Russian workmen and their “artel”
rank and file of laborers do not average above twenty dollars a month. These figures all refer to the best paid industries.
The first expenditure is for house rent. The common price for an ordinary workman’s house is four rubles, or two dollars a month. This includes two rooms and a kitchen—sometimes a cellar—frequently an outside pantry which not uncommonly contains a stove in order that in the summer months, when the heat is great, the cooking may be done outside of the main house.
Workmen’s houses in industrial Russia are of three general types. First, the houses built and owned by the companies and rented to the men, or loaned to them without cost. Second, the average workman’s house, and third, the artel, or lodging for single men.
The Company house is the poorest type. The occupants of these houses are only the poorest workmen. There are unskilled artisans in every mill and factory whose wages are small, so the Companies make up for this (in small part) by giving them the rental. These houses, if rented, would bring about one dollar or one dollar and a half per month.
One tenth of the wages goes for house rent. This is so general that it may be stated dogmatically. Men living in free houses make from ten to fifteen dollars a month. Men living in the four-ruble houses average forty rubles, or twenty to twenty-five dollars a month.
The skilled men are so few that they occupy the better type of house such as usually is occupied by foremen.
The artel, or lodging-house, is a curious institution common throughout Russia. From twelve to sixteen single men live together in specially-built houses consisting of one large, common sleeping-room, a common kitchen and eating-room, and a small ante-room for the caretaker. The caretaker is usually an old woman. She scrubs the floors, does all the chores, and acts in every capacity. The living is of the crudest and cheapest. Twelve rubles, or six dollars a month is the common price paid by each lodger. This includes food. One ruble or fifty cents additional is paid for the rent. The caretaker gets the difference between expenditures for the food and supplies and the total amount paid by the men. The sleeping accommodations are very simple. In some artels there are plank platforms one foot to eighteen inches from the floor, and on these the men lie like packed sardines; in others, each man has a crude bed. There is a stove at one end of the room, and on the walls usually colored pictures—chromos—the only decoration save the ever present icon in the corner near the ceiling.