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Origins of Labor Policy in the Russian Coal and Steel Industry, 1874–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Susan P. McCaffray
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History at Wake Forest University, Box 7806, Winston-Salem, NC 27109.

Abstract

In the southern Russian coal and steel region between 1874 and 1900, labor policy was outlined by the Russian managers of predominantly foreign firms through the Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers. This policy was shaped by chronic labor shortage, by the strained relations between industry and local government, and by managers' sensitivity to their position as spokesmen for foreign interests. The posture southern managers developed was that of welfare capitalism. Considerable expenditure on wages and welfare, however, did not establish labor peace.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

1 A fine study of labor-management practices in St. Petersburg is Hogan, Heather J., “Labor and Management in Conflict: The St. Petersburg Metal-Working Industry, 1900–1914,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1981),Google Scholar and her article Industrialization and the Roots of Labor of Labor Militance in the St. Petersburg Metalworking Industry, 1901–1914,Russian Review, 42 (04 1983), pp. 163190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One work which considers the capital's labor force in the earlier years is Zelnik, Reginald E., Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855–1870 (Stanford, 1971).Google Scholar Moscow's work force is described by Johnson, Robert E., Peasant and Proletarian: The Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, 1979);Google ScholarEngelstein, Laura, Moscow, 1905: Working-class Organization and Political Conflict (Stanford, 1982);Google Scholar and Koenker, Diane, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, 1981).Google Scholar See also Bonnell, Victoria E., Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900–1914 (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar Works which touch upon labor-management relations from the management side include Owen, Thomas C., Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (Cambridge, 1981);Google ScholarKing, Victoria, “The Emergence of the St. Petersburg Industrial Community, 1870–1905,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley, 1982);Google Scholar and Rieber, Alfred J., Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, 1982). Soviet scholarship stresses the development of a labor movement through increasing working-class consciousness and under the auspices of the Social Democrats, but has so far little addressed the dynamics of labor-management relations. The best work continues to be found in careful studies of working-class life and development such asGoogle ScholarIvanov, L. M. et al. , eds., Rossiiskii proletariat: oblik, bor'ba, gegemoniia [The Russian proletariat: character, struggle, hegemony] (Moscow, 1970);Google Scholar and Kirianov, Iu. I., Zhiznennyi uroven' rabochikh rossii [Russian workers' standard of living] (Moscow, 1979). The quotation is from Hogan, “Labor and Management in Conflict,” p. 94.Google Scholar

2 McCaffray, Susan P., “The New Work and the Old Regime: Workers, Managers and the State in the Coal and Steel Industry of Ekaterinoslav Province, 1905–1914,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1983), p. 286.Google Scholar

3 Donbas coal production increased 500 percent between 1887 and 1900, far outstripping the sub-Moscow basin; the Donbas surpassed Urals pig iron production in 1895 and Urals steel production in 1896. See Khromov, P. A., Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii v XIX–XXvv [The economic development of Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries] (Moscow, 1950), pp. 456–58. On the origins and growth of Donbas mining and metallurgical industries, seeGoogle ScholarBakulev, G. D., Razvitie ugol'noi promyshlennosti [The development of the coal industry] (Moscow, 1955);Google ScholarMcKay, John P., Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago, 1970);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, Chaps. 6, 8; Strumilin, S. G., Istoriia chernoi metallurgii S.S.S.R. [History of Ferrous Metallurgy] (Moscow, 1967);Google Scholar and Yurick, Edward F., “The Russian Adventure: Belgian Investments in Imperial Russia,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1959).Google Scholar

4 McKay, Pioneers, p. 36. Determining the actual amount of real investment capital supplied by foreigners is fraught with difficulty. A fine discussion of the data and its limitations is found inGoogle ScholarCarstensen, Fred, “Numbers and Reality: A Critique of Foreign Investment Estimates in Tsarist Russia,” in Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice, ed., La position internationale de la France (Paris, 1977), pp. 275–83; see also Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, p. 225, fn. 17.Google Scholar

5 The numbers on the proportion of firms employing native engineers and managers come from the lists of delegates to the annual meetings of the S'ezd S'ezdov Gornopromyshlennikov Iuga Rossii [The Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers] (SGIR); such lists were published at the beginning of the Trudy [Transactions] of each session. See, for example, SGIR, Trudy 7–28 s'ezdov [Transactions of the 7–28th congresses] (Kharkov, 18821904). In 1894 Briansk Rail employed five native engineers, Franco-Russian employed three, South Russian Dnieper two, and New Russian three. See Spisok gornym inzheneram [List of mining engineers] (St. Petersburg, 1894), pp. 347–59. It should be noted that the description “Russian” to describe these men is not really accurate: as a group they embodied great ethnic and religious diversity, and the group of southern engineers included many Poles, Ukrainians, Russified Germans, and Jews. Here “Russian” is used, regretfully, to connote subjects of the tsar and natives of the Russian Empire.Google Scholar

