasks, such as grinding dye, cleaning equipment and carrying things.70 These figures on children?s occupations in the Sokolovskaia Mill conform to the general tendencies in the cotton industry. Contemporaries noted that men in cotton mills usually performed jobs which required greater strength, whereas women and children performed ?easier? tasks, which nevertheless were often dirtier and more dangerous. According to factory inspectors, many children employed in cotton spinning mills worked in preparatory facilities on carding, and scutching machines.71 In weaving rooms, children usually worked as helpers. Their job consisted of putting warp through the openings of reeds. The helping boy (podaval?shchik) passed the thread through reed and the other (proborshchik) took it. Many children also worked on spooling and winding machines. Children who worked as weavers usually had their own looms and performed all the tasks of adult workers.72 In the dyeing and printing departments, most children 98 worked on drying, spirituous, and starching drums. There they usually watched that the cloth did not jam when it went onto the drum.73 Many children served as assistants of workers who operated dyeing and washing equipment. They also carried calico and engaged in final tasks of cloth finishing. In all these shops, children also cleaned machines and equipment, carried products, wiped floors, and did all other errands. Thus, young children under twelve years of age employed in textile mills normally assisted adult workers (sometimes their own fathers or other relatives) and performed ancillary tasks. A few children, usually between the age of twelve and fifteen, performed adult works. While helping adult workers, children learned to work with machines on which in a few years they could replace adult workers. One contemporary noted that children from age ten to twelve ?observed the work of adult workers and tried to imitate it. . . The most active children helped spinners, and they learned how to piece together broken pieces of yarn and so on.? When they learned all the operations required for spinners, they began to work as spinners themselves.74 How did industrialization affect working hours for children? Before the introduction of labor regulation laws, the workday in fact changed very little and in most cases remained as it had been before industrialization. Working hours for children usually depended on labor arrangements in individual factories and were usually the same as for adult workers. Most, if not all, textile mills that employed large numbers of children worked day and night in 6-hour shifts. There the workday lasted 12 hours. In those factories that worked only day time, the workday continued from 12.5 to 14 hours excluding breaks for breakfast and lunch. In some enterprises, like the bast matting mills, 99 the workday lasted for 18 hours.75 Some enterprises worked day and night in three 8-hour shifts. Under this arrangement, workers worked 8 hours a day during one week and 16 hours a day during the other one.76 Most contemporary observers noted that there was no difference in working hours for children and adult workers. For example, according to an 1871 Moscow city governor report, children usually worked ?the same amount of time as adults.?77 Medical doctor F. F. Erisman, an observer of Moscow industries, noted the same tendency during 1879-80. In his reports, he pointed out that children worked the same number of hours as adult workers, from 12 to 16 hours, depending on factory labor organization. Night work was typical for children. In textile mills, children usually worked two six-hour shifts a day as adults.78 Thus, in most factories the workday for children lasted about 12 hours and in some enterprises it approached 16 and even 18 hours (the same as for adult workers). With the introduction of labor protection laws, by the end of the nineteenth century the workday began to decrease, approaching 11.5 for adults and 8 hours for children (see discussion in Chapter Four). Some contemporaries maintained that although juveniles worked the same number of hours and often performed the same volume of work, they were paid significantly lower rates. The Ministry of Finance commission maintained that the extensive employment of children in industries ?leads to a dramatic reduction of wages of children who work for almost nothing.?79 According to E. N. Andreev, children received from 1 to 20 rubles a month depending on their age, gender, work, arrangements with the employer, and location. In those cases when children were provided by their employers 100 with food and board, their wages were significantly lower than those when they subsisted on their own. In cotton spinning mills, for instance, children worked about 12 hours a day and earned from 3 to 20 rubles a month, that is, 3-5 rubles with food and board and up to 20 without these subsidies.80 The highest monthly wage children received was recorded in a Moscow woolen cloth mill (up to 25 rubles) and in a Moscow tobacco factory (30 rubles). Although in a few cases children could make as much as 25 rubles, the average monthly wages for children were low. Moreover, workers? and children?s wages were frequently reduced by various fines and dues for damaged products or broken instruments, for tools, for being late to or absent from work, and for the maintenance of certain factory services for workers, such as factory physicians, baths, and so on. As calculated by Dr. Dement?ev for Moscow province, for children under fifteen years of age an average wage was 2.43 rubles (17.3 percent of an average monthly wage of an adult worker) and for juveniles between fifteen and seventeen ?3.35 rubles.81 The average figures on children?s wages from Moscow province roughly correspond to empire wide norms. As mentioned, some contemporaries estimated the cost of basic foodstuffs at about 4 or 6 rubles a month. In Serpukhov (Moscow province) one boy aged seventeen reported to a factory inspector that he received 31 kopecks a day (about 7.75 rubles a month) and monthly spent about 4 rubles on food. Wages of other boys of fourteen years of age were even less, from 4 to 6 rubles.82 Hence the wages of children were often hardly enough to buy food. According to factory inspectors, ?the labor of children below 101 14 years of age hardly pays for their subsistence. Their wages are more or less significant contribution to their families, but their competition reduces the price of labor.?83 Children who worked for their fathers or relatives usually received no wages at all. In such cases children?s labor input contributed to the productivity of these for whom they worked and, in turn, increased their wages. Children employed by non relatives were usually paid an average wage of 2 or 3 rubles a month with food and board. As described by factory inspectors, the conditions for children hired by adult workers were often grim, especially for those who depended on food and board from workers who hired them. In most instances, inspectors found that the children not only received no salary but usually owed their employers sums of money for food and board they had received. Inspector Peskov remarked that food supply registers that he had examined consistently revealed children?s indebtedness to their foremen. ?After all,? Peskov wrote ?one can [only] imagine the subsistence level of those who have been hired by individual workers.?84 Of course, most factory children lived not on their own but with their families and their wages often contributed to family budgets, in which cases the families provided support for the children. Depending on the number of dependents, an average working family spent a significant part of its income on food, board and other necessities. Naturally, most working families lived quite modestly. Depending on their personal circumstances, workers dwelled in living quarters with other workers provided by their factories, rented beds or rooms, or in a few instances owned their own spaces. The first was especially true for single workers. Married workers usually rented rooms or quarters. The diet of a 102 typical worker in St. Petersburg, as described by a contemporary, usually consisted of rye bread with salt and water for breakfast and Russian cabbage soup (shchi) with no more than a half-pound of beef (or sometimes without meat), and boiled buckwheat for dinner. In the summer, this diet might be complemented with fresh vegetables, such as green onions and cucumbers.85 Late nineteenth-century reports of factory inspectors align themselves with this observation and suggest similarities in workers? diets throughout European Russia. For example, Dr. P. A. Peskov, who supervised workers? labor and living conditions in private businesses in the Vladimir industrial district in the early 1880s, noted that typical products bought by workers in food markets were cabbage, rye flour, buckwheat, vegetable oil, lard, and tea. They consumed meat and fish only on special occasions. Interesting to note is that workers? provisions records sometimes revealed quite high expenses on pepper, which, factories inspectors suggested, in fact may have represented expenses associated with on alcohol.86 Inadequate nutrition was hardly unique for Russian workers. According to scholars of Europe, in the late nineteenth century ?workers almost everywhere [in Europe] remained chronically undernourished. . . .?87 In many cases workers bought their foodstuffs from factory stores where prices were generally 5-20 percent higher than those at regular markets. Only a few, usually large businesses provided their workers with food cheaper than market prices. For example, the factory stores of the cotton mills of Morozov and Baranov Troitsko- Alexandrovskaia Mill bought food provisions wholesale directly from producers. In addition, the Morozov enterprises had their own agricultural and livestock farms which 103 supplied the stores of the Morozov factories. In the 1870s the Morozov enterprises employed thousands of workers. One Morozov cotton mill in Tver? province used the labor of 4,536 workers, over 16 percent of whom were children under fifteen.88 How did industrialization affect the conditions of labor for children? This has been a highly politicized question that, as a result, produced controversial but quite simplistic responses. In fact, this question is more difficult to answer precisely than it might appear. Soviet scholars of labor have insisted that labor conditions in capitalist factories were extremely oppressive and bad. Late imperial scholars and factory inspectors, although they often focused on negative and sensational cases, suggested that working conditions were varied and depended on individual factories. Comparing small handicraft enterprises with large mechanized ones, some late imperial scholars suggested that human conditions were better in the former. For example, in his famous The factory: What does it give to people and what does it take from them, the late imperial scholar of labor Dement?ev wrote that ?in small businesses the worker enjoys greater freedom than in large ones that use mechanized technology. [In the latter] things are different. The worker is squeezed into an iron frame. He depends so much on the machine that his own will and emotions are completely suppressed. . . . Moreover, in small enterprises work usually is conducted during daytime, whereas in large mechanized ones work continues day and night.? Dement?ev pointed out that during the night small factories could naturally refresh the air inside their workrooms, whereas in large factories that worked day and night and which had inadequate air circulation, workers breathed in stuffy and ?unhealthy? air.89 104 Dement?ev?s observation about the high degree of worker?s dependence on machines in mechanized mills is probably indeed to the point. Still, his somewhat romantic view of traditional workshops hardly finds support in other contemporary descriptions of conditions in small operations. Indeed labor conditions in many traditional workshops, as described by factory inspectors, were very bad. For example, in the above- mentioned bast-matting shops, according to contemporaries, conditions of workers were the very worst of all described. The factory room where the team worked and produced matts also frequently served as workers? living quarters. All adults and children slept together next to their work place. Sometimes the same rooms housed domestic animals, such as chickens and pigs. Work rooms were saturated with the rotten smell of wet bast and animals? urine and lacked any air circulation. In these same rooms workers lived, slept, and took their food. One vivid observer of living conditions in these enterprises remarked, ?sometimes a chicken would come up to sleeping children and peck a cockroach creeping across child?s face . . . but the child?s dream is not interrupted. . .? In some bast matting mills working rooms accommodated several families. An account of workers? conditions in one such factory in Nizhnii Novgorod (Volga Region) stated that ?each workshop had 20 bast matting frames. Each working family sleeps by the frame where they work. There is no other place for sleeping.?90 In small workshops, children often worked with hazardous chemicals. For example, in the matchmaking industry, in which children under twelve years of age made up about a half of the industry?s workers, conditions were perilous. In 1845 a police report described the work of children in the Shvederskii Matchmaking Mills in the Yauza 105 district of Moscow. The mills employed 67 children between ten and fifteen. The children worked in low-ceilinged stone rooms, which had neither windows for air nor fans. In these rooms, children dipped matches in sulphur. Consequently, sulphur was boiling in an open tray in the same room during the entire work day. The report noted that the fire place is really not quite appropriate for that task. Although the tray has above it an iron cowl with a ventilation pipe that leads outside in order to draw out the sulphur evaporations, the largest proportion remains in the rooms. Several hundreds matches were fixed in a plate and dipped in sulphur. Afterwards the remaining sulphur was shaken off on another tray, which a lot of evaporation also occurred. According to some accounts, matchmaking factories sometimes used the labor of four and five-year-old children. The workday started between 5 and 6 in the morning and lasted until 11 p.m. with breaks for lunch and rest. Children received about 1.5 kopeck per 100 matches. Children employed in these enterprises usually came from extremely impoverished or drinking families.91 It is curious to note that by 1880 the labor in most matchmaking enterprises remained much the same as in 1845. Of course, such labor conditions as in the bast-matting and matchmaking mills were not a novelty and were hardly products of industrialization. During industrialization, however, the growth of the production of bast matts and matches created more demand for child workers forced to labor in such conditions. Nevertheless, bast matting and matchmaking enterprises were 106 probably exceptions, whose experiences should not obscure those of other workshops that provided their workers with better conditions. Poor ventilation, inadequate air circulation, and the lack of space between machines, according to most contemporary accounts, were serious issues in most factories. Only some factories that happened to be located in new buildings with wide working rooms had adequate air flow and ventilation. According to Peskov?s 1883 account of Vladimir province enterprises, most provincial textile mill spinning rooms that he visited were wide, filled with light, and had relatively low dust. Machinery was installed with considerable spaces between them.92 Nonetheless, working conditions in many factories were bad. Calico printing factories in St. Petersburg, for instance, astonished some contemporary observers with their ?particularly bad construction, as though workers? health [was] absolutely forgotten.? St. Petersburg leather tanning mills stood out as ?astonishingly dirty, stinky and cramped.? 93 Similar accounts came from other industrial areas. According to Peskov?s description, the preparation rooms in cotton spinning mills, such as scutching and carding rooms, were usually unsatisfactory. Machines were often set up close to one another with narrow passes between them. Moving parts of machines were in most instances not secured. These machines were often of old construction and had insufficient coverage of moving and shifting parts. Moving belts of carding machines were covered only underneath whereas upper vertical and horizontal belts remained completely unprotected. Dust removing devices were not always installed.94 107 Almost all large factories that Inspector Peskov visited had instructions about work safety. The only exceptions were small businesses, where such instructions were often absent. One way or the other, factory owners and workers themselves rarely followed safety instructions. Peskov remarked that he never saw workers actually stopping machines for cleaning, although the rules disallowed cleaning machines while they were working. Most workers received piece-rate wages and therefore never stopped the machine for cleaning. In addition, stopping spinning machines usually degraded the quality of yarn and workers were fined for yarn of poor quality. Therefore cleaning was performed by children who assisted workers while machines were in full movement. Children were constantly moving around the machines in order to clean them and at every moment risked serious injury.95 The Impact of Factory Labor on Children?s Health How did the environment of mechanized factories affect children?s health? In an early 1845 report to the Moscow military governor, the chief of the city police wrote about the conditions of children who worked in one match factory: With regard to the health of the boys, they all have poor face color and continuously cough. This happens because the children work in low-ceilinged rooms, under low stone arches, which have neither air holes nor ventilation. In these rooms they cover matches with sulphur and phosphor which, during the 108 entire day, are melted on a hearth. . . . During their work, the children are breathing in that hazardous miasma; all, without exceptions, have a pale, exhausted, and sick look, and constantly cough. If they continue to stay . . . in such an environment. . . , they will develop illnesses that will prematurely end their lives.96 Doubtlessly, the exhausting industrial environment and long work hours had a tremendous effect on the health of working children whose physical development was not complete. Industrial labor led to the physical decline of many factory children. Unlike work in traditional agriculture and cottage industry, labor in the new mechanized factories subjected children to the rapid pace of machinery and exposed them to dangerous moving belts, shifting parts, intense heat, high noise levels, and hazardous conditions associated with dust and the use of toxic chemical solutions. Of course, in the countryside children also might work with hazardous equipment, be involved in accidents, and suffer injuries. Nevertheless, labor conditions for children in the countryside were much safer. Russian agriculture and cottage industries had long relied on machinery and technology that required a great deal of manual labor. Moreover, as explored in Chapter One, children worked under the supervision of their parents or other adult family members and were assigned work ?suitable for their strength.? The new factory environment and working conditions, as well as the absence in many cases of parental supervision, exposed children to increased risk that in fact resulted in sickness, 109 work-related injuries, and even deaths at rates much higher than those in agriculture and cottage industry. It is important to note that general death rates in the countryside were somewhat higher than in cities. Most observers suggested that this resulted from the unsatisfactory living conditions in the countryside. Some historians of childhood have remarked that because the child mortality rate was higher in the countryside than in cities, living conditions for rural children were worse than those for urban ones. In contrast, other observers of rural life pointed out that many factory workers who came from the countryside maintained their ties with the village and after working in factories for a number of years returned to the countryside where after a few years they died. In this view, this was in all likelihood the consequence of harsh factory labor and of diseases that workers developed while working in factories. Therefore factory labor was in part responsible for increasing the mortality rate in the countryside. Dement?ev noted that as their health worsened workers preferred to return to the countryside where of course they eventually died. He maintained that one can find statisticians who, on the basis of firm numbers, point out the high mortality in the countryside and the low one in [urban] centers. But only our local zemstvo physicians, who maintain medical records for every rural family, know that real reason for the high mortality is factory [labor]. They know that immediately after they return to the countryside [workers] would come to medical 110 establishments with all the signs of incurable lung problems and in a very short time their medical records would mark them as ?dead of consumption?.97 This tendency of sick workers to return home was also illustrated in late nineteenth-century Russian literature. In his short story Muzhiki (Peasants, 1897) about an ill Moscow worker who had just came back to his native village, Anton Chekhov pointed out that ?even if you are sick it feels better at home and life is cheaper; and it is not for nothing people say that home walls help.? In any case, the worker died in a few months after returning home.98 Many rural children who worked in factories and damaged their health also returned to the countryside as their strength failed. Poor labor conditions, unprotected moving parts, and hazardous chemicals also damaged the health of adult workers but this industrial environment was even more harmful for children. Perhaps the most revealing remark about the impact of factory labor on children?s health was made by a factory manager. In his study of factory labor, Balabanov cited an account made by a correspondent of the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti who observed children working in a cotton factory in the dyeing rooms where the temperature reached 45-50 degrees centigrade. They worked on dryers. Startled by the working conditions in this factory, the correspondent asked its manager about what sort of persons these children become when they grow up? ?Afer thinking a while, the manager responded that ?God knows what happens to them. We don?t see them at all afterwards. . . They simply perish, totally perish?. . . .?99 111 Numerous medical records and accounts point out that children in cotton mills suffered from ?an alarming array? of health problems. According to a report received by the Commission for Technical Education in 1874 ?in cotton spinning factories children suffer from anaemia. The hands of children who clean machinery are irritated with a rash because of mineral oil. Children who work in preparatory shops suffer from soreness of the breathing canals and throat.?100 According to factory inspectors, in some cotton factories children employed in preparatory shops were ?dirty in the extreme, covered with some kind of odd lesions, and looked very exhausted.?101 In addition, in most textile mills the inside temperature was very high. The high temperature was maintained for technological reasons. For example, in the spinning rooms high temperature and humidity helped reduce the breaking of threads. But high temperature exhausted workers. A factory worker, A. A. Voskoboinikv, wrote in the social and political journal Biblioteka dlia chteniia (Reading Library) in 1862 that children who worked in the printing rooms of a calico factory, where the temperature attained 40 degrees centigrade, had ?yellow faces, red, swollen eyelids, an unhealthy look, and hollow chests. This is the indisputable evidence and inevitable consequence of some two-three years of employment in cotton factories.? Voskoboinikov claimed that labor in cotton factories ?prevents the physical development of children.?102 These examples and descriptions illustrate the impact of working conditions in the textile industry which, of course, employed the largest number of children. One may assume that annually thousands of children who worked in textile factories seriously damaged their health and many may have perished. 112 Children?s labor conditions in some other industries seem to have been no better. In a sugar plant, for instance, as described by a contemporary, ?children of eight to ten years of age and sometimes even seven years old scaled boilers in extremely harmful conditions. . . [The children] suffocate from the dust and soot.?103 In many factories, the absence of proper air circulation led to poisoning by hazardous chemicals such as chlorous and sulphur.104 Children who worked with hazardous chemicals, according to the medical reports, suffered from serious lung problems. According to the medical records of some children who worked in match factories, the skin of children was pale, flabby, and dry. They had face and leg oedema, dry and spotty tongues, weak and irregular pulse, short breath, and a dry cough. In one case an accident in a match mill poisoned 11 children with sulphur fumes. They were sent to a hospital, where 3 soon died of pneumonia and typhus fever brought on by the exposure.105 ?Cachetic? and ?pale? were terms most contemporaries used to describe child factory workers. They noted that ?the dusty and asphyxiating atmosphere of the factory? was ?harmful for the child?s immature organism.?106 In addition to numerous general illnesses brought about by the new industrial environment, children were also subjected to work-related injuries. The absence of proper air circulation, the cramped spaces, and the absence of coverage on moving parts often led to such work-related accidents. The following document, one of a very few surviving pieces of evidence produced by children themselves, illustrates the problem. In 1857 a work-related accident happened to a sixteen-year-old boy, Andrei Agapov, who was 113 employed in the merchant Nosov?s wool mill in the Lefortovo district of Moscow. In a police report Agapov stated: By faith I am Orthodox Christian, take holy communion every year, know literacy but, because of the disorder of my right hand, on which the fingers were injured, I cannot affix my signature. I am living at the mill of the merchant Nosov since the autumn of last 1856 [and work] as a helping boy on the shearing machine. Last March, the 23rd, right before breakfast, when I was on duty with my fellow worker Nikifor Nikiforov, I tried to straighten the cloth when it began to jam. . . , two fingers of my right hand went with the cloth on the knifes which cut nap. These knifes cut off the nail to the bone on my middle finger and cut off flesh to the bone on the fourth one. . . . After the local physician dressed the wounds, I was immediately sent to a hospital. The police investigation of Agapov?s case indicated that the boy worked under the supervision of an overseer, an eighteen-year-old worker. Although the police found that Agapov was himself responsible for this accident because of ?his own carelessness,? the employer compensated the boy with a sum of money. After his recovery in the hospital for workers, he returned to his home village.107 Evidence suggests that children were more prone to work-related injuries than adult workers. As noted, the most coherent data on working conditions for children comes from the 1870s and early 1880s. The Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill (Vladimir 114 province) provides valuable information on injuries associated with factory employment. During 1881-82 of the 165 registered accidents, 87 (53 percent) occurred among working children whereas the children accounted for only 10.8 percent of the factory labor force. The number of registered accidents indicates that, in the given period, about 16 percent of children employed at the mill experienced accidents, as opposed to only 2.7 percent of adult workers. Most accidents involved cuts, wounds, broken limbs, and fractures of arms, fingers, and legs, which often led to their amputation.108 The most frequent accidents happened among children who pieced thread and set up bobbins. The latter task was performed mostly by male children (77.7 percent) and was the most dangerous operation. About 37 percent of accidents in the spinning shop were associated with setting up bobbins. This data from the Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill is supported by numerous other accounts. Medical and police reports, for instance, illustrate that the most common work- related accidents involved hand and limb injuries.109 According to Moscow government officials, a similar pattern of child injuries existed in Moscow and its province. They confirmed that children were more vulnerable to injuries than adult workers.110 A St. Petersburg government factory commission set up in 1859 also reported that the highest number of work related accidents occurred to children. The commission found that during a certain period cotton factories had experienced 48 accidents with ?serious consequences? that required a physician?s attention among children of the age of fourteen and under and 28 accidents among children of between age fifteen and sixteen, whereas 72 accidents involved adult workers. The number of accidents among children and 115 juveniles (76) exceeded that among adult workers although the overall number of working adults greatly exceeded that of employed children.111 Sometimes work-related accidents caused death. For example, according to police records, in the Guk factory in St. Petersburg, from 2 to 4 children died annually.112 Most contemporaries attributed the ill health in factory children to their physical immaturity and to hazardous labor conditions in factories. They suggested that labor in mechanized factories and the high pace of new machines required excessive energy from working children. Voskoboinikov pointed out that ?the labor burden on children who worked on mule machines exhausts them.? The highest number of injuries occurred among workers who worked on these machines. The highest rate of work-related accidents occurred in textile (cotton spinning) factories and in metallurgical plants, both industries with a high level of mechanization.113 Recent medical studies shed significant light on the differences in physical condition and abilities of children and adults. For example, one study finds that eye movements of preschool children differ from the eye movements of adults, a factor that limits children?s ability to acquire adequate visual information.114 One may imagine the significant impact this factor might have had on the labor of children and ultimately on the higher number of work-related accidents among them. Alongside the impact of incomplete physical development, a possible explanation for the high rate of work-related accidents among children can be found in recent research about neurology and developmental psychology. This research emphasizes the different stages of development of the human brain in adults and children, which in turn produce different patterns of 116 behavior and responses to environment.115 Thus, children?s behavior and responses to factory environment and machines were dissimilar to those of adult workers. In turn, this condition would have affected the high incidence of work-related injuries among working children. Various publications of the 1860s and 70s emphasized the need to deal with the issue of child labor. An editorial in Vestnik Evropy pointed out in 1875 that data on child industrial labor was sufficient to promote a legislative effort. ?Every passing year,? claimed the editor, ?threatens the health and even lives of numerous factory children, poor victims of need.?116 In his 1871 report, the Moscow city governor maintained that ?the young generation is declining physically? because of exhausting work in factories.117 In 1878 the Moscow city governor called for energetic legislative measures to cope with industrial injuries among children.118 Some contemporaries even identified the death rates and the declining health among young factory workers with warfare. ?The most bloody wars,? wrote an observer in 1882, ?seem an innocent joke . . . if compared to these losses of life and health [in industries].?119 This bitter, even exaggerated expression reflected the growing concern among many statesmen and public activists about the decline in the health of the younger generation and its potential consequences for the security and well- being of the empire. Many contemporaries realized that the factory was not a good place for children. These concerns contributed to the emergence of attitudes in opposition to child labor and to appeals for child labor protection laws from state officials, public figures, and intellectuals. 