The morality of the Russian workman is mainly negative. Religion is everywhere, or, at least, ecclesiasticism. But what religion is, or means in Russia, is hard to determine. Church-going is general. The most striking building in each village and town is the church. The clatter and din of church-bells breaks out at any hour. Within are invariably garish decorations of gilt and gold. The workmen, like the peasants, always remove their hats and cross themselves many times when passing a church, and when they enter they have every appearance of piety and devotion. Russian churches do not have pews or seats: the congregation stands, or individuals (at their own will and pleasure, so far as I could discover) kneel and pray, and bow forward until their foreheads rest upon the paved floor. I have seen a cab-driver asleep upon the box of his cab when hit upon the back by a companion, awake startled, and instantly, as by instinct, whip off his hat and cross himself. On every hand are evidences of ecclesiastical power and influence. And yet—what does it stand for? One is not shocked or surprised to find a drunken priest on the street. The most devout drink to excess at stated times. They pillage, plunder and steal goods and chattels and other men’s wives. So far as one can judge religion has no grip whatever upon the hearts of the people, no influence on their conduct of life. At the same time the forms of the church are scrupulously maintained. The fasts are adhered to to the physical detriment of the people, and no house is without its icon. But there is no commandment that is not lightly broken.
It would be wrong, however, to convey the impression that the Russian workman is a drunkard. He is not. He drinks at certain stated times only, usually when he draws his pay. Drink does not seriously interfere with business in Russian industrial centers. There are drunkards in every community in Russia, as in most countries, but on the whole the per capita consumption of alcohol among the workmen is not great and with the exception of the one day in the month which follows the pay-day the workmen are not given to drunkenness; Sundays and holidays might be added.
Morality is a totally different question. A gentleman who for thirty years has been the paymaster of one of the largest “works” in Russia, went so far as to say to me: “Morality is unknown among Russian workmen.” In this respect industrial Russia to-day is not unlike industrial England immediately after the industrial revolution. The breaking-up of the homes and emigration have always resulted in a lowering of ethical and moral standards.
Compared with the English and American workman the Russian is inferior. Physically he should be capable of greater endurance and effort, for his frame is large and heavy, but weakened by his insufficient diet, and too rigid adherence to the fasts prescribed by the church, he has so undermined his strength, and so reduced his capacity, that in the run of months and years he is worth only one third of an English workman, and not more than one fourth of an American. “A Russian looks a long time at his work before he begins,” said a mine foreman to me. Figures furnished me by superintendents and employers demonstrated that the average English workman can do the work of three Russians. The Russian is listless. He does not understand the reason for hurry. To-morrow is as good as to-day. He has not been trained by discipline, nor encouraged by the reward which should accrue to the thrifty and the pushing. Looked at critically he is good raw material—but very raw and very crude. Like the country at large, the Russian workman promises well under proper conditions, and if sufficient time and capital are invested in him, he will develop an adequate earning capacity. But his religion must first be tempered with intelligence. He must learn to make the best use and the most use of his naturally strong physique, and his economic condition must so alter that it will appear to him worth his while to devote himself with more heart to his work. He must adopt a much higher standard of living, and demand recompense for his labor that will enable him to maintain that advanced standard. Under the present system industry is not rewarded by promotion. A miner, for example, can never become a stager, nor a stager an engineer. Having once taken the examination for the lower post all further advancement is precluded. Also, the line between industrialism and peasantry must be more sharply drawn. The man who is farmer in summer and plate-roller in winter may be none the less a good farmer, but he is very much less valuable as a plate-roller. The two lines of life are parallel, but they don’t interlace.
One day I climbed into a huge metal basket and was lowered twenty-five hundred feet toward the earth’s heart. The walls of the shaft were of splendid firm masonry, great blocks of stone like granite. The engines which controlled the descent were equipped with the most modern patents for haulage, automatic brakes and indicators. At another mine I gingerly placed one leg in a small wooden affair like a nail keg, grasped a hemp rope from which the keg was suspended with one hand, and was swung out over a dark well, called a shaft, and with the other hand and the other leg (the one outside the keg) maintained an unsteady balance, and saved myself from too violent contact with the sides, as two horses jogged round a ring, unwinding a drum allowing the keg and its load to go jerkily bottomward. Here the shaft sides were of timber—crude, wooden slats interlaced after the fashion of a crib.
The former was the result of the English influence; the latter was pure Russian.
Between the Russian miner and the French, Belgian, or British miner is this difference: the Russian has not the blood of coal-miners in his veins, nor the traditions of underground workers handed down to him from preceding generations. Whereas the others are generally miners by tradition and breeding, the Russian is really a peasant driven from his land to seek a living where he can find it. Mining is a casual choice with him, he would as lief be in the rolling-mill, or tending one of the coke-ovens.
This system of labor which permits workmen to spend part of the year on their farms and part in the mines and mills, is a symptom of Russia’s industrial revolution. The workers who do this are called “the go-aways,” and make up a large percentage of the workmen in the industrial districts of south Russia, with the result that they are poor agriculturists and second-rate workers. Slowly the system will pass, and industrial towns composed of a permanent population be established. The Russian peasant has been on the land so long that he has little ambition to leave it. When the land is worked out, exhausted, and the annual harvest is no longer sufficient to keep the souls and bodies of his family together, he goes off to the towns. The vast area of European Russia given solely to agriculture, makes it often necessary for the peasant to travel far to find winter employment. Thus north Russians have a journey of fifteen hundred, or two thousand miles to the south Russian mines and factories. This is a goodly distance for a peasant. When harvest-time comes year after year, the worker more and more shrinks from going back to his patch of land to reap the meager harvest, and each year some give up the thought and remain at their work. Many more, however, have a bred-in-the-bone love for the soil, and with a political revolution in the atmosphere, with a general cry from one end of the empire to the other of “Land—Land,” they come up out of the black depths of the coal-pits and back to their dessiatines in the hope that one day other dessiatines will be given them, and they may leave their proletarian life forever. Naturally, this condition does not produce miners or other workers of the best type, and hence the coal-miners of the Donitz basin do not compare favorably with the coal-miners of England or America.