A Russian coal-miner
coal industry among Russians, is the Russian engineer. Russian law provides that the chief engineer at each colliery shall be a Russian, or at least, shall possess a Russian certificate, which amounts to the same thing. There seems to be universal agreement that the Russian mining engineer is rarely a practical man. Trained in a mediocre technological school he comes to a colliery resplendent in a long coat with silver buttons and gold insignia. This coat rarely comes off. A Russian engineer never goes down into a pit if he can avoid doing so. I can testify that I usually saw them strutting about above ground, and always wearing their good clothes—looking much more like officers on parade than practical engineers. The feeling against these dressed-up theoreticians is very strong among pit-foremen, managers, and all practical miners.
If a coal-miner becomes expert in any particular line of work he may become a section-boss, but as for working up from the ranks, it is unheard of, and impossible, according to present laws. If a man desires to become a manager he must make up his mind to this before going into the mines at all, then pass a manager’s examination, after which he may never occupy any other post.
The Russian coal-miner, like most Russian workmen, persists in clinging to the inherited idea that the land is where man belongs, that the land is for the people, and his work in the mines is merely to supply him with food and raiment till the people shall come into possession of the land, when he will lay down his tools and go back to the soil. This is the prime reason for his backwardness.
The Russian coal-miner is naturally careless and lackadaisical. Time is meaningless to him. He lacks caution in his work, and handles explosives as if they were minerals as harmless as coal. The government, understanding this characteristic, largely removes responsibility from the workman and places it upon the employer by granting high compensation in cases of accident. The employer, therefore, takes extraordinary precautions through his managers. This system is by no means a bad one, for in presupposing the ignorance and carelessness of undisciplined workmen, the chance for accident is reduced to a minimum.
The government also protects the children; no boy may be employed at manual labor, or for a full day, until he has attained his fifteenth year. At the age of thirteen a boy may go into an office for half-days. To encourage schooling a boy who passes the third grade in the common schools is excused from sixteen months’ soldiering. These are comparatively recent regulations, copied, I believe, from Germany. There is no gainsaying their value and reasonableness. That such wise laws as these should be found in connection with an industry where there are such absurd restrictions as, for instance, the preventing of practical miners from becoming superiors, is typically Russian.
Not political revolution alone threatens Russia to-day. Industrially, there is every symptom of the disorganization which precedes an industrial revolution. I found Russian workmen agitating armed revolt because they wanted more land! That is the slogan of the peasants. The working-men stand for supporting the peasants in this, in order, as some of them expressed it, that they may quit the industries, and return to the land. So long as workmen look upon their work as a temporary expediency, Russia will not develop a strong working-class. But this is only incident to the transition. Revolution, armed or unarmed, must evolve change, and with the wider liberties and scope for individual development which Russia soon will have, the workmen will have opportunities to develop their own industries. For the present the prime thing is change, immediate and radical change. It matters not what the shibboleth so long as it leads to this.