117 NOTES: 1. On Russian economic development during the nineteenth century, see William Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800-1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); Olga Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1976), Arcadius Kagan, Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century, Roger Weiss, ed., (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Peter I. Liashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution, L. M. Herman, transl., (New York: Macmillan, 1949). Tugan- Baranovsky, Russian Factory, 48. 2. Early Russian industrialization receives treatment in Blackwell, The Beginnings; Crisp, Studies; Kagan, Russian Economic History; and Tugan-Baranovsky, Russian Factory. For discussion of the textile industry, see P. A. Khromov, Ocherki ekonomiki tekstil?noi promyshlennosti SSSR (Moscow-Leningrad: Izd. Akademii Nauk, 1946) and Isaev, Rol? tekstil?noi promyshlennosti. 3. For discussion of the labor force before 1861, see A. G. Rashin, Formirovanie rabochego klassa Rossii (Moscow: Izdatel?stvo sotsial?no-eknomicheskoi literatury, 1958). See also Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move,? 635 note 32, 639-641. Some labor issues before 1861 are addressed in Zelnik, Labor and Society. 4. On the issue of labor migration from the countryside during the late imperial period, 118 see Robert Johnson, Peasant and Proletarian: The Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1979); Daniel Brower, The Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 1850-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Barbara A. Engel, Between the Fields and the City: Women, Work and Family in Russia, 1861-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Evel G. Economakis, ?Patterns of Migration and Settlement in Revolutionary St. Petersburg: Peasants from Iaroslavl? and Tver provinces? Russian Review 56 (January 1997): 8-24. 5. Kahan, Russian Economic History, 48. 6. Kahan, Russian Economic History, 3; see also Mirinov, Sotsial?naia, 1:315. 7. The 1897 census data is cited in P. I. Kabanov et al, eds., Ocherki istorii possiiskogo proletariata (Moscow: Izdatel?stvo sotsial?no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1963), 21. According to A.G. Rashin, in 1897 about 12 percent of industrial workers were children under 15 years of age. Rashin, Formirovanie, 280. 8. The figure for industrial workers includes workers of factories, mines and railroads. Cited in Kabanov, Ocherki, 21, 23. 9. Rashin, Formirovanie, 256. 10. Gorshkov, ?Factory Children,? 17. 119 11. TsIAM, fond 17, opis? 34, delo 48, list 244. See also Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move,? 644. 12. Gessen, Trud, 46. 13. Kitanina, Rabochie, 172 14. Gessen, Trud, 46. 15. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 5:10 (October, 1775):801-826, 824. 16. Andreev, Rabota, 43-49. 17. TsIAM, fond 1780, opis? 1, delo 14, listy 4, 110-112. 18. TsIAM, fond 1780, opis? 1, delo 3; Rashin, Formirovanie, 251. 19. Rashin, Formirovanie, 252. 20. Gessen, Trud, 46. 21. Rashin, Formirovanie, 256. 22. Andreev, Rabota, 1-160, appendix. 23. Gessen, Trud, 56. 24. P. A. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt Vladimirskoi gubernii: Otchet za 1882-1883 god fabrichnogo inspectora nad zaniatiiami maloletnikh rabochikh Vladimirskogo okruga P. A. Peskova (St. Petersburg: Tip. B. Kirshbauma, 1884), 6. 25. L. A. Anokhina, M. N. Shmeleva, Byt gorodskogo naseleniia stednei polosy RSFSR v proshlom i nastoiashchem (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 63. 120 26. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt,16; O deiatel?nosti fabrichnoi inspektsii: Otchet za 1885 god glavnogo fabrichnogo inspektora Ia. T. Mikhailoskogo (St. Petersburg: Tip. B. Kirshbauma, 1886), 14. 27. V. A. Leverychev, Tsariam i rabochii vopros v Rossii (1861-1917 gg.) (Moscow: Mysl?, 1972), 3. 28. Rashin, Formirovanie, PAGE. 29. Gessen, Trud, 47. 30. Rashin, Formirovanie, 251. 31. Rashin, Formirovanie, 251. 32. Gessen, Trud, 48. 33. Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 32. 34. Cited in Rashin, Formirovanie, 251. 35. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 24. 36. Gessen, Trud, 50 37. Gessen, Trud, 46-49. 38. For discussion of the Russian textile industry, see P. A. Khromov, Ocherki ekonomiki tekstil?noi promyshlennosti SSSR (Moscow-Lningrad: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1946). 39. Cited in Andreev, Rabota, 14. 40. Cited in Rashin, Formirovanie, 251. 41. Gessen, Trud, 49. 42. Kirov, Na zare, 40. 121 43. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 39. 44. The cases of these families are cited in Andreev, Rabota, 167-173. 45. Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 29. 46. Andreev, Rabota, 172. 47. Andreev, Rabota, 168-169. 48. Cited in Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 29. 49. Cited in Rashin, 260. 50. I. I. Milogolova, ?Semeinye razdely v russkoi poreformennoi derevne (na materialakh tsentral?nykh gubernii? Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, series 8, history, no. 6, (1987), 37-46, 37. For English-language studies of this issue, see Cathy A. Frierson, ?Razdel: The Peasant Family Divided? in Russian Peasant Women, ed. Beatrice Farnsworth and Lynne Viola (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1992), 73-88. 51. Cited in Milogolova, ?Semeinye,? 37. 52. V. G. Tiukavkin, Velikorusskoe krest?ianstvo i Stolypinskaia agrarnaia reforma (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2001), 35, see Table 1. 53. V. M. Kabuzan, Russkie v mire: dinamika chislennosti i rasseleniia (1719-1989). Formirovaniie eticheskikh i politicheskikh granits russkogo naroda (St. Petersburg: Russko-baltiiskii informatsionnyi tsentr, 1996); Tiukavkin, Velikorusskoe, 34. 54. Kirby, Child Labor, 30. 122 55. L. V. Milov, ?Otkhodnichestvo? Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia 16 vols, (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1967), 10: 696; cited in Tukavkin, Velikorusskoe, 54 56. For further discussion of these workers? associations, see Johnson, Peasant and Proletarian; Zelnik, Labor and Society; Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move,? 645-646; and Worobec, Peasant Russia. 57. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, III; Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 16-17. 58. Tiukavkin, Velikorusskoe, 55; Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3: 518-25. 59. Gessen, Trud, 49; Dement?ev, Fabrika, 147-48. 60. Andreev, Rabota, 38; Gessen, Trud, 50. 61. Andreev, Rabota, 181. 62. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 33-34. 63. Demet?ev, Fabrika, 147-48. 64. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 38-43. 65. Cited in Gessen, Trud, 61. 66. Nardinelli, Child Labor, 106, Table 5.2. 67. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 165, table 4. 68. Shelly Salle, The Whiteness of Child Labor Reform in the New South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 31. 69. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, see prilozheniia, pages 3-53, for the Sokolovskaia Mill. 123 70. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, prilozheniia, 3-53. 71. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 8, 44. 72. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 46. 73. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 47. 74. Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 32-33. 75. Andreev, Rabota, 181. 76. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 46-47. These figures on working hours are supported by the data gathered by the commission for Technical Education of the Imperial Russian Technical Society in 1875. This data is presented in Andreev, Rabota, 46. 77. Gesen, Trud, 48. 78. Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 17. 79. Cited in Andreev, Rabota, 14. 80. Andreev, Pabota, Appendix, 4. 81. Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 18. 82. Andreev, Rabota, 168-173. 83. Cited in Gessen, Trud, 219. 84. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 42. 85. Kitanina, Rabochie, 235. 86. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 107. 87. John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe vol 2 From the French Revolution to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 870. 88. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 104; Andreev, Rabota, 81; Gessen, Trud, 46, 124 89. Dement?ev, Fabrika, 238. 90. Andreev, Rabota, 181 in prilozhennia. 91. Andreev, Rabota, 182-183; ?Iz istorii detskogo truda v krepostnoi Rossii? V. Bukhina, ed., Istoriia proletariata SSSR 4 (20) (1934), 139. 92. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 84. 93. Cited in Kitanina, Rabochie, 43. 94. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 84. 95. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 44. 96. ?Iz istorii detskogo truda,?137. 97. Dement?ev, Fabrika, 248-249. 98. A. P. Chekhov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia v trekh tomakh 3 vols. (Moscow: Izd. Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1967), 5. 99. Zaitsev, Polozhenie, 18; Balabanov 126. 100. Gessen, Istoriia zekonodatel?stva, 75. 101. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 107. 102. Kitanina, Rabochie, 233. 103. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 125-136. 104. Kitanina, Rabochie, 230-31. 105. ?Iz istorii detskogo truda,? 139. 106. Cited in Andreev, Rabota, 12. 107. ?Iz istorii detskogo truda,?133. 125 108. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 125-136; see also Table 6 of prilozheniia, pages 57-67. 109. Kitanina, Rabochie, 232. 110. TsIAM, fond 1780, opis? 1, delo 3, list 1a. 111. GARF) fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 76. 112. Kitanina, Rabochie, 233. 113. Kitanina, Rabochie, 233. 114. Eileen Kowler, Albert Martins, ?Eye Movements of Preschool Children,? Science New Series 215 (February 19, 1982): 997-999. 115. Leonie Sugarman, Life-span Development: Concept, Theories and Interventions (New York: Methuen, 1986); Child Development in Life-span Perspective, E. Mavis Hetherington, ed. et al (Hillsdale N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988). 116. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie,? 826, 824. 117. Gessen, Trud, 48. 118. TsIAM, fond 1780, opis? 1, delo 3, listy 1a-2. 119. Cited in D. P. Nikol?skii, ?K voprosy o vliianii fabrichnogo truda na fizicheskoe razvitie, boleznennost? i smertnost? rabochego? Zhurnal Russkogo obshchestva okhraneniia narodnogo zdraviia 8 (August 1895):611-637, 630-631. 126 CHAPTER THREE LEGISLATIVE AND PUBLIC EFFORTS AND DEBATES ABOUT CHILD INDUSTRIAL LABOR As we have already seen, during the early nineteenth century most state officials perceived child labor as a moral practice essential for the upbringing and education of children. In the middle of the century this perception still prevailed. For example, a prominent statesman and public activist, Admiral Count N. S. Mordvinov, who from 1810 to 1838 headed several departments of the Imperial State Council, maintained that children of peasants and lower urban orders ?could serve with great usefulness? in the nation?s industrial development. Similarly, General Count A. A. Zakrevskii, who from 1848 to 1859 served as the military governor of Moscow, gave child labor a favorable assessment, arguing that employment of children in industries could bring ?great benefits for working families.?1 Both officials carried great weight in imperial policy making. During the 1860s, however, such attitudes began to languish and give a way to voices that opposed child industrial labor. The impact of the new factory environment on children?s health made more and more contemporaries question the moral aspect of the use of children in industries. Many state officials and public figures began to doubt that the 127 factory was a place appropriate for children?s apprenticeship and work. They realized the need for restricting the employment and labor of children. The appeal for child labor protection laws initiated by state and local bureaucrats produced an important public discussion of child industrial labor among state officials, industrialists, academicians, and all others concerned about the issue. During the 1860s and 1870s, the government organized several commissions to inspect labor conditions, review existing factory legislation, work out new factory labor regulations, and promote discussion of these regulations. Although the impetus for this discussion usually came from local and imperial government officials, during the 1870s it involved society as a whole, including industrialists? and public associations, as well as journals and newspapers. The debates about child labor helped form new perceptions of children?s industrial employment and education. This chapter examines the legislative proposals to regulate child labor. It also analyses the debates on child labor and legislation about children?s factory employment, education, and welfare. What impact did the debates have on general perceptions of childhood? How did the debates change the attitude of state officials about child labor? What impact did all of this have on actual legislation about child labor? The answers to these questions, each of which this and the following chapters address in detail, are important in and of themselves. They take on added significance because they open up entirely new perspectives on late tsarist law making and governance. 128 Early Legislative Proposals and the Discussion of Child labor By the late 1850s, government officials recognized that the existing labor regulations in private businesses, the 1835 and 1844 decrees, no longer suited contemporary needs.2 One governmental report admitted that ?the frequency of work- related accidents among workers, and especially working children, requires new regulations? of factory labor.3 In 1859 the imperial government set up two commissions, one under the Ministry of Finances to review the Factory and Apprenticeship Code, and a second under the St. Petersburg governor to ?thoroughly investigate? working conditions in the city?s private factories and workshops and work out new employment and labor statutes for St. Petersburg.4 Both these commissions were headed by A. F. Shtakel?berg, an expert on legal issues regarding factories and workshops in Russia and in Europe.5 Both commissions included local and imperial government officials, public figures, physicians, educators, and a few business representatives. The appointment of these commissions signified the beginning of a process of labor-related legislation and debates about it in Russia. Local offices of the Ministry of the Interior and, in particular, its district medical and police departments were usually the primary institutions to consider local labor issues. On an ongoing basis, they settled labor conflicts and dealt with work-related accidents in private industries. Therefore it was not accidental that the initiative for studying labor conditions and introducing labor protection laws came from these concerned local bureaucrats. When the St. Petersburg commission examined working and 129 living conditions in the city?s industries, it confirmed that factory was an unsafe place for young children. According to its report, ?factory work and . . . the stuffy and dusty [factory] environment have a fatal impact on children?s immature bodies . . . . [Factories] overwork children and treat them harshly and cruelly.? The commission maintained that the state should ?protect the young generation from being subjected to exhausting factory labor.? It suggested the strong need for restricting child labor in the city?s industries.6 The Ministries of Interior and Finance asserted that child labor regulations should not be limited to the capital but introduced in other industrial areas of the empire.7 The two Shtakel?berg commissions addressed multiple aspects of industrial labor and proposed quite similar measures for restricting employment and labor for children in industries and domestic services. The commissions suggested that the employment and apprenticeship of children under the age of twelve should be prohibited entirely. Children aged ten to twelve could take an apprenticeship only when they were apprenticed by their own parents or, in the case of orphans, by their close relatives who served as children?s guardians. Following the language of the earlier laws explored in Chapter One, the commissions specified that in these cases children under the age twelve ?should be assigned tasks according to their physical abilities.? The St. Petersburg governor?s commission proposed to limit the workday for children and juveniles aged twelve to fourteen to twelve hours including a two-hour break for lunch and rest and suggested that the workday for children under sixteen years of age should be only between 5 a. m. and 8 p. m. Thus, the St. Petersburg commission suggested the ten-hour-workday for children aged twelve to fourteen and a ban on night work for children under sixteen. Later, in 130 1862, the Finance Ministry?s commission went even further and proposed the ten-hour workday limit and a night work ban for children and juveniles under the age of eighteen.8 Regarding the education of child workers, the commissions came up with more vague ideas. They proposed that factory owners should be responsible for the general intellectual development of working children. Businesses should not prevent working children from attending Sunday and evening schools. Large businesses with large number of workers should found their own basic literacy schools for their workers.9 These legislative proposals, however, lacked specificity and appear to have been advisory rather than obligatory in their formulation. Both Shtakel?berg commissions also addressed working and social conditions for workers. This applied to adult as well as child workers. The commissions were concerned about work safety in industries and suggested that factory owners be required to provide their enterprises with safety measures, such as shielding moving parts of machines, and providing proper air circulation and lighting in workshops. Owners of enterprises were to be responsible for working out work safety instructions and posting these instructions in places accessible to all workers. The proposals obliged owners and managers to inform workers about potential dangers that work and machines could pose for workers? health. In other words, owners could not employ workers without informing them of potential risks and safety rules. In their turn, workers were supposed to learn work safety rules.10 Additionally, the commissions? proposals specified financial compensation of workers for work-related accidents and work-related sickness during the period of their disability. 131 These provisions would oblige owners in these cases to pay all medical expenses, including those for the physicians and medicines.11 Furthermore, the Finance Ministry proposal included provisions that provided a legal basis for workers to create their independent mutual assistance associations, such as zemliachestva (fraternities) and arteli (cooperative work groups), which until then had existed on an extra-legal basis.12 The proposal also contained provisions on business arbitration courts (promyshlennye sudy) where workers and employers would be equally represented that would be responsible for mediating and containing conflicts between employers and workers.13 In order to implement and supervise factory laws, the commissions suggested the introduction of state paid factory inspectors and the imposition of penalties on those who evaded the regulations. The penalties included a fine of 10 to 300 rubles and, in some cases, specified administrative sanctions.14 Apparently, these commissions, headed by an individual who had studied foreign labor laws, took into account labor legislation that existed in other European countries. In fact, the commissions thoroughly examined contemporary western European labor laws, as well as existing legislation that already regulated some Russian state and private industries. Nevertheless, in many respects the commissions? propositions to prohibit children below twelve years of age from employment and to limit employment for children between the ages of twelve and eighteen in all private businesses went far beyond contemporary European legal norms. As noted, existing legislation in several European countries introduced factory inspectors, banned the employment of children only under eight or nine, and limited the workday to ten hours and restricted night work 132 for children of various ages, as, for example, in the British, French and Prussian statutes. The 1833 British statute banned the employment of children under the age of nine only in textile mills (with the exception of silk) that used steam or water power.15 Thus, regarding the minimum age for employment, the commissions clearly followed the norms that had been established earlier in some Russian industries and traditionally practiced in the countryside.16 Regardless, these provisions for the city?s private industries designed by the St. Petersburg commission were never enacted and did not become law.17 Some Soviet historians of child labor argued that the opposition to their enactment came primarily from industrialists in Moscow and other central provinces where ?traditionally organized? industries heavily depended on child labor.18 This assertion, however, is hard to justify. As we have seen in chapter two, St. Petersburg industrialists also employed many children. In fact, they revealed no less concern about the law?s enactment than entrepreneurs from central provinces where the proposed provisions actually did not apply.19 St. Petersburg industrialists believed that the proposed child labor restrictions for the city would place their industries at an obvious disadvantage to other industrial areas of Russia where child labor would remain unregulated. They insisted on nationwide regulations of child labor. This was one of reasons why the Ministries of Finances and the Interior suggested in 1859 that factory regulations should not be limited to St. Petersburg but expanded to all industrial centers and ?were [to be] required for all? private businesses.20 133 Nevertheless, the St. Petersburg commission, at least, had positive accomplishments. The commission gathered valuable data on factory labor in the city and its district (uezd) during 1859-1860. (See above chapter two, 66.) In addition, some of the commission?s suggestions found their place in a new statute on state mines and metallurgical mills, the provisions of which were enacted in March 1861. In June 1862 similar regulations were introduced for private mining and metallurgical enterprises. These and some earlier statutes limited the minimum age for employment in these enterprises to twelve years, prohibited underground work for children between the ages of twelve and fifteen, and introduced factory inspectors. The decrees obliged managers of state and owners of private businesses to maintain schools for employed children and for children of their enterprises? workers. The decrees also introduced free medical care for work-related injuries and free basic medical services for workers.21 Enacted in 1861, the ?Provisional Rules on Employment for State and Public Work? allowed rail-road building workers to organize workers? associations (arteli).22 Despite the failure to adopt labor protection laws for St. Petersburg industries, the Finance Ministry commission continued its legislative effort and compiled a new proposal, which was published in 1862 and sent out to provincial governments and industrialists? associations for review, discussion, and suggestions. This proposal included all the provisions discussed above. The new proposal received consideration and provoked a lively discussion in the Manufacturing Council (a corporative association of Russian entrepreneurs and industrialists) and its Moscow Section (Moskovskoe otdelenie manufakturnogo soveta), 134 which included industrialists from all the central industrial provinces of Russia. The provisions that addressed child labor were the most controversial. Although many entrepreneurs agreed that the state should introduce some regulation of child labor in private businesses, the dominant attitude toward the proposed specific restrictions was negative. Some discussants suggested following the examples of France and Prussia in limiting the working day to 10 hours only for children under sixteen years of age, not under eighteen, as the proposal maintained. Others asserted that the age to start employment should be lowered to eleven and that the workday for children aged eleven to fifteen should be twelve hours in two six-hour shifts, already the norm in many textile mills. Most, if not all, industrialists declined the idea of prohibiting night work for children between the ages of twelve and eighteen.23 How did industrialists justify their opposition to the proposed legislation and what were their real reasons for opposing it? Most industrialists argued that any restriction on workday and night work for children would ultimately affect the labor of adult workers who were assisted by children and, in turn, affect the whole production process. Some insisted, for instance, that without the help of children night work could not be conducted at all by adults. Other industrialists were concerned that the workday limit and ban on night work for children would lead to the rise of production costs that would consequently make their businesses unprofitable. They maintained that their factories would need to hire more adult workers to replace children. Most industrialists called for no labor regulations for children aged twelve to eighteen.24 135 Industrialists expressed their concerns about the enactment of the new child labor law at meetings held in the Manufacturing Council and its Moscow Section and in letters sent to these associations. Perhaps the most active opposition to the proposed legislation came from the entrepreneurs of Russia?s central provinces who were well represented in the Moscow Section, although entrepreneurs from St. Petersburg also did not support many of the draft?s provisions. The brothers Khludov textile entrepreneurs from Tver? province (central Russia), for instance, strongly opposed the ban on night work for children, stating that this provision would eliminate night work for adult workers as well, because, they claimed, ?adults cannot work without children?s assistance.? The Khludovs insisted on a minimum age for employment of eleven years and thirteen-hour workday for children between ages eleven and fourteen.25 Likewise, Tula textile entrepreneurs (central Russia) claimed that ?any restriction on the labor of children aged twelve to eighteen was totally unacceptable.?26 A group of owners from various industrial provinces of glass- making works, an industry that employed a high proportion of children, joined together and wrote to the Manufacturing Council that ?limitations on child labor would mean the complete destruction of the entire glass-making industry in Russia.? The glass-makers maintained that children were in fact hired by their fathers or other relatives and worked under their supervision. The manufacturers claimed, accurately or not, that the children performed easy tasks and ?earned their bread almost playfully.?27 Many entrepreneurs questioned the drafts? provisions regarding work safety. They argued that these provisions might give workers an advantage in explaining away work- related incidents based in fact upon their own lack of awareness, shift the blame onto 136 employers, and claim compensation.28 Entrepreneurs also rejected provisions that provided for worker?s associations. The Manufacturing Council?s Moscow Section argued that ?instead of using this opportunity [to organize themselves] for their own good. . . , workers led by some kind of conspirators, who will immediately arrive, will use it for evil. . . .?29 At this point, the industrialists were supported by some officials from the Ministry of the Interior who also questioned these provisions by arguing that they might stimulate ?a spirit of solidarity among the masses, [facilitate] strikes, and finally [encourage] disobedience among the working population.?30 Some entrepreneurs emphasized that the proposed law seemed to show too much concern for workers, most of whom were adult, self-dependent, and responsible individuals. They claimed that the law?s provisions deprived both factories and workers of the freedom of negotiating individual work contracts and did not in any way prevent parents from exploiting children at home.31 During the council?s debates many employers expressed humanitarian concerns about children?s families and welfare, arguing that the law?s enactment would indeed serve children badly. For example, the Khludovs, like most employers from other industrial provinces, stated that ?children, having lost the opportunity to earn money in factories, would not be able to contribute to their parents? incomes . . . and instead of [working] in a light-filled and healthy factory building would damage their health in the stuffy atmosphere of their homes.?32 The manufacturers argued that the proposed restrictions on children?s employment would decrease the incomes of workers? families and make it impossible for them to give their children a proper education.33 Similarly, the 137 Tula entrepreneurs insisted that the new regulations on child labor would have ?a bad impact on production and, at the same time, would bring no benefit for children because the easy tasks children perform cannot harm their development,? whereas children would lose the opportunity to earn some cash and thus support their families.34 Most employers claimed that children were usually assigned tasks that fitted their gender, age, and physical abilities. Whether industrialists? benevolent concerns about peasant families? well-being were a sincere cause for their opposition to the proposed restrictions or a simple rhetorical device used to justify this opposition, their concrete suggestions about minimum age and workday, nevertheless reflected their strong entrepreneurial motivation. Their almost unanimous opposition to the night work ban and the work safety provisions reflected their concern to preserve the employment of children. As noted in a previous chapter, children usually assisted adult workers or performed ancillary tasks which, employers believed, could not be performed by adult workers. Indeed, many children were hired as assistants by worker foremen, sometimes their own fathers. Thus, the proposed legislation conflicted with the tradition of family labor practiced in many businesses. One of the most serious concerns of business owners was that the elimination of child labor would lead to the closing of many factories. Entrepreneurs, especially those who owned smaller traditionally-organized workshops that employed many children, obviously worried that the replacement of children by adult workers, a more costly work force, would increase prices for their goods and place them out of reach of the majority of the population. 