6 The Russian name of the organization is S'ezd S'ezdov Gornopromyshlennikov luga Rossii. Thomas C. Owen, who has proposed a rational system of naming over 80 Russian business organizations, translates the title “South Russian Coal and Iron Association.” Here, however, I follow the translation employed by Rieber, who offers the only substantial account of its activities in English in Merchants and Entrepreneurs, pp. 233–43. Owen's list is found in his unpublished paper, “A System of English-Language Titles of Business Organizations in the Russian Empire, 1816–1913,” and I am grateful to him for bringing it to my attention. Soviet studies which touch on the Southern Association includeGoogle ScholarLure, E. S., Organizatsiia i organizatsii torgovo-promyshlennykh interesov v Rossii [Organization and organizations of Russian commercial and industrial interests] (St. Petersburg, 1913);Google Scholar and Shpolianskii, D. I., Monopolii ugol'no-metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti iuga Rossii v nachale XXv [Monopolies of the coal and metallurgical industry of South Russia in the early twentieth century] (Moscow, 1953). Besides publishing proceedings of its annual meetings, the Association also published ajournal,Google ScholarGornozavodskii listok [Mining and metallurgical leaflet] (Kharkov, 19051909), renamed Gorno-zavodskoe delo [Mining and metallurgical affairs] (Kharkov, 1910–1914), and several special studies. The one history of the Association isGoogle ScholarFomin, P. I., Istoriia s'ezdov gornopromyshlennikov iuga Rossii [History of the Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers] (Kharkov, 1908).Google Scholar See also Auerbakh, A. A., “Vospominaniia o nachale razvitiia kamennougol'noi promyshlennosti v Rossii,” [Memories of the origins of the Russian coal industry] Russkaia starina [The Russian past] 138 (1909), pp. 451–72, especially pp. 461–62.Google Scholar

7 The survey concluded that the summer labor force was only 11,504, though 20,470 were needed. See Trudy ekstrennago s'ezda [Transactions of the special congress] (Kharkov, 1893), pp. 4251.Google Scholar

8 Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis' imperii, 1897 g., 13: Ekarerinoslavskaia gub. [The first all-Russian imperial census, 1897, 13: Ekaterinoslav Province] (St. Petersburg, 1904), pp. 140–41;Google ScholarRashin, A. G., Formirovanie rabochego klassa Rossii [Formation of the Russian working class] (Moscow, 1958), p. 30.Google Scholar

9 SGIR, Trudy 7 s'ezda [Transactions of the 7th congress], pp. 158–59.Google Scholar

10 See Spencer, Elaine Glovka, Management and Labor in Imperial Germany: Ruhr Industrialists as Employers, 1896–1914 (New Brunswick, 1984), pp. 7172.Google Scholar

11 SGIR, Trudy 7 s'ezda [Transactions of the 7th congress], p. 243.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., pp. 219–44; the 1903 figure is in SGIR, Trudy 28 s'ezda [Transactions of the 28th congress] vol. 2: question 18, p. 1. The fund's official name was Obshchestvo Posobiia Uvechnym Gornorabochim.Google Scholar

13 For details on the medical services provided by several firms, see Gornozavodskie, Fabrichnye i Rudnichnye Vrachi Ekaterinoslavskoi Gubernii, Trudy l s'ezda [Metallurgical, factory and mine doctors of Ekaterinoslav Province, Transactions of the first congress] (Ekaterinoslav, 1903), esp. pp. 63–64, 76.Google Scholar

14 SGIR, Trudy 7 s'ezda [Transactions of the 7th congress], p. 244.Google Scholar

15 Svod otcherov fabrichnykh inspektorov, 1901 [Collected factory inspectors' reports, 1901] (St. Petersburg, 1903), pp. 162–65; and SGIR, Kamennougol'naia promyshlennost' Rossii v 1913 [The Russian coal industry in 1913],Google Scholar cited in Pazhitnov, K. A., Polozhenie rabochego kiassa v Rossii [The situation of the Russian working class], vol. 3 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1924), p. 51.Google Scholar These averages, of course, obscure enormous seasonal, occupational, and regional diversity. A careful discussion of wages in the Ruhr is found in Spencer, Management and Labor in Imperial Germany, pp. 80–86. The feeling that dangerous work merited higher pay was prevalent outside Russia too. British miners claimed in 1896 that since their work was more dangerous than that of lawyers, they should earn at least as much.Google Scholar See Stearns, Peter N., Lives of Labour: Work in a Maturing Industrial Society, (London, 1975), p. 278.Google Scholar

16 SGIR, Trudy 12 s'ezda [Transactions of the 12th congress] (Kharkov, 1887), p. 336.Google Scholar

17 See Stearns's, Peter compilation of strike demands in Britain, Belgium, France, and Germany in Lives of Labour, pp. 372–94, in which he does not list living conditions as a grievance category. My own study of data available on Ekaterinoslav strikes suggests that living conditions were a concern mentioned between Sand 10 percent of the time. See McCaffray, “The New Work and the Old Regime,” p. 286. Certainly wage and pay demands can be read as a way to improve living conditions, but nonetheless workers in the Donbas explicitly sought improvements in medical care and housing at company expense.Google Scholar

