On the Possibility of Studying the Wage Inequality of Mining Workers and Employees in the Period from 1861 to the Beginning of the XX Century. According to the Documents of the Siberian Archives

The analysis of wage inequality of mining workers and employees is carried out as part of a research project to study income inequality in Russia. The purpose of this work is to analyze the identified archival sources from the point of view of their informational potential for studying wage inequality of mining workers and employees in the regional dimension. The relevance of the appeal to the materials of the Siberian archives is due to the need to identify data on salaries and incomes of mining workers and employees for the period from 1861 to the beginning of the XX century. For European Russia, the available published sources and archival materials have already made it possible to conduct a number of studies on income inequality in the pre-revolutionary period. Although, as L.I. Borodkin notes, there are few such studies ^{[1, p.19]}.

A fundamental study of income and property inequality of the population of the European part of the Russian Empire was conducted by B.N. Mironov, indicating, among other things, the methodology for studying property inequality ^{[2; 3, pp. 96-104]}. Foreign authors also addressed the topic of inequality, who also concluded that income inequality was poorly studied during the period under review, and also limited their research to the European part of the Russian Empire ^{[4, p. 767-798; 5, p. 189-223]}.

Another aspect that determines the relevance of the topic of the article is that in the few studies on economic inequality in pre-revolutionary Russia that are available today, wage inequality is mainly considered in the manufacturing industry, and the mining industry practically did not fall into the attention of researchers.

One of the reasons for the infrequent attention of researchers to the topic of economic inequality in pre-revolutionary Russia in general, and Siberia in particular, are the features of the preserved source base, which are explained by the history of labor statistics and statistical institutions in the field during the period under review, as well as the history of local archives. If for the period after the 1920s there are extensive statistical data on the salaries of workers and employees in Siberia, including published ones, then for an earlier period, especially for the 1860-1890s, such statistical information has practically not been preserved. In this regard, there is a need to refer specifically to archival documents to identify and analyze information about the wages of different categories of workers and employees.

Before proceeding to the consideration of sources, it is necessary to briefly outline the features of the development of the mining industry in the territory under consideration in the pre-revolutionary period. The mining industry in the Altai Mining District developed during the period under review within the framework of the cabinet economy. Until 1861, the mining enterprises used the labor of assigned workers. The remuneration of all categories of workers and employees, including administrative workers, was established by the staffing table of 1849. With the introduction of free labor during 1862-1863, the form of remuneration and salary amounts for newly hired workers, from which artels were formed, were changed and began to be stipulated in contracts. The exception was the private gold industry, which was actively developed in the 1860s in the territory under consideration. Here the labor of free workers was used, who were hired both by themselves and as part of artels. The owners set the wages for private gold mines themselves. After the introduction of free labor, state-owned gold mines could not fully compete with private ones, and in the first half of the 1870s, gold mining at the expense of factory funds ceased. The abolition of forced labor had a negative impact on most other mining enterprises: the number of employees at them gradually decreased, productivity fell and production volumes decreased.

The above-described features of the mining industry development arouse even greater interest in analyzing the differentiation in wages of workers and employees in the conditions of production reduction at various enterprises of the Altai Mining District and in comparison of salaries with neighboring districts.

Descriptions of salaries of workers and employees at mining enterprises in Siberia in general and the Altai Mining District in particular are found in small numbers in published sources of the late XIX – early XX centuries ^[6-8]. They can also be considered as sources for studying income inequality.

Thus, in the work of V.I. Semevsky, who relied on archival materials (some of which have not survived to our time), a description of the economic situation of different categories of workers in private and cabinet gold fields in Siberia was given, the terms of employment, the size and forms of remuneration were prescribed ^[6,7]. The value of his work also lies in the fact that it covers a period poorly reflected in the preserved archival materials, it is about the 1860s-1870s. In general, the chronological framework of a two-volume study of private and state-owned gold mines in Siberia is indicated by the author from the inception of the gold industry until the mid-1890s. Semevsky V.I. on the basis of archival documents, including on the basis of settlement books from five cabinet crafts, containing information about settlements with 612 workers of these crafts, compared the terms of employment and remuneration of labor in state-owned gold mines. He also analyzed the terms of contracts in 1862, 1864 and 1867 for employees of different qualifications employed at state-owned mines, and compared the conditions with private mines, which allows using his work as a source for studying wage inequality in various aspects. In addition, he showed a change in the average size of the earnings of hired workers in the 1860s and 1870s, gave a description of the average budget of a worker at cabinet and private mines, gave descriptions of private cases related to wages, etc. ^{[6, pp. 368-486]}. In the second volume of the study, V.I. Semevsky gave data on earnings in the mines in the 1870s-1890s over a more extensive territory of Siberia ^[7]. Considering that many of the documents on which V.I. Semevsky relied in his research have not been preserved, his work is a valuable source for the topic under consideration.