138 Nonetheless, not all employers opposed child labor regulations. A few philanthropic voices among the industrialists supported these restrictions. According to Gessen, St. Petersburg industrialists gave greater support to child labor regulations than did entrepreneurs of the Russian central provinces. Gessen found that some of the city?s industrialists even suggested raising the minimum employment age to thirteen and banning children?s employment in the most harmful and hazardous industries.35 By contrast, the labor historian Laverychev has noted that St. Petersburg industrialists also viewed provisions regulating employment ages as ?disadvantageous.?36 In point of fact, it was precisely industrialists who owned large mechanized enterprises who most favored restrictions on child labor. In all likelihood, this position reflected these industrialists? economic advantage. Many St. Petersburg employers supported child labor regulation because businesses in the city were large mechanized steam or water powered factories, whereas in the central provinces small workshops with manual labor and old production methods predominated. As suggested in chapter two, in order to increase output and maintain low production cost, small workshops used child labor more extensively than modernized factories, although the overall numbers of children employed in both types of production remained high. Children sometimes composed about forty percent of the workforce in small workshops, whereas in mechanized factories they made up from twelve to twenty-one percent. The owners of large mechanized factories probably realized that if enacted the proposed law would reduce the output of traditional workshops and thus give them a competitive advantage. The historian of child labor in Britain, Clark Nardinelli, described a similar tendency in early British industries. Owners of large 139 mechanized factories equipped with steam engines were among those who supported the 1833 child labor legislation in Britain, whereas owners of small traditional workshops opposed the law.37 The legislative draft and the industrialists? opinion thereof went to provincial governments for review. With a few exceptions, most government officials at the state and provincial levels defended child labor protection legislation. Many provincial officials revealed their skepticism about the industrialists? humanitarianism towards children?s welfare. In their reports provincial governors supported the proposed law. From their perspective, the governors realized that the use of children in factories had increased during past years and required state intervention. As previously mentioned, the local governments with their district police and medical offices were usually the first ones to observe workers? complaints about working conditions and health problems associated with them. Many governors became seriously concerned about the growing number of work related accidents among children. Provincial governors felt that it was the paternalistic obligation of the state and the ruling elite to take care of working children. Thus, during the 1860s the discussion about labor laws generally involved two groups, the industrialists on the one hand and state and local provincial officials on the other. In characterizing the industrialists? voices who opposed the proposed labor regulations, the Tver? governor Count Baranov noted that business owners were hardly concerned about workers? and their families? well-being. Questioning the manufacturers? position, he bitterly remarked that they ?supported the most unethical practices.? The governor continued that ?it is known that the industrialists do not think about people?s 140 welfare and the education of peasant children but only about their own pockets. . . . They simply exploit [their workers and] their . . . abilities.?38 Such words as these expressed by Baranov signified a notable change of attitude about child labor that began to take place among government officials. Many state and local bureaucrats were increasingly outraged by child factory labor and characterized child labor as an ?unethical,? ?immoral,? or ?morally unacceptable? practice. Although the employers? concern about children?s families may have had the aim of concealing their real reasons (to maintain production and exploit the cheapest labor), their arguments nonetheless reflected the harsh economic realities for many peasant families. The discussion in Chapter Two reminded us that many impoverished rural and urban families and especially those with dependent children, under economic duress, had to send their older offspring to factories. The wages children received often made an indispensable contribution to their budgets. Furthermore some contemporaries still doubted that the proposed legislative measures would have any positive impact on children?s lives in general. They closely associated children?s factory employment with poverty, which would hardly be overcome by the introduction of a restrictive law. Others argued that restrictive measures would not eliminate child labor at home, in agriculture, and in cottage industry, where working conditions were sometimes as harsh as or even worse than in new modernized factories. The governor of Vladimir province, one of the few provincial governors who remained openly skeptical about the proposed regulations? potential effectiveness, noted that it would be ?more humane for children and juveniles to work in factories than stay at 141 home.?39 The governor argued that the proposed limits on children?s employment in factories would inevitably lead to an increase of the labor burden on children in agriculture and cottage industries where, he maintained, working conditions were in many cases worse than in factories and where state control over child labor would be almost impossible. He stated that: the child?s immaturity cannot serve an adequate basis for limiting his freedom of employment. Because of the increasing population, it would be more beneficial and humane if children and juveniles worked in factories rather than staying at home and becoming a burden for their parents, who took affection for them and sent them to beg or to harder work in small workshops which easily escape government control.40 The Vladimir province governor?s arguments that restrictions on child labor would simply result in a shifting of children from larger factories to smaller workshops and in intensifying their labor in agriculture and cottage industries may have been well- grounded. Still, as in the case of some entrepreneurs, he also may had in mind the welfare of the province?s industries. Vladimir province was an important center of Russian textile production, where, it so happened, small traditionally organized workshops still prevailed and which heavily relied on the labor of the local peasant population, including many children. 142 In 1865 the discussion about the legislative proposal and the provincial governors? opinions about it returned to the Council of Industrialists. There negative opinions about the proposed restrictions still predominated. Most industrialists continued to express their doubts about the proposed restrictions, arguing that they ?would neither do any good for industries on the one hand, nor bring any benefit to children on the other.? They continued to maintain that limitations on the workday and the ban on night work for children below eighteen could have harmful implications for industry, as well as for the children and their families.41 Entrepreneurs and those who opposed the law tried to develop certain discursive strategies to justify their opposition. To reinforce their arguments and make them sound more dramatic, some entrepreneurs even stated that the enactment of child labor regulations would hamper the entire industrial development of Russia.42 Employers tried to defend their opposition to the proposed legislation by emphasizing the law?s negative implications for the nation?s economy, as well as for the well-being of working families. These two arguments were usually expressed concurrently. In its official opinion sent to the Finance Ministry Commission, the council recommended that the minimum age for employment be lowered to eleven years of age and the ban on night work and the limit on the workday be applied only to children aged between eleven and fifteen respectively.43 Regardless, the industrialists and the Finance Ministry Commission proved unable to reach a compromise. Despite the industrialists? strong opposition to the proposed regulations on child labor and despite the concerns expressed by some statesmen about the regulations? potential ineffectiveness, the commission insisted on their enactment. 143 The commission believed that most industrialists? concerns were either illusionary or highly exaggerated. To counter the industrialists? arguments, some ministry officials argued that even if the restrictions on child labor led to some increases in production costs and reductions of profit, in general, such regulations would benefit the nation?s economy as a whole. They maintained that ?if consumers would pay a little higher price for goods, these prices would be based on more adequate labor conditions and, furthermore, society would not lose the entire generation of children who today are subjected to factory labor.? The commission believed that new regulations were crucial in protecting the younger generation from exploitative and abusive industries. Consequently, the commission found it impossible to take into account the industrialists? arguments and to accommodate their suggestions. All the proposed provisions remained unchanged.44 In 1866 the Commission sent its legislative proposal to the Ministry of the Interior for approval. The ministry gave it no further consideration, as a consequence of which it did not become law. The new labor act introduced in 1866 retained most of the old provisions of the 1835 decree. Child labor in private businesses remained unregulated. In 1866, however, the Imperial Committee of Ministers approved the enactment of the employers? liability provisions, which included free medical care for work-related accidents and some paid basic medical services for workers in all industries. (As mentioned, earlier in 1861 and 1862 similar measures were introduced in the state and private mining industry.) The new provisions obliged all businesses with 100 workers or more to maintain a medical doctor and keep hospital beds at the rate of 1 bed for every 100 workers (10 beds for 1000 workers). The introduction of these provisions was 144 provoked by the outbreak of the 1865 cholera epidemic. The Moscow governor strongly supported their enactment as a preventive measure against the spread of the disease in Moscow and its province. With the absence of factory inspectors and clear stipulations for the implementation of these rules, however, most businesses evaded these regulations, as reported by factory inspectors in 1885. Only a few enterprises maintained medical facilities for workers by that year.45 Why did the enactment of this legislative proposal, so strongly urged by some elements of the state structure, fail in 1866? Beginning with V. I. Lenin, Soviet scholars of labor argued that the failure to enact the provisions of the St. Petersburg and the Finance Ministry commissions resulted from the provision?s ?unrealizable? nature. In this view, ?liberal ideas? that the legislative project embodied could not materialize within the existing autocracy, which had no ?serious stimulus? to enact the law.46 This approach neglects the fact that by definition ?classical liberalism? rejected the idea of state intervention in the economy and labor relations and emphasized instead conceptions of laissez-faire, individualism, and ?freedom of contract.? In this regard, the failure to adopt a universal regulatory labor law indeed signified state adherence to liberal policy in the matter of labor relations in private industries. After all, the government displayed a distinct readiness to intervene in factory life and serve as an arbiter in labor relations. It was the state and local government that initiated labor legislation and set up the legislative commissions. Moreover, as noted, in 1861-62, the state introduced a new universal labor statute for the mining industry and the ?Provisional Rules for Employment on State and Public Work? and, in 1866, the employers? liability act. Some 145 provisions of these acts regarding the education of employed children, employers? liability for work-related accidents, medical assistance for workers, factory inspectorate and workers? associations find their counterparts in the commissions? proposals. A somewhat different explanation for the law?s failure may be found in the opinions of certain late nineteenth century statesmen. They suggested that the proposed restrictions on child labor failed to be enacted because they were embedded within general labor legislation which in turn involved too many ?diverse and complicated? aspects, tried to resolve too many issues, and concerned too many interest groups. The Ministry of the Interior rejected the draft?s provisions regarding workers? associations and labor dispute arbitration courts and therefore did not support the law as a whole.47 In a different view, the late imperial historian of Russian industry M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii suggested that the staunch and quite effective opposition of most entrepreneurs helped kill the new labor law.48 Perhaps a combination of the two versions works best in explaining the result. The industrialists? opposition to child labor regulations combined with the reluctance of some government officials to adopt certain other labor policies prevented the passage of the law. Industrialists? resistance to any significant restriction of child labor indeed proved too strong to be overcome at this time. In 1869, the Moscow Section of the Manufacturing Council, under renewed pressure from the Finance Ministry, again discussed the regulation of child labor. Predictably, the industrialists again opposed the law?s enactment. The council still maintained that the minimum employment age of twelve years stated in the proposal was ?incompatible with the needs of industries? and 146 suggested reducing the minimum employment age to eleven years and limiting the workday for employed children between eleven and fifteen to ten hours during day-time and eight hours at night. Entrepreneurs still insisted that the labor of children in industries was ?an absolute necessity.?49 Industrialists? almost united opposition to the proposed labor protection law illustrates their striking ability to join together in order to protect their entrepreneurial group interests. Clearly, during the debates the industrialists, who resisted the law?s enactment, developed certain rhetorical tactics that appealed to humanitarian notions. Their rhetoric emphasized not narrow entrepreneurial motivations but concern about the nation?s well-being as a whole, specifically the nation?s economic and social interests. Contrary to its portrayals in some histories as ?incapable? and ?powerless? before the state, the Manufacturing Council was very capable of defending the interests of its members and of influencing the process of state decision making. Although the council technically remained under the authority of the Ministry of Finances (the council?s chair was appointed by the finance minister), it formulated its policies quite independently from state and ministerial authorities. In this regard, the council provided a Habermasian ?public sphere? for Russian entrepreneurs where they discussed various issues that affected their interests, formulated opinions thereof, and promoted policies to deal with these issues.50 The council, thus, became an important mediator between the state and the Russian entrepreneurial community. This signifies the participation of entrepreneurs in the development and maturing of a civil society in late Imperial Russia. 147 Although the Finance Ministry commission initiatives were debated over a period of ten years, they remained dead letters. Even so, as mentioned, some of the commission?s provisions served as the basis for the new regulations that restricted child labor in the mining industries and introduced free medical services and compensation for workers. Moreover, the key provisions of these initiatives, as well as the debates about them, formed the criteria for later more successful efforts at factory legislation reform.51 Later Legislative Proposals and Public Debates The legislative efforts and debates about child labor continued throughout the 1870s. During the 1870s, however, they took a new turn. Unlike the debates of the 1860s, which were confined mostly to two groups, industrialists and state officials, the discussion during the 1870s involved a broader range of social groups. Legal and local government reforms of the 1860s, industrial growth, and the emergence and spread of new ideologies all played roles in bringing on all these new developments. The newly introduced local representative governments (rural zemstvos and city?s? dumas) quickly involved themselves in the discussion of child labor. Contemporary periodicals injected this issue and related legislative projects into the public arena. The late 1860s and 1870s also witnessed a revival of workers? protest in the form of strikes and labor strife. A strike in the Nevskii Cotton Spinning Mill in St. Petersburg in May 1870 ultimately involved 800 workers, making it one of the largest strikes of the era.52 During the 1870s, strikes hit St. Peterburg, Moscow, Nikolaev, Riga, Odessa and other industrial centers of the empire. 148 Various contemporary political and economic theories penetrated into Russia and stimulated the development of the workers? movement.53 All these developments influenced the discussion about child labor and child labor protection legislation. Concerned with the growing number of labor conflicts and the emergence of a labor movement, the Minister of the Interior reported in 1870 to Emperor Alexander II about the ?urgent need? for a renewed legislative effort for the creation of a comprehensive labor law and54 similar calls came from some provincial governors.55 The Emperor supported these initiatives. In October 1870 the imperial government organized a new commission to review the workers and domestic servants employment acts and appointed the State Council member Count P. N. Ignat?ev to head it. The appointment of Ignat?ev, a prominent statesman who from February 1872 would chair the Imperial Committee of Ministers, signified the high priority the imperial government assigned to labor laws.56 Meanwhile, labor legislation debates continued within industrialists? associations. Labor issues inspired lively discussions at the First Council of Industrialists which met in June of 1870 in St. Petersburg, several months before the appointment of the Ignat?ev commission. The Ministry of Finance specifically questioned industrialists about their attitudes toward labor legislation, evidently with the goal of having the Ignat?ev commission accommodate these views in its new proposal. The industrialists? council held six sessions, the sixth of which centered on labor legislation and was open to the broad public. According to commentators, this session was attended by only four or five entrepreneurs. Most of the entrepreneurs who had participated in the other sessions 149 ignored this one. Regardless, many public activists, medical and educational professionals, and other reform-minded individuals who were interested in labor issues attended and actively engaged in the session. The discussions focused on various labor issues, including the so-called ?workers? question.? Although children?s employment and the limits on children?s work hours and night work for children remained the most lively and controversial of all the issues debated at the session, participants addressed other worker-related questions regarding work, welfare, education, and morals.57 On the subjects of the minimum age for children?s employment, their work hours, and their night work, this council sheds little new light. As during the previous decade, in 1870 opinion on the children?s workday and minimum employment age was sharply divided between supporters and opponents of existing legislative proposals. Some delegates suggested a total ban on industrial employment for children under fourteen years of age and educational opportunities and suitable work for juveniles between fourteen and sixteen. Other enlightened individuals wanted to prohibit employment for all juveniles in ?perilous? industries, including rubber and tobacco. Such views came mostly from the members of the reform-minded intelligentsia and representatives of the ruling elites. Several employers who represented technologically advanced factories that used steam engines and who probably believed that the law could bring them certain advantages also supported some restrictions. Most business owners, however, maintained their staunch opposition to a minimum age and a maximum workday. Their stated motivation was that they ?still needed numerous auxiliary workers.? Some opponents of labor laws felt that expanding industries constantly experienced labor force shortages, as 150 a consequence of which a ban on child labor would have a negative impact.58 Many entrepreneurs appealed to laissez-faire ideas and stated that the regulation of child labor was ?an attack on the freedom of industry.? Industry, they insisted, should remain free from government ?regulations, restrictions, and inspections.?59 Nevertheless, the council?s deliberations illustrate a new shift in the labor legislation debates. It is interesting to note that although employers largely absented themselves from the sixth session?s labor legislation discussions, they employed a new strategy: to better protect their interests, they sent their delegates to the forum. These were well-educated and knowledgeable professionals, such as officers from the industrialists? associations, economists, lawyers, and so on, who were capable of representing entrepreneurs? views and speaking for them.60 Thus, the council debates occurred mainly between these entrepreneurial agents and the reform-minded professionals?educators, physicians, economists, and labor movement activists who supported the legislation. In general, the debates at the council centered around the question of implications of the proposed child labor law for the nation?s economy and for the material well-being of children and their families. Would these laws work for the betterment of the national economy and society as a whole? Would these laws benefit children and their parents? Ironically, each group tried to appear as the best advocate of the nation?s economic and social interests. Both groups displayed a profound degree of awareness of contemporary political and economic theories and easily manipulated these to bolster their arguments. As during the previous decade, the opponents of the legislation still maintained that the law would have a bad impact on the economy and society by hampering industrial 151 development, creating poverty among the lower classes, and, finally, placing Russian industry at an obvious disadvantage to foreign competitors. The legislation?s supporters countered these views by arguing that ?the material benefit from the use of child labor [was] problematic? for working families because it reduced workers? monthly wages to minimal rates. They also argued that the alleged benefit for industries were illusory. For example, Doctor Vreden, a young political economist who had recently defended his doctoral dissertation, insisted that ?the law must ban the employment of children under twelve, limit the workday for children at the age of twelve through seventeen, and allow this employment only in industries not harmful to children?s health.?61 Evidently informed by modern economic theory, Vreden believed that the use of children in industries led to the reduction of wage rates for adult workers62 and that, in the presence of child labor, ?the working class [received] extraordinarily low wages insufficient to sustain families.? Vreden advocated a ?family wage? for adult workers, by which he meant a wage sufficient to support a family in a way that would eliminate the need for child labor. Appealing to humanitarian values, he maintained that child labor violated basic human rights and insisted that it must be banned, whereas the labor of women and juveniles, although permissible, should be strictly regulated by law.63 Another bitter critic of child labor who participated in this congress was Dmitrii Nikiforovich Kaigorodov, an activist of the early labor movement and a Populist who later would join the first Marxist organization in Russia.64 Kaigorodov sided with those voices that emphasized the need for prohibiting the labor of children twelve and under. He also believed that the use of 152 child labor in perilous industries was highly objectionable and immoral.65 The opponents of child labor laws, however, remained firm in their views. Another controversial issue at the council that escaped consensus was education for working children. Although most discussants supported the idea of factory schools in general, they could not agree about funding for these schools. Some delegates suggested that employers must support factory schools, whereas most industrialists were not willing to take responsibility for financing children?s education. Their deputies argued that education in factory schools must be paid for by some other means since employers were burdened by other expenses. Some representatives of the business community suggested that small withholdings from workers? wages should finance factory schools.66 The representatives of the reform-minded intelligentsia sharply challenged this proposal. In his response to this argument, Vreden, for instance, bitterly stated that if industrialists employ children in a way ?that brings them significant profits,? they were obliged to spend some money on the children?s welfare and schooling.67 The supporters of labor laws connected the education issue to work hours reductions to allow children to attend schools. One discussant maintained that without such reductions the very idea of school education would be useless ?because after working fourteen or fifteen hours a day children would hardly find it possible to attend school.?68 As reflected in the council?s debates, the participants were concerned about measures for facilitating the intellectual and moral development of workers and creating an ideal type of worker. The debates illustrate, however, that there were no definite criteria for what a perfect worker should be. Some discussants, mostly the representatives 153 of the ruling and business elites, emphasized improving the morals of workers and educating them by promoting Christian morality and religious values. For example, regarding the curriculum for factory schools one delegate suggested that religious instruction and Christian morals would provide ?the necessary basis for a disciplined worker.? Ironically, some delegates even maintained that workers? ?good morals? and ?proper behavior? were facilitated by the long workday and by child labor. They argued that restrictions on child labor would demoralize working families. One representative of the entrepreneurial community hypothetically asked ?what would working families do if children do not work until they are seventeen? What would women do? It is clear what they would do. These families would fall into drunkenness and poverty. There is no reason for banning children from work.?69 To support this view, another discussant noted that limiting work hours for workers would lead to the reduction of their wages and, consequently to material and moral deprivation. He stated that ?the moral improvement [of workers] depends on their material well-being. . . . We should not put limits but rather increase as much as possible all the means for raising wages.? By ?means? he apparently meant working hours.70 Obviously, the ruling and business elites wanted to cultivate loyalty and obedience among workers as the letter to fulfill their vision of the perfect worker. They maintained that there should be ?a close link between the intellectual and moral development of the worker and the interests of entrepreneurs.?71 In contrast, progressive delegates at the forum, members of the reform minded intelligentsia and the early workers? movement, perceived an ideal worker as a broadly educated, aware, and socially active citizen. They were concerned about broadening 154 workers? culture and suggested quite different conceptions of workers? morality. Kaigorodov, for instance, noted that the moral health of workers actually lay in ?the improvement of [their] material and physical well-being.? This was the necessary basis for workers? culture. He pointed out that rather than teaching theology, factory schools should educate young workers in natural sciences, factory legislation, hygiene, history, and so on.72 Kaigorodov suggested the founding of trade schools where working children could receive an education in general subjects, including math, geometry, and the Russian language, as well as industrial disciplines, such as drawing and industrial law. Factory schools should also offer courses in church liturgy and gymnastics. He proposed that the state and entrepreneurs should finance these schools. Kaigorodov argued that it was the moral responsibility of the government and society to provide an education for working children.73 As Kaigorodov?s statements illustrate, Russian progressive-minded middle class reformers believed that the state should play a greater role in promoting the nation?s welfare. One author maintained in 1872 that ?questions of health, the material well-being, and the education of workers should be a prerogative of the government, whereas professionals, on the basis of data provided by research, should suggest ways and means for best solving these questions, which are of great importance for the state.?74 As mentioned, during the 1870s various political ideologies began to penetrate into Russia and influence the workers? movement. Entrepreneurs as well as state officials were concerned about the growing connections between workers and what they called ?undesirable?individuals and ideas. In 1870 Moscow manufacturers suggested founding a ?Society for workers? welfare? which would concern itself with factory schools, libraries, 155 and theaters for workers, as well as organize and maintain funds for worker? mutual financial assistance. The council also