18 Liberman, L. A., “Usloviia truda gornorabochikh v Donetskom basseine” [The working conditions of Donbas miners], Vestnik fabrichnago zakonodatel'stva i professional'noi gigieny (VFZPG) [Journal of factory legislation and professional hygiene], 1 (01 1905), pp. 128.Google Scholar On the sources of labor-management confrontation and the living conditions in the Donbas, see Ekarerinoslavshchina v revoliuisii 1905–1907 gg.: dokumenty i marerialy [Ekatennoslav in the revolution of 1905–1907: documents and materials] (Dnepropetrovsk, 1975);Google ScholarLiashchenko, I. I., “Usloviia truda na rudnikakh donetskago basseina,” [Working conditions in the mines of the Donbas], Obshchestvennyi vrach [Public doctor], 2 (1914), pp. 269–78 and 3 (1914), pp. 422–38;Google ScholarMekhmandarov, V. A., “Zabolevaemost' gornorabochikh na iuge Rossii” [Morbidity of miners in South Russia], VFZPG, 2 (02 1905), pp. 5266; 3 (Mar. 1905), pp. 27–54; andGoogle ScholarPankratova, Anna M., ed., Rabochee dvizhenie v XIX V.: sbornik dokumeniov i mazerialov [The workers' movement in the nineteenth century: a collection of documents and materials], (Moscow, 1955).Google Scholar

19 Vestnik Ekaterinoslavskago Zemstva [Ekaterinoslav Zemstvo Herald], 25 Aug 1905, p. 862. The average share of taxes contributed by industry for all eight Ekaterinoslav districts was 44.6 percent.Google Scholar

20 For a good general discussion of European welfare discussions and programs at the turn of the century, see Thane, Pat, The Foundations of the Welfare State (New York, 1982), pp. 101–25. Thane states that though most “developing” countries experienced a rising interest in welfare questions, the nature of their response “varied according to the prevailing ideologies, economic and social structures of each society” (p. 123).Google Scholar

21 As early as 1882 the Southern Association called for “a more fair and just basis for establishing zemstvo taxes,” but this petition was not at that point linked to the welfare question; SGIR, Trudy 7 s'ezda [Transactions of the 7th congress], question 8, p. xxix. From the 1890s on, however, taxes and welfare were linked in Association rhetoric. Interest in the reassessment process remained high at meetings through 1914. See, for example,Google ScholarSGIR, Trudy 39 s'ezda [Transactions of the 39th congress] (Kharkov, 1914), vol. 2, p. 60.Google Scholar

22 See von Ditmar, N. F., “Ob otnosheniiakh vrachebno-sanitar'nago dela iuzhnykh gornopromyshlennykh predpriiatii k zemstvu,” [Concerning the zemstvo's relationship to the medical and sanitation affairs of southern mining enterprises], SGIR, Trudy 28 s'ezda [Transactions of the 28th congress], vol. 1, p. 20.Google Scholar

23 Fenin, A. I., Vospominaniia inzhenera: k istorii obshchestvennogo i khoziaistvennogo razvitiia Rossii, 1883–1906 gg [Memoirs of an engineer: toward a history of the social and economic development of Russia, 1883–1906] (Prague, 1938), p. 50.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 133.

26 Ia. Priadkin, D., “O nedostatke rabochikh na rudinkakh Donetskago Basseina” [Concerning the shortage of workers in the Donbas mines], Report on question 3, Trudy 37 s'ezda [Transactions of the 37th congress].Google Scholar

27 These positions were articulated in floor debates and in resolutions approved by the SGIR at annual meetings in Kharkov between 1905 and 1914. See SGIR, Trudy 29–39 s'ezdov [Transactions of the 29th-39th congresses] (Kharkov, 19051914). The sincerity of labor's demands was especially the subject of the November 1906 meeting;Google ScholarTrudy 31 s'ezda [Transactions of the 31st congress] (Kharkov, 1906), vol. 3, pp. 2133;Google Scholar and the impassioned speech by L. G. Rabinovich, pp. 62–63. Zemstvo taxation and representation surfaced at virtually every meeting. On the need for a national income tax, see the remarks of Kgaevskii, S. S. in Trudy 33 s'ezda [Transactions of the 33rd congress] (Kharkov, 1908), vol. 3, p. 131;Google Scholar serious discussion of national accident and health insurance began in 1908, Trudy 33 s'ezda, vol. 3, pp. 33–39; and reaction to the 1912 insurance law is found in the meeting record for that year:Google Scholarvon Ditmar, N. F., “O podgotovitel'nykh rabotakh po vvedeniiu zakonov o strakhovanii rabochikh” [Preparing for the introduction of the law on workers' insurance], Trudy 37 s'ezda [Transactions of the 37th congress] (Kharkov, 1912).Google Scholar