suggested creating workers? credit associations and consumers? associations. By taking responsibility for maintaining workers? mutual assistance associations, entrepreneurs tried, in the words of one employer, to ?prevent workers from attempting to organize themselves.? Entrepreneurs clearly desired to exercise more control over workers? self-organization. Initially, these ideas attracted support from some officials from the Ministry of the Interior. The chief of the Third Department of the Imperial Chancellery, however, worried that the associations would be penetrated by ?the currently multiplying followers of Flerovskii, Shchapov and Lasalle who would use them in their own interests and thereby create a gap between labor and capital.?75 Overall, the council?s debates did not come close to achieving a settlement between supporters and opponents of the legislation, especially as regards proposed age and work hours limitations. In the resolution it sent to the Finance Ministry, the council disapproved the provisions on the minimum employment age and maximum work hours for children. The council found the idea of schools for working children ?useful and desirable? but the entrepreneurial community did not want to take responsibility for funding the schools. The resolution also conveyed the entrepreneurs? desire that child labor laws must correspond to existing norms in other countries. Obviously, concerned about foreign competition, the Russian entrepreneurial community wanted the suggested law not to place Russian industry at a disadvantage.76 156 Nevertheless, despite the opposition from the entrepreneurial community, the legislative struggle continued. In October 1871, the Ignat?ev commission reviewed the industrialists? and local governments? suggestions and came up with a new legislative draft for a ?Code on Personal Employment of Workers and Servants.? In general, the Ignat?ev commission legislative initiatives retained most of the provisions about the minimum employment age, workday, and night work for children suggested by the Finance Ministry Committee in 1862. It also suggested some new approaches to labor regulation. The proposal outlawed the employment of children under the age of twelve and limited the workday for children aged twelve to fourteen to eight hours. Children of that age could work 4 ? hour at night time per 24 hours, whereas children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen could work ten hours during daytime or eight hours at night. The draft would have obliged employers to provide employed children with school education and medical care. Unlike the previous propositions, this draft contained more specific provisions for the implementation of the law and administrative penalties for employers who transgressed it.77 As noted, during the late 1860s Russia witnessed some labor unrest, as a consequence of which most local governors and state officials were more inclined to support labor protection regulations. For instance, in his 1871 report to Alexander II the Moscow governor emphasized the need for new labor laws and for state factory inspectors who would supervise their implementation. The governor supported the Ignat?ev commission?s legislative effort. He also displayed some skepticism toward the industrialists? alleged concern for children?s families. ?Employers hardly ever 157 acknowledge their exploitation of children,? he insisted. ?They shift the blame onto the parents as though they force children to support their families.? He believed that employers would exercise no care for working children?s welfare and that the government should be more involved in the matter of children?s well-being.78 Some government officials began to support even more decisive measures to restrict children?s employment. When the legislative draft was discussed and reviewed in the Ministry of the Interior in 1872, the ministry suggested, regarding the child labor provisions, the lowering of the workday to six hours daytime and three hours at night for children aged from twelve to fourteen. For children between fourteen and seventeen years of age, the workday was to be limited to eight hours during daytime and four hours at night.79 As in previous cases, most industrialists did not support the provisions of the draft. When the business community learned about the interior ministry?s changes to the draft, its associations immediately began to protest the propositions. The Moscow Stock Exchange Committee, an influential industrialists? association, called a meeting which produced a resolution that stated that the provisions regulating child labor would lead to the inevitable elimination of all night work, significant new expenditures for factory reorganization, and the rise of wages for adult workers because of the elimination of children from production. Replacement of children with adult workers would lead to the increase of production expenses which will serve the interests of foreign competitors.80 158 Furthermore, the Chairman of the Stock Exchange Committee, N. A. Naidenov, maintained that the proposed law ?would be the kiss of death for the national industry. . ., whereas [at present] children perform easy tasks that cannot harm [their] health in any way.?81 Some industrialists also did not want to take responsibility for providing free medical services for their workers. On the issue of children?s health, one entrepreneur noted that ?poor health among working children is caused by the extremely bad sanitary conditions of their home environment rather than by factory work itself.? ?Complaints about exhausting child labor and its exploitation by the employers are groundless because,? claimed this industrialist with some hypocrisy, ?humane treatment of the weak is a characteristic of the Russian people.?82 Of note is that the debates about labor legislation during the 1870s received more publicity than those of the previous years. Newspapers and journals began to publish regular articles and essays about factory children, their working and living conditions, and the impact of factory labor on their health (see discussion below). The proposed regulations attracted attention and were discussed in the newly elected local representative bodies, in rural zemstvos and city dumas. Viewing the issue of children?s employment differently from many industrialists, the local governments mostly supported the reformist ideas. Local governments especially approved of limiting employment age and working hours and providing education for working children. In 1873 the city duma of Ivanovo-Voznesensk (Vladimir province), one of the largest textile centers of Central Russia, suggested an introduction of a tax on local businesses in order to finance technical schools.83 In 1874, the zemstvo of Vladimir province suggested some specific 159 ideas about provisions on factory schools. It proposed that in factories where the number of workers reached 100, the employers should establish schools for all working class children (not just for employed children). In the matter of the minimum age for starting employment and the workday for children, the Vladimir Province Zemstvo Council proposed that children under the age of fourteen should be banned entirely from employment and that the workday for children between fourteen and seventeen be limited to eight hours with a required two-hour break for rest. The governor of Vladimir province also favorably assessed these suggestions.84 Naturally, factory workers were among those who strongly advocated restrictions on child labor. For example, during the famous Krenholm Cotton Mill strike in 1872, workers demanded, among other things, limits on the children?s workday and schools for factory children.85 Child labor was an issue of many other strikes as well. Obviously, the use of children?s low-paid labor reduced wage rates for adult workers, a factor that made child labor a matter of direct concern for them. The ongoing public discussion during the 1870s began to create a more receptive climate for labor protection laws even among some members of the entrepreneurial community. When the issue of child labor arose in 1874 in the Commission for Technical Education of the Imperial Russian Technical Society, this commission displayed considerable sympathy for labor protection and welfare laws. The commission seems to have been dominated by reform-minded individuals. It included professors of economics, medical doctors, inspectors of technical schools, and a few entrepreneurs. It?s head was professor of economics Iu. E. Ianson. As noted in Chapter Two, this commission gathered 160 important comprehensive data about children employed in factories and the conditions of their employment across the Russian Empire. The commission produced a thorough study of the impact of factory labor on children and concluded that the health condition of most children employed in factories was poor. It worked out specific legislative recommendations for imperial law makers. Only three members of the commission suggested eleven years as the minimum age for beginning factory employment, whereas the other twelve members agreed on twelve years as an absolute minimum.86 The commission emphasized the moral and medical aspect of the use of children in industries. In its resolution, with reference to contemporary medical research, the commission attempted to provide a detailed explanation of why the employment age should be limited to twelve and the working day to eight hours. Physicians who participated in the commission maintained that the physiology children under twelve years of age was ?so weak that any continuous work is very harmful. At this age, children cannot pay enough attention and exercise necessary caution [while working with machinery] and therefore are easily vulnerable to the various dangers this machinery may pose,?87 an observation that finds support in recent research on child development (see Chapter Two). In essence, the resolution implied that the industrial employment of young children, persons who had not attained the necessary physical and mental maturity, was immoral and should be prohibited outright. On the issue of school education for juvenile workers, the Commission for Technical Education came up with concrete and quite progressive ideas. It suggested that factory schools should be set up no more than four km (about two miles) apart in all 161 locales where the number of factory and shop workers approached 500 people. Additionally, the commission proposed to introduce a tax on all businesses at the rate of ? - 2 percent of the amount spent on workers? annual wages in order to organize these schools and a tax for all workers at the rate of one percent of their salary in order to provide free education. The Commission also suggested that the employment of children between the ages of twelve and fifteen should be utilized only if they attended school at least three hours a day. The commission specified that employers should not require juveniles between fifteen and seventeen to attend school, nor should they prevent such children from attending school. The commission proposed requiring that workers between fifteen and seventeen years of age who had not attended at least two years of public schooling attend factory schools.88 Similar ideas on the schooling of working children were emphasized when child labor was debated at the Council of Machine-Making Industrialists which met in 1875. The council welcomed the enactment of child labor laws.89 The recommendations of the commission for technical education were also considered by the Society for the Support of Russian Industry and Commerce in the late 1870s. The Society agreed about most provisions on safety work and education but suggested ten years as a minimum employment age, pointing out the British and French examples. In most European states where child labor laws existed, the minimum age for employment was usually limited to ten or twelve years of age and the workday for children under the age of fourteen to ten hours.90 162 In 1874 Igntev?s proposal and public opinion about it were reviewed by a specially appointed committee which included the representatives of various ministries, members of the nobility, representatives of provincial and local government, and representatives of six large enterprises, with the Minister for State Possessions, Count P. A. Valuev, as the chair.91 Some government officials believed that Ignat?ev?s draft attempted to address too many aspects of labor all together and that, in order to expedite its introduction, the draft?s provisions should be divided and then gradually enacted according to their priority. Thus, Valuev?s committee retained all provisions which it believed were of the highest importance and needed to be enacted first. It excluded from Ignat?ev?s draft sections on workers? associations and labor arbitration courts, which, as noted, caused some tension within the Ministry of the Interior. Among other issues, the committee gave child labor the highest priority. It suggested limiting the maximum workday for children between twelve and fourteen years of age to six hours a day and three hours at night, and for juveniles between fourteen and seventeen to eight hours a day and four hours at night.92 As previously mentioned, this reduction of work hours for children had already been suggested by the Ministry of the Interior. Regarding the minimum age, the committee suggested twelve years as the appropriate age to start employment in factories and ten years to begin an apprenticeship.93 Employers could not require employed children to do work that did not fit their age and strength. The provisions on schooling obliged employers to ?provide employed children with the time for attending schools.? The committee suggested penalties for violations from 50 kopeck to 10 rubles, depending on the violation.94 163 Nine members of this committee, mostly representatives of the business community submitted a ?special opinion? about child labor regulations. They agreed with the minimum employment age but suggested increasing the maximum workday for children between twelve and sixteen to nine hours arguing that the six hour-workday limit for children was ?impractical and unrealizable.? They maintained that in those countries where child labor was regulated, the minimum work day provisions usually did not work.95 Their opinion was supported by the representative of the finance ministry.96 Again, as in 1862, in 1875 this new proposal was sent to various industrialist associations for review and discussion. The Valuev committee requested local and provincial governments and various public organizations to respond to questions about the new legislative proposition. Again, the majority of the entrepreneurs did not support the child labor provisions. When the proposed law was discussed at an especially appointed commission of the Riga Stock Committee in 1875, the commission suggested limiting the minimum employment age to ten years and the workday to six hours for children between ten and thirteen years of age. The commission, however, approved the idea of mandatory schooling for children under the age of thirteen. The Ivanovo- Voznesensk Committee for Trade and Industry expressed similar views. It supported the idea of education for factory children but proposed limiting the minimum employment age to ten years. In 1881 the Society for the Support of Russian Industry and Commerce submitted a statement that also suggested ten years as the minimum age for employment. This issue aside, the society revealed positive and progressive attitudes about factory schools for children.97 Nevertheless, by the late 1870s, broad public opinion, which 164 included most state officials, members of local representative government, the reform- minded middle class, and most members of the intelligentsia, had long anticipated the end of child labor, a practice they considered morally unacceptable and downright evil. Although the entrepreneurial community still mostly rejected the crucial provisions regarding child labor, the 1870s witnessed a significant transformation of public attitudes about the issue. The involvement of reform-minded individuals, members of the workers? movement, and economic theorists, such as Kaigorodov and Vreden, in the discussions epitomized the growing public concern about child labor and labor protection legislation. Although, during the 1860s, some educators and medical doctors had taken part in the labor law discussion, the discussions had included mostly industrialists and state officials. In contrast, during the 1870s child labor and labor legislation became a broader public issue. The increased publicity about children?s industrial employment and the impact it had on children increasingly outraged public opinion in Russia. This transformation of attitudes about child labor is perhaps best reflected in two starkly contrasting statements made by the Vladimir provincial authorities. In the early 1860s, the governor of the province had expressed absolute support for children?s employment in factories and had insisted that ?children?s immaturity? was not a sufficient cause for restricting child labor. In 1878, a new governor of the same province wrote that ?one of evils that marks industrial areas is the use of children of ten and under [for work].?98 The contrast signifies the fading away of the old perception of child labor as a means of apprenticeship in favor of an entirely new concept of childhood and education. 165 During the 1870s, the child labor issue and the discussion thereof encouraged an emergence of a broader social welfare reform movement. Many concerned and reform- minded contemporaries expressed their opinions in journals and newspapers. Many articles in contemporary periodicals addressed the issues of factory labor, labor protection laws, and workers? welfare in general. For example, in an 1871 article in a popular medical journal Arkhiv, one author (who wrote under the ?P.?) called for the introduction of labor protection and sanitary laws and for the creation of a system of independent factory inspectors and physicians. He maintained that we still have highly insufficient organization of sanitary control over factories, plants, workshops, and so on, because of the absence of laws which should adequately protect the life and health of workers, as well as because of the absence of personnel, who should be responsible for control over industry and the sanitary conditions of workers.99 According to the historian of medicine A. P. Zhuk, the author was probably S. P. Lovtsov, a medical doctor and public activist. In this and other articles, he offered a whole program of responsibilities for factory medical inspectors. These responsibilities consisted of control over employment and labor, including for women and children, and the supervision of education for employed children.100 In an 1872 article in Znanie, Lovtsov emphasized that ?a more radical means for protecting workers? health would be the rise of wages and the decrease of working hours. . . . This would reduce workers? time 166 in workshops and thus cut sickness and mortality rates among them.? He also supported the minimum employment age and argued that the law should ban children and juveniles under eighteenth years of age from employment in industries and from certain kinds of work that could jeopardize children?s health.101 At this point, Lovtsov and other progressive-minded individuals attacked previously predominant views among entrepreneurs that long working hours and child labor were the best means of raising incomes and promoting the well-being of workers? families. From the 1870s on, various periodicals began to publish regular articles on the working and living conditions of working children. These publications exposed to public view child labor and conditions among children in industry.102 Many publications devoted whole issues to child rearing and children?s education. For example, in its section ?The domestic observer,? the political and social journal Vestnik Evropy published regularly articles about conditions among children in industries.103 The eminent educator V. I. Liadov published his famous manual on child rearing and upbringing.104 The medical journal Arkhiv devoted many pages to childhood and children?s health. Most of these articles portrayed child labor as an evil practice that must be outlawed. Many doctors devoted their research to and published their studies on the issues of children?s diseases and mortality. For instance, V. S. Snegirev defended a doctoral dissertation entitled ?About death mortality among children under the age of one? with the Medical Surgical Academy. In his polemic against some authors who emphasized race and climate as determining factors in children?s mortality, Snegirev concluded that child mortality primarily reflected the social conditions endured by the mass of the population. He 167 emphasized the importance of education and better material conditions as the key factors in a population?s well-being.105 This public discussion of the whole issue of childhood produced an environment that favored the introduction of child labor laws. Another factor in the transformation of public opinion was popular literature. During the late nineteenth century, children and childhood occupied a special place in Russian literature. Children had always been a subject of Russian literature but during the second half of the nineteenth century the themes of childhood and children were specially prominent in literary publications. Many authors exposed and, in effect, denounced abuses against children employed in factories, workshops, and domestic service. In his 1888 short story Spat? khochetsia (I want to sleep), Anton Chekhov described a thirteen-year-old girl, a babysitter and maid in a craftsman family. An unbearable longing for getting a little sleep becomes an obsession for this overworked and exhausted child. Finally, either in her fragile dream or in some bleary reality she realizes that the ?force that bonds her arms and legs, that chains her life? and prevents her sleep is the child. Chekhov continues, ?a mistaken thought? seizes her: ?kill the baby and then sleep, sleep, and sleep.? And the girl strangles the child.106 In another story, Van?ka (1886), Chekhov recounts a history of a nine-year old boy, Vania Zhukov, who had been sent to an apprenticeship. In a letter to his grandfather, addressed briefly ?to the village, to grandfather, Konstantin Makarych,? the boy complained about the severe abuses that he had to endure from his master. As he remembered his village life, the boy begged his grandfather to take him back home to the village.107 Unfortunately, as the address may suggest, this letter never reached its destination. Perhaps these children?s total hopelessness, echoed in Chekhov?s and other 168 writers? stories, was artistic exaggeration. Nevertheless, the stories represented the growing concern among the educated public about working children. Late nineteenth century writers perceived child labor as a wicked practice. Like other factors mentioned, literature?s condemnation of child labor signified new perceptions of childhood. This growing public interest in children and childhood also influenced the development of literature for children. Although the origins of literature for children in Russia dates back to the late fifteenth century, during the late nineteenth century children?s literature became a prominent genre in Russian literature.108 Several children?s series, including Children?s books for Sundays, D. F. Samarin?s Library for children and youth and A. S. Suvorin?s Low-priced library, among many, emerged as popular periodicals affordable for children of the lower social strata. Great writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leonid Andreev, Maxim Gorky, V. G. Korolenko, wrote stories and novels for children. Many authors devoted single volumes especially to young audiences.109 Children?s literature tried to encourage children?s curiosity about the world and cultivate in children a love for reading and learning. It emphasized school education as a primary priority of childhood. In summary, the debates about labor laws created an atmosphere that favored the introduction of labor protection and social welfare laws that marked the late imperial decades. In addition, these ongoing debates illustrate two important aspects of Imperial Russia. First, as mentioned, the debates reveal the remarkable development of the Russian business community during the late nineteenth century into a vigorous and powerful social group capable of influencing state policies. The involvement of the community?s 169 associations in the process of law making delineates the limits of the autocratic government in that process. Second, concomitantly, the debates display the process of law making in Imperial Russia quite differently from our usual perceptions. Rather than being a product of one or another top level bureaucrat, laws arose from broader public discussion and compromise among various social groups that in this as in other cases resulted in legislative efforts. Although, most legislative propositions did not become law at the time,110 they, as well as public debates about child labor during the 1860s and 1870s, laid important intellectual and juridical foundations for the laws of the 1880s on children?s employment, work, education, and welfare and facilitated their introduction. These laws, their implementation and significance will be discussed in the following chapter. 170 NOTES: 1. Cited in Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 55. For biographic information about N. S. Mordviniv and A. A. Zakrevskii, see D. N. Shilov, Gosudarstvennye deiateli rossiiskoi imperii. Glavy vysshikh i tsentral?nykh uchrezhdenin, 1802-1917. Bibliograficheskii spravochnik (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001), 246-249, 432-437. 2. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1) list 74. 3. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 76. 4. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34(2), list 25-26. 5. Rosiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (hereafter RGIA), fond 504, opis? 1, delo 99, list 5-20. 6. Cited in Andreev, Rabota, 13. 7. GARF, fond102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 76. 8. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 76; Andreev, Rabota, 4-5. In his studies on child labor and the related legislation, Soviet historian Gessen stated that the proposals limited the employment age to ten and the workday for children aged ten to twelve to 6 hours and for children between twelve and fourteen to 12 hours. Other sources, including archival documents and those cited in Andeev, do not support Gessen?s statement. The 12 hours workday suggested by the commissions included a 2 hour break for lunch and rest so that actual working hours were limited to 10. See Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 56- 57; and idem, Trud, 52-53. 171 9. Andreev, Rabota, 5,12. 10. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 76; Andreev, Rabota, 5. 11. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 77. 12. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 58; V. A. Laverychev, ?Iz istorii politili tsarizma po rabochemy voprosy v 60?70-e gody XIX v.? Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, series History 3 (1971), 66. There are basic differences between arteli and zemliachestva. Arteli were often small groups of peasant-migrants who sought temporary employment. Some of these arteli included only children. Workers? zemliachestva were based on worker?s regional identities and were created in urban areas of at large enterprises; they were usually stationary and large in membership. For discussion of these associations and a short bibliography, see Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move,? 645. 13. Istoriia rabochego classa Rossii, 1861-1900 L. M. Ivanov and M. S. Volin, eds. (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 123. 14. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 76-77. 15. Nardinelli, Child Labor, 104. 16. For further discussion of the early factory laws, see Chapter One. Laura Engelstein has noted that ?all . . . lawmakers in Russia and the West borrowed from each other?s laws. Laura Engelstein, ?Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia? American Historical Review (April 1993): 338-381, n. 27. 17. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 77. 18. For example, Vladimir Gessen argued that the St. Petersburg commission?s legislative 172 proposal was ?defeated because of the firm opposition of Muscovite entrepreneurs.? See Gessen, Trud, 53. 19. In his Tsarism i rabochii vopros, Laverychev points out that St. Petersburg industrialists found the minimum age for employment ?not quite desirable.? Laverychev, Tsarism, 19. 20. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34(1), list 76. 21. Istoriia rabochego klassa Rossii, 1961-1900, L. M. Ivanov, M. S. Voliin, eds, (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 123-124. 22. Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 2: 23; Gessen, Trud, 52. 23. Andreev, Rabota, 15-16; Gessen, Istoriia zelonodatel?stva, 56-57. 24. Andreev, Rabota, 15-16; Gessen, 56-57. 25. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 57. 26. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 57. 27. Gessen, Trud, 47; idem, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 89. 28. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 56. 29. Quoted in Laverychev, ?Iz istorii,? 66. 30. Quoted in Laverychev, ?Izistorii,? 67. 31. Trudy komissii uchrezhdennoi dlia peresmotra ustavov fabrichnogo i remeslennogo (St. Petersburg, 1863), 274-278, Andreev, Rabota, 5-6, 12,16. 32. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 57. 33. Trudy komissii, 274-278. 173 34. Cited in Gessen, Istoriia zekonodatel?stva, 57. 35. Trudy komissii, 274-275. 36. Laverychev, Tsarism, 19. 37. Nardinelli, Child Labor, 133. 38. Ibid., 275. 39. Ibid., 278 40. Trudy komissii, 287; Gessen, Istoriia Zakonodatel?stva, 58. 41. TsIAM, fond 2354, opis? 1, delo 49, list 38; Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 57. 42. Andreev, Rabota, 15-16; Gessen, Trud, 47. 43. TsIAM, fond 2354, opis? 1, delo 49, list 38. 44. Andreev, Rabota, 14. 45. Gorshkov, ?Toward a Comprehensive Law,? 58. In this article I mistakenly claimed that the hospital beds were to be established at the rate of 5 beds for every 1000 employees. This information is incorrect. Hospital beds were set up at the rate of 1 for every 100 workers. See A. P. Zhuk, Razvitie obshchestvenno-meditsinskoi mysli v Rossii v 60-70 gg. XIX veka (Moscow: Gos. izd. meditsinskoi literatury, 1963), 327-328; Istoriia rabochego klassa Rossii, 124. 46. Laverychev, ?Iz istorii,? 24; idem, Tsarism i rabochil vopros, 25-26. 47. Cited in Laverychev, ?Iz istorii,? 65. 48. Tugan-Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika. 49. TsIAM, fond 143, opis? 1, delo 34, list 4; TsIAM, fond 2354, opis? 1, delo 49, list 38. 174 50. German sociologist Jurgen Habermas suggested the concept of an ?informal voluntary public sphere in civil society where private middle class individuals joined in groups became involved in ?critical? and ?reasoned? discourse about common issues . . . in order to influence the process of state decision making.? For Hebermas, this represented one of the aspects of democratic government. Citation from Boris B. Gorshkov, ?Democratizing Hebermas: Peasant Public Sphere in Pre-Reform Russia? Russian History/Histoire Russe 31 (Winter 2004), 374. For more discussion on the public sphere, see Hebermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere A Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); idem, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Frederick Lawrence, trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). 51. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 111. 52. Ocherki istorii possiiskogo proletariata, 1861-1917 P. I. Kabanov, P. K. Erman eds et al (Moscow: Izd. sotsial?no-ekonomicheskoi literatury), 37-38. 53. V. Ia. Laverychev, Tsarism i Rabochii vopros, 14-15. 54. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 78. 55. RGIA, fond 1149, opis? 9, delo 31 (1), list 53-54; GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 77; Gessen, Trud, 48. 56. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (hereafter RGIA), fond 1149, opis? 9, delo 31(1), listy 3-26; GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), list 78. 175 57. P. Paradizov, ??Rabochii vopros? v Rossii v nachale 70-kh godov XIX v.? Istoriia proletatiata SSSR, A. M. Pankratova, ed. in chief (Moscow: Partiinoe izdatel?stvo, 1932), 9: 55. 58. Paradizov, ??Rabochii vopros?,? 62. 59. Protokoly i stengraficheskie otchety 1-go Bserossiiskogo S?ezda fabrikantov, zavodchikov i lits interesuiushchikhcia otechestvennoi promyshlemmost?iu, v 1870 g (St. Petersburg: Izd. Akademii Nauk, 1872); Andreev, Rabota, 41-42; and Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 70. 60. Paradizov, ??Rabochii vopros?,? 55. 61. Cited in Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 71. 62. The idea that child labor led wages of adult workers to decline was advanced by Karl Marx. For discussion see his Kapital, Samuel Moore at al, tans. ((New York: International Publishers, 1967) 1: 395-402. 63. Paradizov, 61. 64. Kaigorodov was one of the early activists of labor movement. For more discussion, see Paradizov, ??Rabochhii vopros?,? 59. 65. Istoriia proletariata, 60. 66. Gessen, Istoriia zaonkodatel?stva, 70. 67. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 71. 68. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 71. 176 69. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 71. 70. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 71. 71. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 70. 72. Ibid, 70-71. 73. Istoriia proletariata, 60. 74. ?Bolezni rabochikh? Znanie, 6 (1872), 51. 75. Istoriia rabochego klassa, 1861-1900 L. M. Ivanov, M. S. Volin, eds (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 125-126. 76. Andreev, Rabota, 41 77. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34(1), list 78; TsGIAM , fond 2354, opis? 1, delo 49, ?Ustav o lichnom naime rabochikh i prislugi i zamechaniia k nemy,? listy 1-38; Andreev, Rabota, 7, 41-88. P. Litvinov-Falinskii, Fabrichnoe zakonodatel?stvo i fabrichnaia inspektsiia v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1900) 13-28. 78. Gessen, Trud, 48. 79. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (1), listy 111-115; Andreev, Rabota, 10. 80. Andreev, Rabota, 74. 81. Andreev, Rabota, 25-26; Gessen, Trud, 126. 82. Cited in Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 75-76. 83. Andreev, Rabota, 42. 84. Andreev, Rabota, 42-43. 85. Gessen, Istorria zakonodatel?stva, 79. For more discussion on the Krenhokm strike, see Zelnik, Law and Disorder. 177 86. Andreev, Rabota, 50. 87. Andreev, Rabota, 50. 88. Andreev, Rabota, 43-64. 89. Andreev, Rabota, 65. 90. Andreev, Rabota, 64-67; For discussion about European child labor laws see Gorshkov, ?Toward a Comprehensive Law,? 62. 91. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (2), list 25. 92. Litvinov-Falinskii, Fabrichnoe zakonodatel?stvo, 13. 93. Andreev, Rabota, 9. 94. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 78. 95. Andreev, Rabota, 33-37. 96. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 78. 97. Andreev, Rabota, 63-64, 70, 72. 98. Quoted in Gessen, Trud, 48-49. 99. Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchestvennoi gigieny (The Archive of Criminal Medicine and Public Hygiene) 1 (1871), 127. 100. Arkhiv, 139-140. 101. Znanie, 6 (1872), 49. 102. Zhuk, Razvitie, 321. 103. For example, see the 1870's issues of Vestnik Evropy. 104. V. I. Liadov, Rukovodstvo k vospitaniiu detei (St. Peterburg: Tip. Kolesova i Mikhina, 1873). 178 105. Zhuk, Razvitie, 303. 106. Chekhov, Izbrannye proizvedenia, 1:418-423. Quoted on page 423. 107. Chekhov, 250-253. 108. F. Setin, ?Rozhdeniie prozy dlia detey? O literature dlia detey, Ezhegodnik vyp. 21 (Leningrad: Izd. detskaia literatura, 1977), 128-129. 109. For example, see Chekhov?s Zhizn? v voprosakh i vosklitsaniiakh and Sbornik dlia detei. 110. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34(2), list 26. 179 CHAPTER FOUR FACTORY CHILDREN: STATE PROTECTION, EDUCATION AND INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICAL LIFE The long public discussion of the 1860s and 1870s about child labor in industry yielded the 1882 law, the first decisive act to restrict the industrial employment of children. The following years and decades witnessed the introduction of labor protection and welfare legislation concerning all industrial workers. Starting with the 1882 law, the government limited the employment of children in all private industries and introduced mandatory schooling for children hired for factory work. The laws banned the labor of children during night-time and in perilous industries, including underground work in mines. During the late imperial decades, a series of laws limited the workday, legalized strikes and workers? unions, and introduced healthcare and state-sponsored medical insurance for all workers. In order to implement labor protection and welfare laws, the state instituted the factory inspectorate. All these laws directly applied to hundreds of thousands of children employed in industry. What did these laws accomplish? What happened to those children who were banned from employment and to those allowed to take factory jobs? This chapter investigates the laws, their implementation, and significance by exploring their actual 180 impact on children?s employment in industry. It situates the analysis within the general context of a similar process taking place outside Russia, focusing on the timing, pace, and the degree of effectiveness of child labor protective laws. It traces similarities and differences between Russia and other industrializing countries. The chapter also explores the education of working children and their involvement in certain social and political processes occurring in the Russian Empire during its last decades. The 1882 Child Labor Law and its Implementation In December 1881, the minister of finances N. Kh. Bunge, known as a liberal minister, forwarded the new legislative draft ?On the labor of children and teenagers? to the Imperial State Council for approval. After revisions in various legal departments of the State Council, in June 1882 the Council and the Emperor finally accepted and approved the draft. In legal and historical literature it became known as the June 1882 law. (The main points of this law are in Appendix I.) The law barred children under twelve years of age from employment in ?factories, plants, and manufacturing establishments.? It limited work for juveniles aged between twelve and fifteen years to eight hours a day, which excluded time for breakfast, lunch, dinner, attendance at school, and rest. Work could not last more than four consecutive hours. It prohibited work between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. in summer and spring, and between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. in fall and winter, as well as work on Sundays and important imperial holidays. The law also banned the employment of children of these ages in ?industries harmful to children?s 181 health.? The Ministries of Finances and the Interior were to issue a list of such industries, which they actually provided by June 1884. The provisions of the law obliged employers to provide their teenage workers at least three free hours a day or eighteen hours a week in order to attend public schools or their equivalent.1 In order to provide businesses with time for accommodating the law?s provisions, the government scheduled the enactment of all statutes that concerned children?s employment for May 1, 1883.2 Thus, after almost two decades of public discussion, the state finally imposed universal restrictions on child factory labor. The 1882 law, as well as later laws that applied only to certain kinds of businesses, distinguished three age categories of children. These categories included children under twelve years of age, who were banned from employment, children between the ages of twelve and fifteen (defined as maloletki), and juveniles aged from fifteen to sixteen (podrostki). The latter two age categories, of course, were suitable for employment. Individuals aged seventeen and above were considered to be adults. Child labor protection laws introduced after 1882 applied primarily to children between twelve and fifteen years of age and to a lesser extent to juveniles of fifteen or sixteen.3 The 1882 law concerned factory labor and also extended its reach to all private businesses equipped with steam colanders, steam or mechanical engines, machines and lathes, and to all establishments that employed over 16 workers.4 In all enterprises that fell under the 1882 law?s scope, it provided for a system of state control over working conditions for children. By June 1884, the government organized the 58 provinces of European Russia into nine ?industrial districts.? In each 182 district, an office of factory inspectors supervised the implementation of laws ?that regulate employment, work, and education of juvenile workers and examined, with the aid of members of the local police offices, transgressions of this legislation.? The government created the Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Vladimir industrial districts in 1882 and during 1884 added the Voronezh, Kazan?, Kiev, Kharkov, Vilna, and Warsaw districts.5 The provisions on factory inspectors, however, did not apply to state-owned industries or to privately owned mines. Control over the implementation of labor laws in these businesses belonged to their administration or, in the case of mines, the Mining Administration.6 In addition, the Asian part of the Russian Empire, especially western and eastern Siberia, which had a significant number of mining and metallurgical industries that employed children, also remained outside of the factory inspectorate?s jurisdiction. Most Siberian mining had its own inspection system introduced during earlier decades.7 Each of the industrial districts consisted of a number of imperial provinces of European Russia and initially had one inspector and one assistant, an obviously quite inadequate.8 Factory inspectors were subordinated to the Ministry of Finance. Annual salaries for inspectors were 3,000 rubles and their assistants received 1,200. According to an 1882 editorial in Vestik Evropy, these were ?meaningful? sums. In order to maintain the inspectorate, the state made an annual appropriation of 78,500 rubles and introduced a tax on industries, which ranged from 5 to 100 rubles depending on the number of employed people in the given firm.9 Factory inspectors were qualified persons of the economic, legal, medical, and engineering professions. Examples were doctors of medicine P. A. Peskov and F. F. Erisman and the prominent economist I. I. Ianzhul. The 183 academic, research, or professional activities of many such appointees related to factory labor or workers. Some of them had actually served as provincial supervisors of sanitary conditions in factories and were therefore quite familiar with industry. The Chairman of the Committee for Technical Education of the Russian Technical Society, E. N. Andreev, who had taken an active part in the preparation of the 1882 law, became the first Chief Factory Inspector.10 Later, some contemporaries noted early factory inspectors? ?high qualifications and professionalism.?11 In late 1882, the Finance Ministry notified employers about the new law through the auspices of local police offices. The ministry sent out circular letters to private businesses informing them of the introduction of new factory labor regulations and of the factory inspectorate. The letters required employers to sign and return a memo confirming that they had received and read the information.12 In March 1883, the Chief Inspector Andreev requested employers to communicate to him their opinion about the newly introduced labor regulations. Most employers reported that they did not see any major obstacles to the law?s enactment. Many owners pointed out, however, that the provisions on minimum employment age and night work were troublesome and required time to make certain adjustments. Employers also emphasized that the regulations must apply to all businesses across Russia simultaneously so that the law provided equal conditions for all owners.13 As noted, the opposition to child labor restrictions came mostly from owners of smaller traditionally organized businesses. Some industrialists complained that the immediate enactment of the law 184 would place many families, which had already arrived at factories with their children, not to mention the entrepreneurs themselves, in a ?quite awkward situation.? In April 1883, Andreev reported to the finance minister about some employers? concerns that ?after the Easter holidays many workers would return with their families from the countryside and may find themselves forced to support underage family members with their own means. . . . In addition, many businesses employ underage orphaned children who may find themselves without any means of subsistence.?14 Trying to accommodate industrialists? concerns, the finance minister Bunge wrote to the State Council that ?because of the great significance that the labor of children has attained in some businesses? the immediate enactment of the law would create problems for employers.15 He asked the Council to delay the enactment of the children?s employment provisions for one more year. Thus, the law?s provisions, which were to be implemented on May 1, 1883, were actually brought into effect a year later, on May 1, 1884. The provisions that concerned the introduction of the factory inspectorate, however, went into force in June 1882.16 The postponement of the enactment of the provisions on children?s employment allowed businesses one more year to make necessary changes to production and labor organization as a basis for dismissing all children under twelve. In addition, as a result of industrialists? initial pressures, in 1884 the government introduced some provisional adjustments to the 1882 law. Employers still complained that some of the law?s terms did not fit the labor and production processes normally practiced in their businesses. For example, as noted, the workday in most textile mills lasted twelve hours in two six-hour shifts. This type of organization conflicted with the 185 new law?s terms that limited the workday for children to eight hours and required children?s work to last no more than four consecutive hours a shift. An 1884 provision of the child labor law allowed enterprises that worked in six-hour shifts to work children six consecutive hours instead of four. The total workday for these children, however, was limited to six hours a day. In addition, in 1884 the government allowed some industries, including glass making, to employ ten-year old children as apprentices and ?assign them work appropriate to their strength.? These provisions were introduced as temporary measures until May 1, 1886.17 Regardless of these problems, with the completion of the industrial districts by October 1884 the government filled all eighteen factory inspectors? and assistants? positions. Inspectors started their work in January 1885.18 The Chief Factory Inspector and district inspectors of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Vladimir had been appointed earlier, in late 1882. Starting in 1882-83, these individuals began to collect data on their districts? industries and factory labor, an effort joined by the other inspectors during 1884-85. With some exceptions, owners welcomed inspectors to their businesses. Some employers, however, met them with hostility and a few did not even want to let inspectors enter their enterprises and contact workers. In the Kiev district, some cases of coarse treatment of inspectors by employers occurred. In St. Petersburg, a number of employers initially refused to admit inspectors to their enterprises. A few Moscow owners tried to dispute the inspectors? right to question their workers and, like their Petersburg counterparts, refused to admit inspectors to their businesses.19 Some industrialists still believed that the introduction of factory inspectors was a crude state intervention in ?the 186 private affairs? of entrepreneurs and their businesses, a perhaps not unexpected assertion of laissez faire among Russia?s nascent capitalists. The Voronezh district inspector remarked that some employers were posing questions about ?what business is this of the government and why is there suddenly so much attention to children?? These employers believed ?that [child labor] was such a minor issue that it should not concern any respectable government.? These entrepreneurs resisted factory inspectors? visits.20 These cases were, however, uncommon. Most employers cooperated with the inspectors. In any event, during 1882-1885 inspectors and their assistants assumed responsibility for over 25, 913 businesses that fell under the technological and juridical scope established by the 1882 law. Overall, these businesses employed 870,969 workers and spread across an enormous territory of over four million square kilometers. Thus, on average, each inspector or his assistant was responsible for supervising about 1,440 enterprises, a daunting figure. The finance ministry provided factory inspectors and their assistants with travel funds, although inspectors claimed that these funds at first came with some delays. By the middle of 1885 the inspectors and their assistants actually inspected and gathered data from 4,897 enterprises, a considerable number but only 20 percent of the total for which they had responsibility.21 Although in late 1882 local police offices informed local businesses about the introduction of child labor regulations, when inspectors came, some employers claimed to be completely unaware of the new law?s existence. Further investigation revealed, however, that many of these claims were groundless because entrepreneurs in fact had received the information about the new laws and signed a confirmation memo. Clearly 187 some employers claimed ignorance as an excuse for continuing their former practices of employing under-aged children.22 In 1885, in order to avoid uncertainty and facilitate awareness among employers and workers, the finance ministry published a single edition of Collection of Decrees about Under-aged Workers Employed in Factories, Plants, and other Manufacturing Establishments23 at a price of 25 kopeck. Factory inspectors believed that this price was ?low enough? and affordable for most workers. In addition to all legislative acts regarding child labor that had appeared since the 1882 law, this publication included two separate leaflets printed in larger letters and containing ?Rules for Employers? and ?The List of Harmful Industries,? and samples of data sheets for factory inspectors. Instructions required factory owners to post the leaflets in factories in open places accessible to all employed people. For regions with large non-Russian populations, copies of the volume were published in native regional languages, in addition to Russian. Official and popular periodicals also published information about the new labor regulations.24 In addition, when they visited factories, inspectors informed their owners or managers about the new child labor regulations. They explained the meaning of these regulations and suggested what should be done in each specific case in order to implement them in each respective business.25 In December 1884, after the first factory inspectors had gained some experience, the finance ministry in coordination with the inspectors worked out detailed instructions for factory inspectors and employers. The instructions tried to eliminate vagueness in interpretation of the law and to clarify and facilitate its implementation. Provisions of the instructions required owners to employ children only with documents that identified their 188 age. Employers were responsible for keeping copies of these documents in factory offices and presenting them to factory inspectors on demand. The instructions required employers to maintain records about all employed individuals under the age of seventeen who were allowed for employment and report to the district inspectors about their further intentions to use the labor of these persons. The instructions suggested to inspectors what kind of information they should gather about businesses and workers and how to report this information. They contained sample tables that inspectors were required to fill out and return in their monthly reports on businesses that they had inspected during the month in question. In addition, the instructions required inspectors to control the implementation of the Medical, Fire Protection, and Building Codes in industries, in addition to child labor laws.26 In other words, the government demonstrated a clear intention to enforce the implementation of the new labor laws. Some employers apparently attempted to evade the law by manipulating its language and finding rhetorical loopholes in its provisions. For example, when inspectors visited factories and saw children under the age of twelve on the shop floor, employers sometimes maintained that these children were not workers but simply accompanied their fathers or relatives. Employers claimed that the children could not stay at home because there was nobody to take care of them, a not entirely implausible assertion. To clarify the ambiguity, the instructions stated that ?even the presence of children in a working room constitutes that they are performing work? and that such children must be considered workers. Thus, the presence of children under the specified age in places where work was conducted constituted a violation of the 1882 law.27 189 In order to reinforce the implementation of the 1882 law and later labor acts, in 1884 the government added the Penal Code with additional provisions that specified and increased sanctions for violations of labor regulations. According to these provisions, employers who transgressed child labor laws could be sentenced to ?no more than one month? of imprisonment or fined up to 100 rubles. The same penalties applied to employers who failed to provide their employed children free time to attend schools.28 Of course, 100 rubles was quite a trivial sum for most entrepreneurs. In cases when the law was violated, factory inspectors could adjudicate the violations in coordination with the local authorities or simply file reports to local police or courts, who would then presumably follow up on the matter. The imposition of penalties, inadequate as they were, did signify to entrepreneurs the government?s serious intent: Russian subjects, like people everywhere, habitually ignored or otherwise evaded laws that lacked specific focus and penalties. As described earlier, the introduction of the 1882 law resulted from the debates of the 1860s and 1870s, which had created a favorable background for its implementation. In fact, educated, reform-minded society had long awaited the law and welcomed it when it finally arrived. In August 1882, the journal Vestnik Evropy wrote that ?the need for protecting children employed in factories has long been established not only by society and literature but by the government.?29 Moreover, the economic slump of the late 1870s and early 1880s caused by overproduction facilitated the introduction of the 1882 law. Industrial output heavily exceeded market demands for goods. This caused businesses to reduce their production, 190 which in turn created unemployment. Many businesses laid off a proportion of their workers, including many children. Wages of industrial workers declined partly as a result of the reduction of working hours. Large industrial centers witnessed a wave of workers? protest and strikes.30 The factory inspector of the Moscow industrial district Erisman wrote that ?had the introduction of the 1882 law not occurred during the industrial crisis of the early 1880s, the struggle of industrialists against the law would have been more energetic.? Indeed some employers even suggested the complete elimination of night work as ?the best measure? for overcoming the ongoing crisis.31 Thus, during the early 1880s, unlike during the previous decades, despite a few individual cases of antagonism, no strong consolidated resistance to child labor regulations arose. This undoubtedly facilitated the laws? implementation and enforcement. The government?s efforts to regulate labor relations and provide welfare for workers continued during the following decades. Later Imperial Russian Laws on Employment, Labor, and Welfare and Their Placement among Other Industrializing Countries of Europe Nevertheless, the introduction of the 1882 law signified the beginning of a coherent process of labor protection legislation in Imperial Russia, a little-noted process that continued throughout the regime?s last decades. The government ultimately extended its concern toward all workers, adults as well as children, regardless of their age and gender. New legislative acts further restricted the labor of children between twelve and 191 seventeen, scrutinized the implementation of labor laws, introduced compulsory education for employed children, and addressed the employment of women. Later legislation also established the maximum workday and instituted medical care, state- sponsored medical insurance, and disability compensation for all factory workers. A series of laws during 1905 and thereafter legitimized strikes and workers? associations. In order to enforce compliance with all these laws, the government dramatically increased the number of inspectors, as well as the scope of their authority. In June 1884 the Finance Ministry issued a list of types of industry and work where it prohibited the employment of children under the age of fifteen. This was an extensive list of 36 industrial spheres with specified occupations and workshops where the children could not be employed. The list included certain occupations in textiles, oil refineries, mills which processed minerals, chemical plants which produced acids, paints and vanishes, spirits distilleries, and slaughter houses among many others. In some businesses, children under fifteen were allowed to do only certain specified tasks. In bakeries, for instance, they could only perform the packing and carrying of bread, contact with ovens and other processes was forbidden.32 On June 12, 1884, the government introduced a law on mandatory schooling for children aged between twelve and fifteen years employed in industry and who had not yet completed an at least one-year program of public schooling. The law required these children to attend schools and to complete a one-year curriculum at a public school or its equivalent. The law advised, but did not oblige, factory owners to open and maintain factory schools, if public schools were remote from factories and not available for 192 working children. The law?s statutes laid responsibility for organizing factory schools on factory inspectors and local education authorities. The law obliged the Ministry for People?s Education to develop a curriculum and teaching plans for factory schools.33 Although the organization of factory schools was non-obligatory, the law nonetheless made employers responsible for children?s education. Employers either had to maintain a factory school, if no public school was available nearby, which was true for many enterprises, or hire only those children who had already received the required education. The laws of 1885 and 1886 prohibited night work for children under the age of seventeen and for women in the cotton, linen, and wool industries, and in mills that processed mixed fibers considered harmful to workers. Local and provincial authorities, however, retained the right to admit teenagers and women to night work in some exceptional cases. With the agreement of the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Finances reserved the right to extend this legislation to other industries.34 In 1886 the state introduced the first universal law ?On factory employment and on relations between manufacturers and workers.? This law included all of the above mentioned provisions regarding child labor and also broadly addressed adult industrial labor. The law regulated employment contracts and relations between workers and employers and extended the responsibilities of factory inspectors toward all industrial workers regardless of age. The latter provision, however, applied initially to only three of the most industrialized districts of Imperial Russia, that is, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladimir. During the 1890s, the government extended the law?s scope to other industrial districts. The law increased the number of inspectors by adding ten new assistants? 193 positions. The law also included provisions that obliged employers to provide workers with certain basic medical services.35 Thus, almost all the measures regarding child labor proposed and discussed during the earlier decades became law during the 1880. By the 1890s, many of these provisions applied to other age groups as well. Thus, the debates about child labor formed the foundation for the enactment of child labor laws, a process that spanned several decades. This process served as a template for universal labor protection legislation. By the mid-1880s the economic crisis of the early 1880s began to recede and industry began a recovery. The economic revival and the reopening or expansion of many businesses demanded a larger work force. At this point, the labor laws and inspection system came under vigorous and consolidated attack from employers. For example, in 1887 the Moscow Association for the Support of Russian Industry complained to the Finance Minister I. A. Vyshnegradskii that with the introduction of the factory inspectorate there occurred many ?disagreements and conflicts between inspectors and employers.? Industrialists stated that ?the law placed factories at the mercy of persons [inspectors] who did not know the industry and its needs.?36 Employers demanded the elimination of certain provisions regarding child labor. Individual owners sent letters to the government requesting temporary exemptions from the child labor laws. For instance, in 1889 the owner of the Murakov firm asked the Ministry of the Interior to grant his business a five-year moratorium on labor laws, stating that his recently established enterprise was ?relatively small in production volume.? The ministry, however, refused to grant the request.37 194 Nonetheless, under constant pressure from the industrialists, the government agreed to introduce some relaxations of the existing law. In 1890 the government allowed children between the ages of twelve and fifteen to work on Sundays and important imperial holidays with the agreement of factory inspectors. The government also increased the workday for children to 6 consecutive hours in businesses that utilized twelve-hour workday in two six-hour shifts. (As mentioned, a similar provision had been introduced in 1884 as a temporary measure and was in force until May 1886.) In industries that worked eighteen-hours a day in two nine-hour shifts the workday for children was increased to nine hours. This was done in order to reconcile working hours for children with the workday of adult workers whom they assisted. Regardless, the concessions did not go so far as to eliminate the outright ban on the employment of children under twelve.38 Furthermore, despite increased opposition from employers during the late 1880s, the legislative effort to further restrict child labor continued throughout the 1890s and into the first fifteen years of the twentieth century. In 1892 the government introduced restrictions on the labor of children and women in the mining industry. The law banned children under the age of fifteen and women from night work and from work inside mines and underground. The law specified that night work was work between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. in spring and summer and between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. in winter and fall. The workday in the mining industry for juveniles aged between fifteen and seventeen was limited to eight hours.39 In 1897 the government introduced ?The Statute on Rural Handicraft Workshops,? which extended all the existing labor regulations to rural handicraft 195 enterprises. (One wonders about the enforceability of this worthwhile endeavor.) In the same year, another law limited the workday for adult workers to 11 ? hours during daytime and to 10 hours at night and to 12 hours in businesses with a continuous production cycle. Introduced at first in the nine industrial districts, all such factory labor regulations soon spread their scope to most other territories and provinces of Imperial Russia. The government also organized new industrial districts in Azerbaijan and Georgia.40 The state specifically placed the responsibility for implementation of all these laws upon factory inspectors. An appropriate conclusion would be that the interaction between entrepreneurs and the state as regards child and other forms of labor was dynamic, interactive, and dialectical. The end result was constantly increasing state control over and limitation of labor practices, especially as regards children. As noted, the labor regulations introduced after 1886 dramatically expanded the factory inspectorate and its area of responsibility. In 1886 the inspectorate consisted of 29 individuals, including nine inspectors, nineteen assistants, and one chief inspector. The number of inspectors was obviously insufficient to provide for affective oversight of labor laws. In order to reinforce the factory inspection system, the government drastically increased the number of inspectors. By 1894 the factory inspectorate included 18 senior inspectors, 125 inspectors, and 20 assistants. The position of chief inspector was eliminated. The law of 1897 introduced 20 new positions of factory inspectors and three positions of factory revisory (supervisors whose functions mirrored the former chief inspector?s) thus increasing the inspectorate to 185 persons.41 196 State legislative efforts to regulate labor relations and introduce labor protection continued during the early twentieth century. Despite the extensive legislation and statutes to enforce adherence during the 1880s and 90s, many legal issues regarding factory labor relations remained unresolved. For example, such crucial questions as workers? associations and labor unions, not to mention workers? unemployment compensation and medical insurance, remained open. In 1905, under the grave pressure of massive labor unrest that year, the government created a commission to reform and extend labor legislation and appointed the Finance Minister N. V. Kokovtsov, known as a liberal paternalist, as chairman. The commission consisted of prominent state officials, representatives of various business groups, and members of the reform-minded intelligentsia. It also invited representatives of local governments (zemstvo and duma), members of the factory inspectorate, factory law specialists, and the working class to offer their opinion about its proposals. The commission produced drafts of new labor legislation provisions that were published in Torgovo-Pomyshlennaia Gazeta (Commerce and Industry Gazette) and widely publicized in other periodical publications. Although it is not clear of the working class formally participated in the resulting discussion, business and scholarly groups sent in suggestions to the commission. Retaining the laws of 1882 as the basis, the new legislative proposal tried to impose additional regulations on child labor. These included a maximum workday of 10 hours for juveniles aged between fifteen and seventeen years and 17 non-working holidays in addition to Sundays.42 The draft contained five new legislative propositions. They included provisions on the workday and its divisions, on 197 medical care for industrial workers, and on state health insurance funds. Two provisions aimed at revising existing laws that outlawed strikes and workers? associations. The provisions on medical services for workers contained more specific stipulations for implementation than the earlier acts. The most controversial proposition was about limiting the workday to eight or ten hours, depending on the industry and the character of work. Most entrepreneurs objected vociferously to this proposition. They pointed out that many Russian industries already had a ten-hour workday and that most other countries had no such universal regulations of the workday. The 1901 British act limited the working week to 55.5 hours only for women in the textile industry and to sixty hours in other industries. The French legislation of 1892 imposed the ten-hour day only for juvenile workers and women and extended this provision to all workers only in 1900.43 Most other industrialized nations had far fewer such regulations. Consequently, the Kokovtsov?s commission?s proposition regarding the workday did not come into force. The standard workday remained 11.5 hours, the norm introduced by the 1897 law.44 The propositions on strikes and workers? unions, however, were actually formulated as laws and enacted. With some restrictions, the laws of 1905-1906 legalized strikes and provided a basis for the organization of workers? unions and cooperatives ?aimed at pursuing economic interests and improving labor conditions of their members.?45 Restrictions on strikes applied to types of industry and businesses defined as of ?vital importance to the nation,? such as transportation, telegraph, postal service, banking, and so on. These last statutes allowed for the expansion of the legal 198 workers? movement often noted in histories of the post-1905 era. Although strikes were legalized in 1906, it must be noted that workers actively utilized this form of labor protest well before the 1906 legislation. With few exceptions, strikes were resolved peacefully, by the means of negotiation and compromise between the involved parties.46 Although the commission?s proposition about insurance did not come into force at once, it provided a foundation for the 1912 insurance law. The 1912 law, with its over five hundred articles, established compulsory medical insurance and medical funds for all industrial workers and financial compensation for workers and members of their families for work-related accidents, injury, or death. The law instituted elected insurance boards, which administered funds collected from compulsory contributions made by employers and workers. The implementation of this law proceeded quite expeditiously. By June 1914, Moscow province alone had 344 insurance boards, representing 370,000 workers. By the end of 1915 fully 77 percent of Moscow factory workers belonged to insurance funds. Similar results occurred in other major industrial centers of Russia. According to the historian of the workers? movement, G. A. Arutiunov, by June 1914 over 2,800 insurance boards representing over two million workers including children had been established throughout Imperial Russia.47 Labor unions, worker-oriented cooperatives, and a host of other worker associations underwent a similar expansion, as often noted in historical literature of the era. All of this activity was capped in 1913, when for the first time and entirely unnoticed in the historical literature, all existing labor laws were collected into a single volume - the Factory Law Code - Russia?s first uniform and comprehensive law on 199 industrial labor.48 All these laws concerned not only adult workers but affected the lives of millions of children and juveniles who still worked in factories and other production establishments. In order to facilitate the laws? implementation and aid the factory inspectors? oversight, the government provided broad publicity for the expanded labor and welfare laws. Laws were published in inexpensive single volumes affordable by most people. During the late imperial decades several such publications addressed factory and child labor laws and explained their significance. To make them comprehensible for common and semi-literate people, these publications used plain, simple language and sometimes appeared in editions printed in larger letters. In this case, other segments of society, including, for their own reasons, the radical movement, also joined in the effort to publicize the new labor laws. A 1915 publication about child labor laws, Our Laws on Protection of Child Factory Labor: A Common Guide edited by M. Balabanov, provides an interesting example. The publication was divided into sections that addressed specific aspects of the child labor regulations. Each section started with large-font titles with simply written and clear statements such as ?Children under the age of twelve are banned from employment? or ?Children are banned from night work,? ?Children are prohibited from work on holidays,? ?Children are banned from employment in harmful occupations,? and so on.49 Many periodicals of the period devoted considerable space to factory legislation, providing the issue with forums for broad public discussion. In fact, ever since the introduction of the 1882 law numerous periodicals, including newspapers, 200 regularly published discussion articles about factory labor legislation and all manner of related issues.50 How does this process of the introduction of labor protective laws in Russia fit other industrializing European countries? Although Russian industrialization began somewhat later than in several other countries of northern and western Europe, the pace and timing of the labor laws? introduction in Russia nevertheless conformed to the general European pattern. In most industrializing countries, the most decisive laws regarding child and women?s labor, the workday, and the institution of factory inspectors appeared during the later decades of the nineteenth century. For example, as already mentioned, in England the 1833 legislation that forbade the employment of children under nine and introduced factory inspectors in the textile industry was extended to all industries only in 1867. The 1844 Factory Act limited the working week for children under thirteen to 36 hours. France banned the full-time industrial employment of children under twelve and instituted factory inspectors in 1874. (The French law still allowed part- time employment for children between ten and twelve years of age in some exceptional cases.) Belgium introduced its first child labor and factory inspectors? law in 1889. (A Belgian law of 1884 prohibited boys under the age of twelve and girls under fourteen from work underground in the mining industry.) An 1889 law restricted children?s and female employment and established factory inspectors in the Netherlands.51 Elsewhere in Europe, as in Russia, the timing of the introduction of the freedom to strike, labor union, and social insurance laws varied, but, in general, it occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Britain had a long history of 201 worker?s unions, the first law that fully protected the country?s trade unions from illegality appeared in 1871. Germany pioneered in the introduction of work-related illness and accident compensation laws in 1883 and 1884, partly as a response to the growing socialist movement. Nonetheless, in 1886 Prussian police restricted and in 1901 prohibited strikes. In 1897 Britain introduced the Workmen Compensation Act. In 1916 Denmark established industrial accident compensation for workers. Although well before the outbreak of the First World War most European nations had abolished penal sanctions against strikes and trade unions, during the war some countries such as Britain outlawed strikes and harshened government policies toward the worker?s movement. During the years before the outbreak of the war, Germany took a much harsher position toward union activism, especially strikes, than it had in the past. After the war, as a response to the rise of the socialist movement among workers, almost all European nations at one point or another introduced the eight hour work day and unemployment compensation on their way to the creation of modern welfare states.52 The timing of the introduction, as well as the substance, of labor related laws in Russia renders problematic the notion of Russian ?backwardness? emphasized by some contemporaries in Russia and by many commentators down to this day. In an 1882 issue of Vestnik Evropy (Messenger of Europe), as a response to the 1882 law, an editorial remarked that western countries like Britain, France and Germany ?far surpassed [Russia] on the path toward rational factory legislation.?53 This was one of many analogous remarks. The contemporary emphasis on Russia?s ?lagging behind? has influenced many scholars of modern Russian history to utilize the concept of backwardness as a powerful, 202 indeed all-embracing, methodological paradigm for understanding and explaining Russia?s past. The above exploration of Russian labor laws, and their implementation, as well as the process of law making, however, suggests that those contemporary remarks exaggerated the actual situation. Contemporary overemphasis on ?backwardness? seems to have distorted Russian reality. This tendency probably reflected the desire of some political groups within Russia, such as the famous Westernizes, to make a strong rhetorical case for speeding up the process of Russian industrial and social development, which de facto was already well under way during the late imperial decades. The notion of ?backwardness? served as a discursive strategy in the contemporary debates of the day and should not be taken uncritically at face value by historians today. Russia doubtless lagged somewhat behind several of the most advanced nations as regards aspects of industrialization and labor protection. Even so, the gap was smaller than usually believed and, furthermore, did not apply to Russia?s relative position with many other industrializing nations. The Impact of the Child Labor Laws on Children?s Employment How important and effective were the laws that regulated child labor? Was their introduction significant for the lives of working children? Historians still debate the effectiveness and importance of child labor laws. Indeed, this question may be too difficult to answer definitively at this stage. Most recent studies of child labor argue that labor protection laws appeared in most countries at a time when most of their provisions 203 had already lost their importance. For instance, the historian of child labor in Britain, Clark Nardinelli, has pointed out that the restrictions on children?s employment were introduced in the textile industry in 1833 when the number of employed children under the age of nine had already declined.54 Other recent scholars emphasize that female labor protective laws were ineffective and gender biased ? they were primarily concerned with the protection of women as mothers, not as workers, and, for the most part, were aimed at eliminating women from production and confining them to the private, domestic sphere.55 By contrast, some early scholars of child labor have suggested to the contrary that child labor laws decreased children?s employment in factories, which ultimately reflected the significance of these laws.56 Soviet historians have devoted only sporadic attention to labor laws. Since the late 1920s, no specific study of labor laws has appeared. The voluminous literature on the labor movement and workers? unrest created the impression, despite the absence of systematic research, that tsarist labor laws were either ineffective or simply did not exist. This tendency to view tsarist laws as useless had been established quite early by V. I. Lenin. Suggesting the futility of late tsarist labor legislation, Lenin compared it to carrying water in a sieve.57 Soviet scholars embraced Lenin?s assumptions. Nevertheless, as previous sections of the dissertation suggest, the introduction of labor-related legislation occurred in Russia at a time when many industrializing countries of Europe introduced similar legislation (and when others had none at all). Thus, given the relative lateness of Russia?s heavy industrialization, Russian labor laws could be argued to have been crucial at the time when the employment of children was reaching its height. 204 In contrast to Soviet scholars, contemporary observers and factory inspectors offered a more complicated picture of the effects of the 1882 and later laws, although they too acknowledged the difficulty of the laws? implementation. Factory inspectors noted the general decline of children?s employment in industries, the reduction of working hours, and some improvement in the working conditions of factory children. For instance, in his 1885 report the chief factory inspector Ia. T. Mikhailovskii remarked that those inspectors ?who visited the same factories before and after 1884 could not miss the pleasant change that had occurred in conditions for working children. Children had became more energetic, their faces fresher . . . which had almost not existed [before the new laws].?58 Whether this remarkable change really occurred or not, all factory inspectors clearly recognized the importance of factory labor protective laws and tried to facilitate their implementation. To be sure, the laws of 1882, 1884, and 1885 initially regulated child labor in private businesses, which, as noted, used certain kinds of technology and employed at least 16 workers. The laws applied only to European Russia. Although these businesses involved hundreds of thousands of children, the laws did not address labor in agriculture, domestic services, and small artisan workshops that also employed many children. For an example within one industry, the authority of factory inspectors extended only to large matting mills and did not cover numerous small matting enterprises that did not have steam powered technologies or employed less than 16 workers. Many children nevertheless worked in these enterprises.59 The state tried to resolve this issue by the introduction of the 1897 law. The law extended labor regulations and factory inspections 205 to rural workshops, thus at least in theory (in reality the state?s ability to oversee small rural enterprises was limited) placing more employed children under state control and protection. In addition, as mentioned, specific labor laws regulated child labor in state enterprises and mines. Nonetheless, the labor of children working in agriculture and domestic services, where labor conditions could be as harsh as in industries, still remained entirely unregulated and unprotected. Although coherent statistics on children who worked in agriculture or engaged in domestic service are non-existent, many contemporary periodicals and literary publications implicitly suggest that the percentage of children employed there attained high levels. Furthermore, after the introduction of the 1882 law, many children under the age of twelve from poor families in all likelihood shifted to agriculture and domestic services out of sheer necessity. Thus, the fact that the child labor laws did not address all employed children probably constitutes the greatest single weakness of the labor protection legislation. Regardless, the introduction of a legal basis for a system of state control over factory labor was one of the most notable accomplishments of the 1882 law. Factory inspectors began to gather systematic data on children?s employment, education, and working and living conditions in industries. They also gathered important general information on private businesses located in their factory districts. Inspectors revealed the existence of a significant number of businesses that had not previously been reflected in any statistical or police registers. For example, in 1885 an assistant inspector of the Kazan district found in the city of Orenburg twelve factories about which the local statistical 206 committee had no record and the local fiscal authorities no awareness of their existence. Such ?hidden? unregistered businesses were discovered in other industrial districts as well.60 This information was crucial to help the state create a more accurate picture of private industry and define more precise taxation policies. In this regard, in addition to their major responsibilities - to oversee labor - inspectors supervised the accuracy of payments of certain taxes on businesses.61 As mentioned, during 1882-1885, factory inspectors visited about 5 thousand enterprises or about 19 percent of all businesses that fell under their jurisdiction.62 At first glance, this number may appear less significant than it actually was. These 5 thousand enterprises were located in European Russia spread over a territory of 4 million square kilometers. St. Petersburg district was territorially the largest. It included seven northern and Baltic provinces and covered over 1.14 million square miles. Other big factory districts were Moscow, Vladimir, and Kazan. The Moscow district included about 7 thousand businesses. The vastness of the empire and its inadequate transportation system presented the biggest problem facing factory inspectors. In order to inspect a factory, they often had to travel large distances. Factory inspectors complained that by law they and their assistants were obliged to visit all businesses and therefore could not inspect any single business more than once over a considerable period, although many enterprises required additional visits. Thus, although factory inspectors worked quite effectively, as noted by many contemporary periodicals, they could not possibly cover all factories. For example, in 1885 one Moscow district inspector with his assistant oversaw only 460 factories out of 7,000. The Vladimir district inspector visited 292 businesses out of the 207 4,065 which came under his jurisdiction.63 The increase in the number of inspectors during the 1890s, however, brought more effective supervision of factory labor. As noted, complete reports of the inspectors from all nine districts appeared in 1885. The first reports came from Moscow, Vladimir, and St. Petersburg districts in 1883. Between 1883 and 1917, factory inspectors compiled and published their annual surveys, which even today are among the most valuable and comprehensive surviving sources on late imperial factory labor. Although these surveys did not reflect child labor in agriculture, domestic services, state enterprises, mines, and many small artisan workshops, they nevertheless suggest the dynamics of children?s employment in private industries. (Some of this data is presented in Chapter Two.) Most importantly, the inspectors? surveys show that after the enactment of the 1882 law, the number of children working in industries rapidly decreased. For example, the inspector of the Vladimir district Dr. P. A. Peskov reported that in 1882-1883 children under the age of fifteen accounted for 10.38 percent of industrial workers of Vladimir province. In 1885 the number of employed children below fifteen fell to 3.8 percent of the workforce. Overall in the more inclusive Vladimir factory district, of the 97,756 workers employed in the 292 factories that Peskov visited in 1885, 6,049 were children. This equaled 6.05 percent, a figure which, in his own words, was ?significantly less than before the introduction of the law.?64 In Kostroma province, before 1884 there were 1,735 children under fifteen years of age working in the province?s industries. After the law was enacted, there remained only 695 children of that age, less than half of the previous 208 number. In the Kharkov factory district, the number of children under the age of fifteen decreased from 3,325 before the law?s enactment to 1,425 in 1885.65 Inspectors also noted the rapid decline of children?s employment in particular industries. For example, before 1884 about 24 percent of textile workers were children, whereas in 1885 children accounted for only 5.5 percent. Child labor also declined dramatically in chemical plants, where before 1884 children made up 14.5 percent of the industry?s workers and after 1884 the number decreased to 0.3 percent. Inspectors noted that the decline in children?s employment was especially significant at large, technologically advanced enterprises.66 Why did children?s employment decline rapidly after the introduction of the 1882 law? According to factory inspectors, the result of the 1882 law, when the industrialists learned about its provisions, was the dismissal of a great number of children from factories. The employers fired not only children who according to the law could not be employed but even those of higher ages whose employment was allowed. Peskov observed that ?with the introduction of the law [many] owners dismissed children from their factories.? Some owners fired children as ?a demonstrative act, because they did not want to allow factory inspectors [to visit] their businesses.? Other technologically advanced enterprises really had no need of child labor and even if they employed children did so only in very limited numbers as an exception.67 Another important factor that stimulated the immediate decline of child labor in industries after 1884 was the above-mentioned general economic recession during the early 1880s, a factor also stressed by many factory inspectors in their reports. As result of 209 overproduction, numerous factories closed or laid off many thousands of workers. Without great difficulty, factory owners first dismissed working children. By the end of the 1880s, however, when the crisis was over and the economy began to recuperate, the number of child workers under the age of fifteen increased to 7.7 percent, less than during the late 1870s but more than during the crisis.68 As mentioned, employers began to attack labor laws and the factory inspectorate, a phenomenon that, by the way, suggests the likely effectiveness of the laws and the factory inspectors. The statistical decline in children?s employment, however, may have been offset somewhat by evasions of the law that occurred with particular intensity after the economic crisis came to an end. Factory inspectors complained that child labor regulations were difficult to enforce because employers often evaded them with the complicity of parents and children themselves. As noted in Chapter Two, children, who came mostly from impoverished working and peasant families, tried to hire themselves out in order to sustain their own lives and, quite often, to provide some support for their families. In order to obtain employment, under-aged children concealed their real ages and claimed to be older than they were. One contemporary account of child workers in mining stated that ?most of [the children] are hardly even thirteen; . . . many seem to be eleven. But if you ask one of them ?how old are you?,? to your astonishment, he will answer: ?fifteen.? This [occurs] with the knowledge of the mine administration . . . and it is not in the interest of the boy himself to reveal his true [age] -- he can lose the job.? 69 According to inspector Peskov, 210 one cannot fully rely on the age information in children?s documents, fact about which I personally became convinced. . . Even entrepreneurs themselves share the opinion that the identification information about ages is inaccurate. . . According to their documents, some children were thirteen or fourteen years of age but their external appearance and physical development suggested that they were no more than ten.70 Local authorities sometimes issued documents that stated the age necessary for factory employment, even if this required adding a couple of years. They often did so with the agreement of and for the benefit of parents who wanted to send their offspring to factories. Factory inspectors were well aware of these practices and usually did not take the age stated in children?s identification documents for granted. They tried to estimate children?s ages by their appearance and also asked the children themselves about their ages. The responses were not always exact, because in some cases children did not even know their ages, or, in other cases, wanted to conceal their real ages. Peskov reported that once, after he had finished his interviews with working children in a calico printing factory, ?one embarrassingly looking boy suddenly returned and stated that he was not thirteen years old as he had said but only eleven.? When Peskov asked him why he wanted to conceal his age, the boy replied that his overseer told him to do so. In addition, during inspectors? visits some owners tried to hide employed children by sending them to places within factories where inspectors could not have access, thus corrupting the accuracy of data on children?s employment.71 211 Even in 1900, some eighteen years after the introduction of the 1882 law, inspectors disclosed violations regarding the employment of children under the age of twelve. For example, inspections disclosed that in 1900 eight factories in the St. Petersburg, three factories in the Moscow, and ten factories in the Warsaw industrial districts used the labor of children under age twelve. Similar violations were found in other factory districts.72 According to the police records, employers who transgressed the law were subjected to fines as high as 1,000 rubles, although most penalties involved fines of about 100 rubles.73 The phenomenon in which factory inspectors regularly found violations of the laws on ages of child laborers suggests the probable overall reliability of the factory inspectorate?s data on the ages of child workers. The inspectors usually observed and talked to children in person and registered them in the appropriate age group according to their direct observation rather than according to the factory?s data. This allowed inspectors to disclose cases of legal transgression and report them to the police. Regardless of possible evasions, in a long-term perspective during the three decades before World War I, the employment of children in industry gradually declined. As mentioned, in 1883, the year before the introduction of the law in 1884, children between the ages of twelve and fifteen years (maloletki) accounted for about 10 percent of factory workers in Russia. By mid-1885 this figure fell to 3.9 percent. This tendency continued until the outbreak of World War I. The number of children aged between twelve and fifteen decreased, whereas that of juveniles aged from fifteen to seventeen slightly increased. In 1901, working children between the ages of twelve and fifteen 212 accounted for 2 percent and juveniles aged from fifteen to seventeen - 8.6 percent of industrial workers. In 1905 maloletki comprised 1.4 and juveniles - 9 percent of workers. In 1913, industrial labor consisted of 1.6 percent of maloletki and 8.9 percent of juveniles.74 Thus over a period of 30 years, the number of factory children below twelve had fallen to insignificance and the number of child workers (maloletki) had fallen from 10 percent to less than 2 percent. Available data from individual factories confirms this picture of a significant decline in children?s employment. By 1907 in the Putilov plant, one of the largest metallurgical enterprises in St. Petersburg and in Russia, working teenagers accounted for only 1.3 percent of the workforce. The St. Petersburg Tentelev Chemical Plant did not employ children at all. In metallurgical and chemical industries, perhaps the most hazardous to children, children?s employment declined significantly after the introduction of the 1882 law. In certain other plants, however, the percentage of children still remained high. For example the ?Torkovichi? Glass Mill employed 238 children aged between twelve and fifteen, fully 43 percent of the mill?s workers. Most of these children were recorded as apprentices.75 Nonetheless, employment in agriculture and domestic services aside, it is clear that employment of children below the age of fifteen in factories was disappearing in late tsarist Russia. How did the child labor law affect labor conditions for children working in industries? This question seems to have been controversial and, indeed, towards the beginning of the twentieth century ideologically loaded and politicized. Various political parties used labor issues to attack the government and appear as the best protectors of 213 workers? interests. These groups recognized no improvements brought by the labor laws and tended to accentuate worse cases of factory labor. According to some radical socialist periodicals, the conditions of working children and juveniles improved little in comparison to previous decades before the introduction of labor protection laws. For instance, Iskra and Proletarii, two famous Bolshevik newspapers, cited examples of working and living conditions of children employed at the Filipov Candy Factory in Moscow. Children received 5 rubles a month, food, and board. Their workday lasted 11.5 hours daytime and 10 hours at night. Children lived on the top floor of the factory building in a room without air circulation and which housed about 300 people. Beds were set up in pairs and each pair accommodated 3 or even 4 people.76 Although such cases may have accurately reflected the reality of working conditions at particular enterprises, they by no mean represent the entire reality. Indeed, evidence about labor conditions is much too diverse and fragmentary to allow for strict conclusions about whether they were bad or not. As noted, contemporaries, including factory inspectors, observed that after the introduction of the 1882 law the labor conditions for working children witnessed relative improvement by the end of the nineteenth century. Factory inspectors reported that businesses, when it was required, introduced safety work measures, such as covering moving parts of machines and steam engines, replacing wooden stairs with cast iron, improving air circulation, and so on. Some businesses reorganized the setting of machines and equipment in working rooms in order to provide wider spaces and passages for safety reasons.77 214 Late imperial statistics illustrate a definite decline in work-related accidents among workers, which also signifies improvements in labor conditions. The number of work-related accidents among workers under the age of seventeen in fact decreased dramatically. According to the 1894 data from Vladimir province, where surveys covered 75,522 workers (including 6,179 children and juveniles under seventeen), work-related accidents requiring a physician?s attention occurred to 1,904 workers (2.5 percent of the workforce), including children and juveniles. Injured children and juveniles accounted for 224 or respectively 3.6 percent of working children and 11.6 percent of all injured workers. The number of injured adults was 1,680, which accounted for 2.4 percent of working adults and 88.4 percent of all injured workers.78 Although the proportion of injured children was relatively higher than that of adult workers, it is clear that the overall number of work-related injuries had declined dramatically since 1884. In contrast, before the enactment of the 1882 law more than 50 percent of accidents occurred to working children. (For work-related accidents before 1884, see Chapter Two.) In addition, inspectors noted that the law affected the actual workday for children. Before the law?s enactment, the regular workday for children lasted from about 12 to 13 and even more hours. After 1884, the workday approached 8 or 6 hours, depending on type of labor organization. According to the mass of data that covered 1,366,000 workers in 1904, the workday averaged 10.7 hours for adult males, and 10.4 hours for women and children aged between fifteen and seventeen years. This was less than the norm set up by the 1897 law. Children under fifteen years of age worked 7.6 hours. In 1913 the maximum workday lasted 11.5 hours. Some historians point out that these data came 215 from official reports produced by factory administrations interested in ?underestimating? the length of the workday. In this version, the actual workday might have been somewhat higher.79 The data issued by factory administrations are, however, supported by the reports of factory inspectors. This data suggests that teenagers between the ages of fifteen and seventeen on average worked 9.83 hours and those under fifteen 7.9 hours a day.80 It is also an indisputable fact that the decline of the workday for children directly affected their salaries in a negative way. In most cases, children?s wages decreased proportionally relative to the reduction of working hours. According to factory inspectors, with the decrease of working hours from 12 to 8, children?s wages were lowered by one third and when the workday was reduced to 6 hours children began to receive half of their previous wage. In the Kiev industrial district, children sometimes did not receive any wages but worked for food and board.81 Factory inspectors suggested, however, that the reduction of working hours in fact led to an increase in children?s hourly productivity. Obviously, children worked shorter hours and were less overworked, as a consequence of which they could work more effectively and produce more per hour. Regardless, children?s increased productivity rarely had a positive effect on their wages. Only a few employers, when they realized that children?s productivity had risen, increased their wage rates.82 Even so, existing data on wages suggest a general rise in adult and juvenile wages. Throughout the empire, in 1905 the worker?s average annual salary was about 235 rubles, in 1910 ? 246 rubles, and by 1913 it further increased to 264 rubles. The highest average salaries for workers were in the St. Petersburg industrial district, where in 1913 workers 216 got about 339 rubles, whereas the lowest average wage of 196 rubles was recorded in the Kiev district. In 1900 St. Petersburg district workers on average had received 265 rubles, whereas in the Kiev district workers? average wages had been 133 rubles.83 Regardless, the rise of prices for daily necessities led some observers to point out that the increases in workers? wages were partially consumed by inflation.84 Data on workers? expenses, however, suggest that on average in the late nineteenth century workers confronted roughly the same outlays for foodstuffs as they had before 1884. (Chapter Two presents data on workers? food expenditures during the 1870s.) During the early twentieth century, an average adult worker spent monthly from 4 to 5 rubles for food, whereas children?s expenses ranged from 2.25 to 4 rubles a month. Workers? expenses depended on their wages. Those who received higher wages tended to spend more on food. Dement?ev estimated that an average working family spent about 58 percent of its income on food, with variations depending on the size of the family.85 Nonetheless, the outbreak of World War I created new realities, which produced some negative effects on ameliorations brought about by the labor laws. With the beginning of the war, many men left factories. Industries faced a great demand for labor. In 1916 the demand for workers greatly surpassed the labor supply. The government introduced detailed regulations that allowed women and children (between twelve and fifteen) to labor in those industries and occupations where previously they faced prohibitions, such as metallurgy and mining. The 1915 statute permitted underground work for women and children. At this time, many women and children entered the industrial labor force. If in 1913, industrial workforces consisted of 13.9 percent teenage 217 workers (between twelve to seventeen), in 1916, as an immediate impact of the severe labor shortages during the war, this number had increased to 21 percent.86 Just before the February 1917 revolution, the factory inspectors recorded 49,956 child workers between twelve and fourteen ((2.4 percent of the workforce) and 242,866 juveniles between fourteen and sixteen (11.6 percent) of a total industrial workforce of 2,093,860 persons in the industries covered. In 1913 children and teenagers of these ages had accounted for respectively 1.4 and 9.7 percent of factory workers.87 After the February 1917 revolution, the Provisional Government attempted to resolve the child labor issue which the war had exacerbated. Child labor was one of the most vigorously debated questions of the newly created Ministry of Labor. In March 1917, the Provisional Government abolished the 1915 statute that had allowed military- oriented mining and metallurgical industries to use the labor of children and women, including for underground work. The law of August 1917 abolished night work for juveniles under seventeen years of age and for women in all industries. For the duration of the war, the labor minister, however, retained the right, with the agreement of the minister of trade and industry, to allow night work for women and children. Regarding child labor, the Provisional Government retained all previous provisions of the 1913 Code on Industrial Labor.88 The October 1917 revolution and its aftermath produced new social and economic realities that altered the nature and perceptions of child labor. After the October revolution, Russia faced civil wars. The well-known national economic collapse threw many hundreds of thousands of workers into unemployment. The number of children 218 under fifteen employed in factories declined dramatically. By September 1918, teenagers between fifteen and seventeen accounted for 13.1 percent of the factory workforce and by July 1919 this figure had further dropped to 8.5 percent. In general, the period of War Communism (1918-1921) has left little statistical evidence. One source suggests that during 1918 unemployment reached 1,500,000, a figure that doubtlessly impacted children as well as adults.89 During the years between 1918 and 1924, Russia faced the tremendous social problem that contemporaries called besprizornost? (children?s homelessness and neglect), which involved several million children.90 But this is another story. In summary, although factory labor laws lagged behind the pace of involvement of children in industrial labor and therefore had little impact on the generation of children who first experienced industrialization, Russia, like other countries, did introduce laws about child labor. These laws improved conditions for children and certainly had the potential for improving the well-being of future generations of children in Russia. Child labor in industries became subject to state control and protection. Factory inspectors gathered important data on factory labor and supervised children?s employment. In addition, the laws recognized education as a priority of childhood and as a desirable alternative to factory labor. Finally, and most importantly, industries could no longer regard very young children as a source of labor and had to seek production methods, technologies, and organization of labor that would end their dependence on children?s employment. 219 Education of Factory Children Compulsory education of children employed in factories was another significant aspect of the late imperial labor law. A few words about education in Imperial Russia will help provide a context for the issue of education of working children. Before the reforms of the 1860s, elementary education for children of all social estates was provided in district schools (volostnye and uezdnye shkoly), elementary schools for peasant children, elementary schools of the mining industry, and in orphanages. However the vast majority of children in Russia, especially serf children, remained outside these schools. Peasant schools were usually limited to state and royal family villages and were simply nonexistent in serf communes. In 1836 there were only 65 peasant schools, whereas by the mid-1850s their number had increased to 2,500.91 Elementary schools in serf villages were solitary exceptions. The evidence on such schools is extremely limited. A few serf children received an elementary education privately with priests, retired soldiers, or village communal scribes. For example, the former serf Savva Purlevskii recalled in his memoirs that he studied basic literacy and calculus with the local priest and then with his father. When Purlevskii grew up and became a bailiff in the late 1820s, his village commune and the landlord founded a school for village children.92 Nevertheless, the majority of serf and numerous state peasant children remained illiterate or barely literate. In addition to these scarce educational opportunities, some children could receive an education at factory schools. The history of factory schools in Russia perhaps dates back to the early nineteenth century. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the 220 growth of new mechanized industries with their elaborate technologies created a new demand for educated workers. New complicated machines required not only workers with elementary literacy but those capable of mastering new techniques. Deeply concerned about qualified workers at a time when the government restricted education for lower social estates to elementary schooling, some entrepreneurs, on their own private initiative, began to establish factory schools, technical schools, Sunday schools, and schools for teenage workers.93 In addition to promoting education among workers, some owners saw these schools as a means of ?social control? for creating loyal disciplined individuals.94 Nevertheless, before the 1884 law, the effort to spread education among working children remained highly sporadic, depended on the employers? good will, and was usually limited to a few large enterprises. The history of early trade and technical schools founded by the brothers Timofei and Konstantin Prokhorov (the co-owners of the famous Three Mountains Factory in Moscow) is a notable example of entrepreneurial endeavor to promote education among children. The first Prokhorov school opened in 1816 for 200 children of the factory?s workers (most of whom were peasant-migrants) and of the Moscow poor. In 1833 Timofei Prokhorov opened another school for both children and adults. Education in both the Prokhorov schools was tuition-free. To maintain their schools, in 1840 the Prokhorovs spent about 17,000 banknote rubles and in 1842 25,845 rubles, remarkable sums by contemporary standards.95 These were, however, exceptions. In the 1840s and 1850s, there were only 34 factory schools in Moscow province, including 16 factory schools in Moscow with over 221 1000 students.96 In addition to these few factory schools, in 1843 ten Sunday factory schools opened in Moscow province with 1050 students. A modest number of factory schools existed in other provinces of Imperial Russia. Although all these educational establishments were private, the government attempted to regulate their general curriculum. Students of these schools received an education in industrial technology, industrial chemistry, factory management, mechanical drawing, machine construction, accounting, and other technical and financial disciplines, as well as in general subjects such as religion and calculus.97 The significance of these educational establishments was that they were opened to children regardless of their social background and gender. According to a report for 1844, ?the major part of students of private factory schools belongs to the peasant estate [including serfs] and less that one seventh are from petty townspeople (meshchane).?98 The Finance Ministry?s technical drawing schools represent another interesting example. Among 874 students of the schools, 109 were serf children, 131 - children of peasants of other categories, 31 - nobles?, 56 - families of high military officials, 18 ?clergy, 2 - state bureaucracy, 14 ? orphans, 2 - honorary citizens?, 52 - ?people of various ranks? (raznochintsy), and 467 ?other social estates, mostly townspeople.99 Teenaged girls were among the classmates at some factory schools -- 80 female students attended the Prokhorov, Guchkov and Roshfor factory schools.100 These fragmentary statistics hardly represent the full number of working children who received an education, a phenomenon that should neither be exaggerated nor ignored. Of course, children of the nobility, clergy, and townspeople could receive an education at other schools or from private tutors. 222 Factory and Sunday schools were particularly crucial for working children and children from the lower social orders because this was often the only chance to get an education. The 1860s, which left their mark on Russian history as the period of Great Reforms, brought significant changes to the education of the lower social orders. During the 1870s, numerous zemstvo schools opened their doors to peasant children.101 These significant efforts in the schooling of rural children were, however, undercut by the increasing peasant migration to urban or industrial areas. Those children who moved from their villages seeking factory employment could no longer go to their rural zemstvo schools. Furthermore, having migrated to a city and taken a job, many children in fact lost the opportunity to receive any education at all and remained illiterate. Factory schools that working children could attend existed only in some state and large private businesses, whereas local boarding schools were often situated far away from factory districts and were not easily accessible for factory children. At the same time, as they undertook factory employment children could hardly find time to attend even nearby factory or district schools. In most cases recorded by governmental agencies, most rural children who had attended local schools in the countryside were no longer capable of doing so after they moved to cities and took factory employment. Chapter Two sites an example of a twelve-year old boy who before his move to the city and factory employment went to a local village school, but after he entered the factory, where he worked 12 hours a day, he could no longer continue his schooling.102 This was the case for most working children. The Chief Factory Inspector Mikhailovskii wrote in 1885 that before the 1882 and 1884 laws it was impossible to 223 require factory children to attend schools after twelve hours of work. He remarked that ?in these circumstances, education would be more deleterious than useful . . . It would lead to complete exhaustion of [the child?s] immature body.? Inspectors noted that students at factory schools were mostly local children and children of workers who did not work. Working children often attended their enterprise?s schools irregularly.103 The lack of opportunities for employed children to receive an education had a direct impact on their literacy rates. By 1885 factory inspectors interviewed about 15,300 working children and found that literate and semi-literate (who could only read) children accounted to 5,300 (35 percent of the total) and only 500 had received formal diplomas. The balance (65 percent) were illiterate. The highest literacy rate among working children in 1885 was recorded in the St. Petersburg industrial district and reached 70.26 percent. The lowest proportion of literate working children was in the Kazan, Kharkov and Vilensk (Vilna) districts and ranged from about 20 to 25 percent. Literacy rates among children employed in the Moscow and other central provinces was about 30 percent.104 In the Vladimir factory district, out of 4,965 working children, 1,508 (30 percent) were literate and semiliterate. The lowest literacy rate was among working girls. Only 265 girls working in the district were either literate or semiliterate. This number accounted for 5.3 percent of all employed children and 14.6 percent of the employed girls.105 The evidence from some individual factories lends support to this general tendency in literacy rates. When the Vladimir District inspector Peskov visited the Sokolovskaia Cotton Mill in 1882, he found that of the 276 factory children, only 83 (30.1 percent) were literate or semi-literate. Some children (11.6 percent) attended the 224 mill?s school located nearby. The working day in the mill lasted for 12 hours in two six- hour shifts. Peskov remarked that obviously, after a 12 hour workday children were too exhausted and could hardly attend the mill?s school.106 The laws of 1882 and especially of 1884 constituted a significant turn in the question of education of employed children. The laws prioritized the education of working children. For the first time in Russian history, a law obliged children employed in factories to attend an at least one year program of elementary schooling and receive a diploma. Those children without the required education had to receive it either before entering factory employment or during it. In addition, the reduction of the workday for children to six and eight hours opened an opportunity for children to attend factory or local boarding schools. The number of factory schools, however, still remained low despite the effort of factory inspectors to motivate employers to build factory schools. According to an author of an 1894 article in Russkaia mysl? and the reports of factory inspectors, in 1885 there were only 163 private factory schools.107 In 1899 their number increased to 446, at which point about 44.400 working children were attended these schools.108 Although the number of factory schools was low and they could not accommodate all employed children who needed an elementary education, during the late nineteenth century many employers did undertake a significant effort to promote literacy among their workers. Late nineteenth and early twenty centuries sources offer abundant evidence of employers? support for the education of their workers. For example, the Ramensk Mill founded a school that eventually educated 374 boys and 301 girls. In 1907 the owners 225 also built buildings in the village of Ramenskoe for schooling the children of local peasants. These buildings along with 10,000 rubles were given to the local zemstvo for founding a boarding school (narodnoe uchilishche).109 Some mills also set up subscription libraries and organized Sunday readings for their workers. For example, the Ramensk Mill had a library with a total of 26,658 volumes. These volumes included textbooks, educational and popular literature, and periodicals.110 The Ramensk Mill had rather a remarkable record of literacy among workers. According to the 1914 data, of the 630 recorded workers, 76.8 percent were literate, 3.2 percent ? semiliterate, and 12.7 percent illiterate with the balance unknown.111 By the 1890s, even mining industries of the distant Lena Region had set up factory schools, libraries, and other facilities for mining children. Some companies also arranged theatrical performances for their workers.112 As a result of this educational effort, literacy rates among employed children grew significantly during the late imperial decades. According to the 1918 census, the general literacy rates among workers was 64 percent, or 44.2 percent among working women and 79.2 among working men. Literacy prevailed among young workers. Among workers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, 93.6 percent were literate and among those between twenty and twenty-five - 88.6 percent. Data from Moscow in 1913 confirms these trends. Only 45.6 percent of men and 1.9 percent of women aged between fifty-five and sixty who worked in the city?s factories were literate, whereas about 90 percent of working men and 40 percent of working women between fifteen and twenty-five were literate. Literacy, however, depended on locality. In many areas of non-European Russia 226 and in some western and southern provinces of its European part literacy rates among workers remained significantly lower than in the central provinces and St. Petersburg.113 Children?s Socialization and Involvement in Political Life One of the most interesting developments of the late imperial decades was the participation of children in social and political events in the empire. Most of these children were employed in industries. In addition to the new opportunity for working children to receive an education, factory labor also seemed to facilitate their rapid involvement in social and political life. Factory children worked side by side with adult workers and often resided in the same crowded quarters with unrelated adult people, where, as one historian of Russian labor put it, ?people cooked, smoked, argued, chatted, and tried to rest [and] children dashed around.?114 A description of workers? life in an Eastern Siberian gold mine noted that ?your twelve-year-old boy at the mines already smokes tobacco . . . swigs down a jigger of vodka in one gulp . . . and neatly washes a tray of gold.?115 Working children learned early on all aspects of the adult life experience, from grievances to happiness. G. V. Plekhanov, an early Russian Marxist and theorist of political economy, observed that ?working children and teenagers are distinguished from their peers from the upper classes in their self-dependence. Life presses upon them the struggle for existence and this inculcates in children resourcefulness and tempering in order to avoid early destruction.? Plekhanov recalled that he met a thirteen-year-old boy, 227 an orphan, who lived completely independently. ?The boy himself settled with the factory office and knew how to balance his miniature budget.?116 Factory children engaged in the workers? movement, actively participated in labor protest and strikes, and were often initiators of this protest. Working children and teenagers also became involved in workers? associations and political parties. Activists of the Russian workers? movement observed the involvement of working children in the movement. For example, when Plekhanov delivered a speech at one of the early meetings of the Land and Freedom (Zemlia i Volia) Society in St. Peterburg in 1871, he noted that the meeting attracted many school-aged children, most of whom worked in the city?s factories. Plekhanov spoke under a banner upon which was written ?Zemlia i Volia!? and which was held by a sixteen-year old worker, a weaver in a textile mill.117 According to numerous primary sources on the labor movement, children were frequent participants in and even initiators of demonstrations and strikes. In the spring of 1878, a children?s demonstration occurred in St. Petersburg. During the strike at the city?s Novaia Cotton Spinning Mill, several participants, including children, were taken to the district police. A group of children working at the mill immediately organized a demonstration and went to the police quarters demanding release of their co-workers. In November 1878, a children?s strike broke out in the Kening Textile Mill. This strike was launched by working children. The mill employed about 200 workers, 140 of which were children between twelve and fifteen years of age and teenagers. The mill owners wanted the children to perform extra work in addition to their regular tasks. In protest, children 228 stopped work and a strike broke out. Later the children were joined by adult workers. The factory administration, however, refused to accept the workers? demands.118 The record of the workers? movement during the late imperial period contains a significant number of strikes initiated by employed children. A strike broke out in 1902 in a St. Petersburg tobacco factory. This strike was started by working girls. Female children who assisted adult workers refused to work for 30 kopecks a day and demanded increased pay rates. When refused, the girls went on strike. A strike initiated by working children occurred at a shipyard in St. Petersburg. According to the recollections of one of the participants of the strike, ?a large group of boys, about 200, gathered around the factory administration. The chief master came to the boys and addressed [them] with admonitions. Instead of replying, the boys submitted a letter that demanded a raise in their wages. The master suggested that those who disagreed with the existing rates could leave the enterprise. The boys were then joined by adult workers. The strike lasted one day and the workers? demands were fulfilled.?119 Another strike initiated by children broke out in early 1903 in the Nevskaia Cotton Mill in St. Petersburg. The boy assistants who helped adult spinners working on mule machines stopped their work and went on strike. The boys demanded that the administration raise their wage rates and dismiss their overseer, a certain Nikolai Ivanov. The boys were joined by working women and later by men.120 Similar incidents of child worker activism took place in other areas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.121 Most strikes initiated by children reflected their desire for higher wages. As noted in the previous section, the introduction of the 1882 law led to a reduction of children?s 229 daily work hours and in turn decreased their wages. In some cases, children?s protest was directed against adult workers who in fact employed children and paid their salaries. In these cases, children?s salaries came out of workers? wages and depended on their goodwill. In some of these strikes, adult workers sided with children and demanded that factory owners raise children?s wages. Most such strikes, however, would probably never have occurred had children not started them. Adult workers often seemed to support children?s demands by work stoppages because they could not continue their tasks without the children?s help. Self-interest rather than charitable instincts seems to have motivated them. Children also assisted adult workers during acts of protest and often proved to be very handy helpers. When demonstrations took place, children often served as observers and watched out for police. When the police were in sight, the children whistled to inform demonstrators about the approaching police. Demonstrators then had the opportunity of dispersing and hiding. In some cases, children cried or made jokes in order to distract the police. When police turned toward the children, the protesters smashed street lights and windows. During one strike at Petersburg?s Obukhov Plant, children helped adult workers to build barricades and resist the police.122 Demonstrations and protest strikes with child and teenage workers? involvement sometimes turned violent. As contemporary accounts suggest, workers? protest was frequently accompanied by manifestations of misrule, such as commotion and noise, and sometimes by direct violence, including the breaking of machines, glass, windows, and so on. In some cases, children resorted to violence in order to induce other workers to 230 participate in protests. For example, in one case at the Morozov Cotton Mill in Tver? working children, in order to get adult workers to stop work, began to break windows in the factory buildings. According to a description, children and teenagers ?hissed and whistled.? During a strike at the Tornton Mill in St. Peterburg, working children used boiling water and stones against police. During the general strike in Odessa in May 1905, in order to have the city stop work children rang the church bells and let the steam out of boilers. According to a police report, using these and other methods, at 9 o?clock in the morning a ?band of boys compelled the shop-assistants to strike.?123 Some demonstrations, however, were well organized and peaceful. In such cases, before going on strike children first presented their complaints orally or in a written form.124 As noted, by the late nineteenth century most child and young laborers were literate and knowledgeable about factory laws. One description of workers? protest in the Ekaterinburg Printing Mill noted that apprentices were particularly distinguished by their behavior. ?The juveniles,? according to this observer, ?are all educated and smart, and read books just like they eat a piece of a white bread cake. The employer cannot deal with them easily. If he asks them to do extra work, they refuse and refer to the law that limits their work.?125 Contemporaries also noted that child and juvenile workers were quick to question the existing social and political order. State officials? reports stated that young workers rejected family and religious values, ignored the existing social norms, and were disobliging and disrespectful of authority. One contemporary observer wrote that industrialization led to ?the decline of morality. [This is] one of the most deplorable 231 tendencies of the past and [is] connected with the diminution of religiosity among people . . . encouraged by the nihilist media.?126 The deputy minister of the interior P. D. Sviatopolk-Mirskii expressed his opinion in 1901 that ?in the last few years the good- natured Russian guy turned into a type of a semi-literate member of the intelligentsia who believes that it is his duty to reject religion and family, disobey laws [and] authorities and jeer at them.?127 Police reports claimed that the ?militant mood is observed only among green youth (zelenoi molodezhi).? Ironically, the observations by contemporary officials find support in numerous workers? memoirs. One Jewish worker described in his memoirs how he and his peer co- workers broke with their religious, which he called, ?superstitions?: We children of poor parents hired ourselves at a bristle factory in Nevel?. There where about 150 boys. We labored about 15-17 hours a day with low wages in dirt and dust. At the end our patience had come to an end and we went on strike. . . We could not break the intractability of the owner and the strike lasted a while. Finally we won a 10 hour-work day. Then we found other obstacles that lay outside the factory. These were our religious prejudices. We were very religious boys, so religious that at one point we donated contributions from our wages and made a present, a sacred object, a torah scroll to the owner. In the city we were exemplary boys. But when life became so unendurable, we realized that god is bad and we scorned his help. We cast off all these religious superstitions. We 232 began to smoke and to eat Russian sausage and pork. By doing this we caused wild hostility from fanatically religious Jews. This experience was likely shared by thousands of working children of all religious backgrounds. Having broken with religion, many factory children and juveniles entered youth organizations of various political parties and movements. Such organizations arose in St. Petersburg and many imperial provinces. The first children?s organizations appeared in the western and southern provinces of the empire. The Yugenbund (Youth Organization) was organized under the Bund (the Jewish social- democratic organization) in 1905 and involved working children between ten and fifteen years of age from Poland and Western Ukraine. In 1906 the youth association, The League of Youth, arose in Moscow. Among other large associations of youth were the Northern Union of School Youth, the South-Russian Union of Youth and Budushchnost? (Our Future).128 Working children directly participated in the revolutionary events of 1905. In 1905 in Dvinsk some 300 children went on strike. Children paraded along streets with political slogans stating ?down with autocracy,? ?down with tyrants,? and so on. During the procession the children tossed leaflets which stated that they ?organized the demonstration not to produce a children?s play but to protest against tyranny and the brutality of our government.... For freedom!? 129 Slogans that stressed political freedoms and agitated against the ruling system became typical in children?s demonstrations of the 1903-1905 era. As noted, children engaged in the 1905 revolutionary events in Odessa. In 233 fact, as observed by contemporaries, during the general strike in Odessa, working children and youth predominated. One youthful participant in those events maintained that ?many people noted that numerous children took part in the strike. Let it be! Is it not good that we proletarian children participate in this struggle? . . . We, children, are exploited even more because we are more helpless.?130 The involvement of working children in political life signified the development of a new culture among the younger generation. This culture emphasized protest of, and resistance to official values and norms, as exemplified by the state, church, and parents. The new culture also emphasized political freedoms and social equality. Some contemporaries noted the increasing generational conflict occurring during the late imperial decades. They observed that ?youth felt with more strength the impassability of the gap between parents and children. . . . Parents joined this regime that suppresses our souls.?131 Because they were young, children?s and youths? hopes were high. They desired a better life than that of their parents. This better life was associated with broad political freedoms, a constitution, and representative institutions.132 Despite the efforts of the government to ameliorate labor conditions and promote welfare and education among workers, the cultural conflict between the expectations of a rapidly changing society and the state?s stagnant political structures grew exponentially. Most citizens found themselves dissatisfied with a tsarist political system that proved itself quite incapable of dealing with the hardships caused by World War I. When the war broke out and the tsarist government showed the first signs of weakness, factory children and youth actively plunged into the revolutionary movement that ended the old regime in Russia. 234 NOTES: 1. Sbornik postanovlenii o maloletnikh rabochikh na zavodakh, fabrikakh i v drugikh promyshlennykh zavedeniiakh (St. Petersburg, 1885); A. A. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia v Rossii, 1882-1906 (Kiev: Tip. Kul?zhenko, 1906),10. 2. Sbornik postanovlenii, 5, no III. 3. M. Balabanov, Nashi zakony o zashchite fabrichnogo truda detei. Obshchedostupnoe prakticheskoe rukovodstvo (Kiev: Tip. pervoi kievskoi arteli pechatnikov, 1915), 7 4. Balabanov, Nashi zakony, 9-10. 5. Mikulin, Fabichnaia inspektsiia, 10-11; Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 9-10, 12. 6. Sbornik postanovlenii, 4, no 6; 12, no 16. 7. Siberian mining and metallurgical industries were regulated by earlier laws introduced during the 1830 and 40. These laws provided for a system of inspectors who supervised work related issues. For a discussion on Eastern Siberia, see Michael Melancon, The Lena Goldfields, 34-35. 8. Sbornik postanovlenii, 24. 9. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 4 (August 1882), 724; Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia, 8; Sbornik postanovlenii, 12, no III. 10. In 1886 fourteen factory inspectors and their assistants were engineers, ten were medical doctors, three - educators and university professors. I. T. Mikhailovskii, O 235 deiatel?nosti fabrichnoi inspektsii: Otchet za 1885 god glavnogo fabrichnogo inspektora I. T. Mikhailovskogo (St. Petersburg, Tip. Kirshbauma, 1886), 5. 11. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evroy 6 (December 1886), 861. 12. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 6 (December 1886), 865-866. 13. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 86-88. 14. Andreev cited in Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 85-86. 15. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 86. 16. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia, 10. 17. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia, 10-11; Sbornik postanovlenii, appendix ?Pravila,? no 1. 18. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 8. 19. ?Vnutrennee obzrenie? Vestnik Evropy 6 (December 1886), 867. 20. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 6 (December 1886), 867. 21. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 8, 13. 22. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 6 (December 1886), 865; Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 23. Sbornik postanovlenii. 24. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy, 4 (August 1882), 722-726; ?Iz obshchestvennoi khroniki? Vestnik Evropy, 4 (July 1884), 447-448. 25. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 7-8. 26. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 4. 27. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 7-8; Sbornik postanovlenii, appendix ?Pravila.? 236 28. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia, 10. 29. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 4 (August, 1882), 722. 30. See letters of the Minister of the Interior Count D. A. Tolstoi to the ministers of finance and justice (February 4 1885). GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34(1), listy 1-3 and 4-5; For more discussion on workers? unrest during the period, see Laverychev, Tsarism i rabochii vopros, 14. 31. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 83. On workers protest during the late 1870s and early 1880s, see Istoriia rabochego klassa Rossii, 1861-1900 L. M. Ivanov, M. S. Volin, eds (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 126, 127-128. 32. Sbornik postanovlenii, 18-22 and appendix ?Spisok.? 33. Sbornik postanovlenii, 6-10; Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 6-14; Balabanov, Nashi zakony, 39;. 34. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, 3 rd series (hereafter PSZ 3), no. 3013. 35. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia,11-12; Istoriia rabochego klassa, 124. 36. Litvinov-Falinskii, 314-318. 37. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (15), list 116. 38. PSZ 3, no. 6741. 39. Ibid., nos. 8402, 11391. Also see Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (hereafter SZ) (St. Petersburg, 1893), vol. VII, Ustav gornyi, no. 655. 40. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia, 14-15. 237 41. A. A. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia v Rossii, 1882-1906 (Kiev: Tip. Kul?zhenko, 1906), 13-14. 42. Rabochii vopros v komissii V. N. Kokovtsova v 1905 gody (Moscow, 1926), 41, no. 5. 43. Rabochii vopros. 44. Svod Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (hereafter SZ), vol. XXI, part 2, Ustav o promyshlennom trude (St. Petersburg, 1913). 45. Rabochii vopros v komissii V. N. Kokovtsova, nos. 15, 25 and 27; and PSZ 3 (1905), no. 26987, see section II, p. 852; and SZ (1913), vol. XXI, part 2, Ustav o promyshlennom trude, no. 230. 46. For discussion, see Theodore H. Freidgut, Iuzovka and Revolution. Vol. 1, Life and Work in Russia?s Donbass, 1869?1924. Vol 2, Politics and Revolution in Russia?s Donbass, 1869?1924 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 and 1994). 47. Pazhitnov, 146-8; Arutiunov, Rabochee dvizhenie, 258. 48. Svod Zakonov, vol. XXI, part 2, Ustav o promyshlennom trude; Gorshkov, ?Toward a Comprehensive Law,? 64. 49. M. Balabanov, Nashi zakony o zashchite fabrichnogo truda detei. Obshchedostupnoe rukovodstvo (Kiev: Tip. Pervoi kievskoi arteli pechatnikov, 1915). 238 50. For example, see numerous issues of Vestnik Evropy that gave labor laws broad public discussion. Vestnik Evropy 11 (1884); idem. 2 (1885); 6 (December 1886). 51. Hepple, The Making of Labor Law, ch. 2. 52. For discussion, see Hepple, The Making of Labor Law, ch. 2. 53. Vestnik Evropy 4 (August 1882), vnutrennee obozrenie, 722. 54. For discussion see Nardinelli, Child Labor, 144 55. See, for example, Jane Jenson, ?Representation of Gender: Policies to ?Protect? Women Workers and Infants in France and the United States before 1914,? in Gordon, Women, the State and Welfare, 152-198; and Lewis and Rose, ?Let England Blush,? in Protecting Women, 91-124. Also see Kessler-Harris, Lewis and Wikander, ?Introduction? in Protecting Women. 56. For discussion, see Caroline Tuttle, Hard at Work, 228. Late imperial Russian scholars of child labor have also argued that child labor laws led to the decline of children?s employment in industries. 57. Gorshkov, ?Toward a Comprehensive Law,? 50. V. I. Lenin, ?Novyi fabrichnyi zakon? (1897). 58. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 96. 59. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 38. 60. ?Vnutrenee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 6 (Dcember 1886), 862. 239 61. Mikulin, Fabrichnaia inspektsiia, 14-15. 62. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 15. 63. ?Vnutrennee obozrenie? Vestnik Evropy 6 (December 1886), 863. 64. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt and idem, Otchet fabrichnogo inspektora Vladimirskogo okruga P. A. Peskova za 1885 g. (St. Petersburg, 1886), 25-26. 65. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 100. 66. Cited in Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 100. 67. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt and idem, Otchet fabrichnogo inspektora Vladimirskogo okruga P. A. Peskova za 1885 g. (St. Petersburg, 1886), 25-26. 68. Gessen, Trud, 65. 69. Cited in Pazhitnov, Polozhenie, 2: 28. 70. Peskov, 12-13. 71. Peskov, 12-13, 18. 72. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (15), listy 79, 85; See also Gessen, Trud, 111. 73. GARF, fond 102, opis? 42, delo 34 (15), listy 1-132. 74. Svod otchetov fabrichnykh inspectorov za 1914 g. (Petrograd, 1915). See also Rashin, Formirovanie rabochego klassa Rossii. 75. Semanov, Peterburgskie 76. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 60. 77. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 65. 78. A. A. Mikulin, Prichiny i sledstviia neschastnykh sluchaev s rabochimi na fabrikakh i 240 zavodakh: Statisticheskoe issledovanie (Odessa: Iuzhnoe obshchestvo pechatnogo dela, 1898), prilozheniia, p. 7. 79. Gessen, Zakonodatel?stvo, 100. 80. Kirov, Na zare, 65, Zaitsev, 16. 81. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 86. 82. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 87-88. 83. Balabanov, Ocherki p istorii rabochego klassa 3: 150; Gessen, Trud, 258; The figures on the wages for 1905 and 1910 are cited in I. M. Pushkareva, Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v period reaktsii, 1907-1910 (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 50. 84. Gessen, Trud, 250-251. 85. Dement?ev, Fabrika, 181. 86. Gessen, Trud, 64-111. 87. Gessen, Trud, 111. 88. ?Biulleten? Ministerstva Truda? (June 10 1917) GARF, fond 4100, opis? 1, delo 69 (1917), list 3; Gessen, Trud, 111. 89. A. Anikst, ?Edinstvo organov po uchetu i raspredeleniiu rabochei sily,? Ekonomicheskaia zhizn? June 29, 1919. 90. For discussion of this issue, see Alan Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened. Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press,1994); Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution. Soviet Family 241 Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge, U.K., New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapter 2; Margaret K. Stolee, ?Homeless Children in the USSR, 1917- 1957,? Soviet Studies 40 (1988); and Boris B. Gorshkov, ?Children?s Commission? Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History (2005). 91. Kitanina, Rabochie, 176. 92. Gorshkov, A Life under Russian Serfdom, 54-57. 93. Gorshkov, ?Serfs on the Move,? 652-563. 94. This idea has been emphasized by some British scholars of education. See Kirby, Child Labor, 114. 95. For further discussion of these early educational establishments, see Liudmila V. Koshman, ?Fabrichnye shkoly v Rossii v pervoi polovine XIX v.,? Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Istoria 2 (1976): 20-23. 96. Koshman, ?Fabrichnye shkoly,? 23; Laverychev, Tsarizm i rabochii, 16. 97. ?Voskresnye shkoly v Moskve,? Ekonom 22 (Moscow, 1846), 166. 98. RGIA, f. 560, op. 38 (1844), d. 499, l. 23. 99. RGIA, f. 560, op. 38 (1846), d. 530, l. 112. 100. TsIAM, f. 17, op. 97 (1845), d. 81, l. 395. 101. The issue of rural schools after 1861 is thoroughly discussed in Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986). 242 102. Andreev, Rabota, 172. 103. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 86. 104. Mikhailovskii, O deatel?nosti, 89; Istoriia rabochego klassa Rossii, 1861-1900 L. M. Ivanov, ed. et al (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 126. 105. Peskov, Fabrichnyi byt, 26. 106. RGIA, f. 560, op. 38 (1846), d. 530, l. 112. 107. Mikhailovskii, O deiatel?nosti, 92. 108. Istoriia rabochegoklassa, 127. 109. N. A. Ivanova, Promyshlennyi tsentr Rossii, 1907-1914 (Moscow: Inst. rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1995), 266. 110. Ivanova, 266. 111. Ivanova, Promyshlennyi tsentr, 266. 112. Melancon, Anatomy, 59-60. 113. G. A. Arutiunov, Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v period novogo revoliutsionnogo pod?ema, 1910-1914 (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 41. 114. Melancon, Anatomy, 87. 115. Cited in Melancon, Anatomy, 59. 116. Kirov, Na zare, 94. 117. P. I. Kabanov et al., Ocherki istorii rossiiskogo proletariata, 1861-1917 (Moscow: Izd. sotsial?no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1963), 54. 243 118. Gessen, Istoriia zakonodatel?stva, 79. 119. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 100; Iskra 14 (1902). 120. Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v 1901-1904 gg. Sbornik dokumentov L. M. Ivanov, I. M. Pushkareva, ed. et al (Leningrad: Nauka, 1975), nos 68, 69, 70. RGIA, fond 1405 (Ministerstvo iustitsii) opis? 104, delo 3315, listy 4-4a. 121. Rabochee dvizhenie, no 29. 122. Iskra 85 (1905). 123. Kirov, Na zare, 96-99. 124. Kirov, Na zare, 99. 125. Kirov, Na zare, 102-103. 126. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 84. 127. Kirov, Na zare, 106. 128. Bund was the All-Jewish Union of Workers. It was organized in 1897 and in 1921 it became a part of the Communist Party. Kirov, Na zare, 124. 129. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 110. 130. Kirov, Na zare, 112. 131. Cited in Kirov, Na zare, 124. 132. For this interpretation of late imperial Russian political culture, see Michael Melancon, ?Popular Political Culture in Late Imperial Russia (1800-1917)? Russian History/Histoire Russe 31 (Winter 2004): 369-71 and Michael Melancon and Alice Pate, 244 ?Bakhtin Contra Marx and Lenin: A Polyphonic Approach to Russia?s Labor and Revolutionary Movements? Russian History/Histoire Russe 31 (Winter 2004): 387-417. 245 CONCLUSION This dissertation fills an almost obscured page in the history of imperial Russia. It reveals that children, as a considerable part of the country?s industrial workforce, played an unexpectedly large role in Russia?s industrialization. As noted, child productive labor had existed long before modernized industries arose in Russia. Children had been involved in agriculture and cottage industries from time immemorial. They also worked in state and manorial enterprises. Child labor had traditionally found broad acceptance. State and society viewed it as a moral practice necessary for preparing children for adult life. Early state laws authorized the employment and apprenticeship of children. No laws attempted to prohibit child labor. When industrialization began to occur in Russia, many children eventually entered the industrial workforce. This was stimulated by developments in the countryside during the late nineteenth century that led many families with their children to seek employment in cities and industries. This phenomenon was also encouraged by the wide acceptance of child labor and by the absence of laws that could have restricted children?s employment in industry. The crucial role children played in industrialization reflected not only the large number of child workers but also pertained to the actual production process, which, according to entrepreneurs? own testimony, they had designed to function with children?s 246 input. Although widely accepted in pre-industrial Russia, toward the end of the nineteenth century child labor came under attack. The new industrial environment proved itself dangerous for children?s health. This dissertation suggests that children were more vulnerable to work-related injuries then adult workers. The decline in the health of children who worked in industries provoked serious concern and debates about children?s factory employment. A considerable transformation of the legislation about the employment and work of children followed during the late imperial period. This dissertation places the laws that limited child labor and introduced education and welfare in an historical and intellectual context. The ongoing public debates during the 1860s and 1870s about children?s welfare, employment, and work altered the attitudes of legislators toward child labor and childhood. The debates provided a crucial theoretical foundation for the labor protection legislation of the second half of nineteenth century. Unlike the early legislation that had tended to be quite specific, the laws of the 1880s and the following decades became ever more systematic and comprehensive. They dealt not only with the minimum work day and employment age but sought to improve children?s welfare in general by addressing working conditions, health care, and the education of working children and by stipulating penalties for employers who transgressed the law. While exploring the debates about factory labor laws, this dissertation sheds some new light on the process of imperial Russian lawmaking. Contrary to the dominant historiographical view of imperial Russia with its emphasis on strictly power relations, the process described here suggests an interactional relationship between the late tsarist 247 state and developing civil society. The laws that resulted reflected society?s public discourses and concerns. These laws resulted from a broad public discussion and from compromises that involved state bureaucracies, various political, academic, and business groups, individuals concerned about public welfare, and to some extent even working populations. These findings problematize the conventional autocrat-centered approach which emphasizes the power of the state and tsarist bureaucracy over a weak civil society. This dissertation suggests novel ways of understanding and interpreting the late imperial Russian state as more dynamic, adaptable, and responsive to public pressures than traditional interpretations have allowed. This point does not challenge traditional views about the late tsarist regime?s ultimate political failings. It does suggest that we not exaggerate those failings, as serious as they were. Finally, the discussion of the workers? plight and the subsequent passing of legislation to ease the situation remind us that the tsarist government was willing to rely on measures of amelioration, along with the coercive ones that we usually emphasize, to cope with the labor question. Arguably, by the end of the period under discussion, these and other laws, including the workers insurance law, had the potential for significantly improving the condition of working children had the outbreak of World War I not defeated all such efforts. In the end, factory labor decisively influenced the involvement of children in the social and political events, including the revolutions that occurred in the Russian Empire during its last decades. 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary archival sources: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) [State Archive of the Russian Federation], Moscow: fond 102 ?Departament politsii? (Police Department) fond 109 ?Tret?e otdelenie sekretnoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliarii? (The Third Department) fond 4100 ?Ministerstvo truda Vremennogo Pravitel?stva? (Labor Ministry of the Provisional Government) Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (RGADA) [Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts], Moscow Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) [Russian State Historical Archive], St. Petersburg fond 1405 ?Ministerstvo iustitsii? 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Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986 Zelnik, Reginald E. Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 257 APPENDIX 1845 Decree on Children?s Employment 19262 ? August 7. Highly Approved decree of the Committee of Ministers and published on September 13. ? On the prohibition of entrepreneurs to employ children under the age of 12 for night work. The governing Senate heard the report of the Minister of Finances which stated that some businesses conduct work during day and night and the night work is particularly burdensome for under-aged workers. In order to alleviate the latter, . . . the Sovereign Emperor Highly: owners of business that conduct night work are required to sign memorandums that oblige them not to employ children under 12 years of age from midnight to 6 am. The supervision of this law?s compliance is laid on the local officials . . . . Source: Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii. 2nd series, vol 20, no 19626, p. 591. 258 Highly approved on the 1st day of June of 1882 the opinion of the State Council about the measures of restriction of work of children and juveniles in factories, works and other industrial units and about their education. I. In the change of and addition to the appropriate articles of the Law Code about children of both sexes who work in factories, plants and manufacturing establishments which belong to private individuals and organizations (societies, associations and companies), as well as to the state, the following rules are introduced: 1. Children under the age of twelve are not allowed for employment. 2. Children between the ages of twelve and fifteen cannot work more than 8 hours a day, not including time for breakfast, lunch and dinner, attendance at school, and rest. Their work cannot last more than 4 consecutive hours. 3. Children under the age of fifteen cannot work between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. as well as on Sundays and major holidays. 4. The children mentioned in Article 3 are prohibited from employment in such industries or for single works which are parts of these industries that are by their nature harmful or recognized as exhaustive for health. The list of such industries and occupations . . . is to be defined by the mutual agreement of the finance and interior ministries. . . 5. The owners of factories, plants and manufacturing establishments are required to provide their working children who have no diploma at least the one-class program of people?s or its equivalent school with no less than 3 hours a day or 18 hours a week in order to attend the said schools. 259 II. In order to control the implementation of the regulations of labor and education of child workers a special inspection is introduced on the following grounds: 1. Regarding the control over work and education of child workers, the areas with industries are to be divided into special districts. Their number, as well as the arrangement of provinces and areas within each district are to be approved by laws. 2. Depending on the necessity, each district has one or several inspectors. The overall supervision over all districts is handed over to the chief inspector. This inspectorate is placed under the authority of the ministry of finances? Trade and Manufacture Department. 3. The district inspectors are responsible to the chief inspector and relate to the local provincial and local authorities on the same basis as all other officials of the Finance Ministry who belong to the provincial government. . . 4. Inspectors are obliged to 1) oversee the compliance with the laws on child labor and education of working children; 2) file with the local police protocols about violations of the said laws and submission of these protocols to the appropriate legal institutions; and 3) bring to court persons responsible for violations. . . 5. Detailed provisions for responsibilities and procedures are set up in a special instruction to be approved by the Ministry of Finances with the agreement of the Ministries of the Interior and Education. 6. The authority of the inspectorate. . . does not spread to factories, plants and manufacturing establishments which belong to the state or government. Control over 260 labor and education of children employed in these enterprises is placed on those appointed persons who manage them. III. The provisions of the Part I are to be enacted on May 1 1883. 261 Testimony of worker Petr Afanas?ev On April the 2nd of 1857 in Lefortovo private police house the following were inquired and testified: My name is Petr Afanas?ev, I am 18 years old, Orthodox Christian, take confession and holy communion every year, and literate. I am a serf of Klemovo village, Venevsk uezd of Tula province, of landlord Durnovo. I am currently employed as a worker in the merchant Nosov?s factory. My duties include the supervision of the helping boys who work on the shearing machines and stand at each machine in order to straighten the cloth going through the shafts. There are six such boys. Last March, the 23rd, at 8 o?clock in the morning, right before breakfast, one of the boys, peasant son Andrei Agapov, somehow, I do not know for sure how, got his hand into the machine and had two middle fingers injured. As I dare say, he probably got into the machine because of his own carelessness because I always supervise the boys and none of them engaged in pranks but each stands with machines in his right place. . . . To the above testimony signature is affixed. Andrei Afanas?ev 262 Testimony of the boy Andrei Agapov On April the 5th, 1857 in Lefortovo private residence house... from the hospital for workers... peasant boy Andrei Agapov, 16 years old, of landlord Vasil?chikov testified during the questioning: I am Orthodox, take confession and holy communion every year. I am literate but cannot affix my signature because of the illness of my right hand of which the fingers were injured. I am living at the mill of merchant Nosov since the Autumn of last 1856 [and work] as a helping boy on the shearing machine. Last March, the 23rd, right before the breakfast, when I was on my duty with a fellow of mine Nikifor Nikifirov on the sides of the machine, in order to straight the cloth which moves upon the shaft into the machine. I began to correct the cloth that had just began to jam..., two fingers of my right hand went with the cloth on the knifes which cut nap. These knifes cut off the nail to the bone on my middle finger and cut off flesh to the bone on the fourth one. . . . After the local physician dressed the wounds, I was immediately sent to a hospital.