Another pre-revolutionary published source can be considered the work of I.I. Tyzhnov on the mining population of Altai in the Altai Collection. In the fifth chapter, I.I. Tyzhnov gave some data on the remuneration of various categories of mining workers, including according to the staffing table of 1849 ^{[8, pp. 143-148]}. However, unlike V.I. Semevsky, he did not make comparisons of earnings. In general, this work can be used as a source expanding the information given in the study of V.I. Semevsky.

These published sources formed the basis of those few studies on the salaries of Siberian miners that were conducted in the second half of the XX century and in the XXI century. In particular, the issues of remuneration, wage dynamics and living standards of workers at mining enterprises and mines in Siberia were studied in detail by V.P. Zinoviev ^[9]. His research presents the period of the late XIX – early XX centuries, for earlier years similar information can be found, in particular, in the collective monograph "The Working class of Siberia in the pre-October period" ^[10]. It should be noted that the problem of inequality and income differentiation among different professions and groups was not the main purpose of these studies, but they can be considered significant for the topic of our study in terms of information about the level, type and dynamics of wages.

As mentioned above, one of the main reasons for the lack of research on income inequality in pre-revolutionary Siberia is the peculiarity of the source base: its small number and unsystematic nature. In this regard, it is extremely important to continue identifying archival materials, as well as analyzing the documents already identified for the possibility of studying income and wage inequality based on them. Previously, we have already identified the features of the source base, and also identified the information potential of the funds of the State Archive of the Altai Territory (hereinafter GAAK) ^{[11, pp. 134-143; 12, pp. 21-30]}. This article presents a detailed description of documents with information about wages identified in the GAAK and the State Archive of the Tomsk Region (hereinafter GATO), and also examines the information potential of archival funds of the Kemerovo region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

When studying the size of wages in institutions and enterprises of the mining and mining sector, two groups of sources are distinguished, which differ significantly in the number of preserved documents, the systematic nature of information and the uniformity of content:

1. Documents with information about the salary (salary) of full-time ranks / employees.

2. Documents with information about the wages of different categories of workers: freelance and contract, in basic and auxiliary jobs, adults, adolescents and minors, in government and private jobs. According to the place of work, the following categories of employees can be distinguished and, accordingly, documents reflecting their earnings can be described:

1) on private and state-owned gold mines;

2) in the mines;

3) in factories and factories;

4) in the institutions of the mining industry;

5) in institutions of the non-mining sphere.

We are talking not only about workers, but also about employees who were present at each of the designated places, or held positions in various administrative institutions of the mining industry and beyond.

From the identified archival documents in the GAAK and GATO funds, the first group of sources (on the salary (salary) of staff ranks/employees) includes demanding payroll statements, form lists and lists of ranks/employees, as well as statements of income subject to income tax. The latter will not be considered in this article, as they were described in the study earlier ^[11].

The main source in this group can be considered form lists and lists of ranks, which are almost identical in content of information. The GAAC documents contain formulary lists and lists of ranks/employees for factories, mines, mines, Kolyvan Grinding Factory, Barnaul Main Laboratory, Drawing Room, Forest Management, Barnaul District School and Barnaul Hospital. Medical ranks for factories and mines of the Altai Mining District are listed separately in the lists. Both the form lists and the lists of ranks collectively cover the entire period we are studying. These documents were compiled in order to account for the passage of service for each employee, and in them, among other things, there is an indication of the rank, position held and the required salary (salary) per year.

At the moment, there is information about 2500 form lists and identical documents from the GAAC funds, on the basis of which M.A. Arshakyan created a database in MS Access a few years ago ^[13].  All database records cover the period from the beginning of the XIX century.  by 1919 140 entries have been made since 1861. The database in its original form did not contain salary data, so at the moment we are supplementing it with this information, as well as making new entries from newly identified form lists and lists of ranks. In the future, it may be expanded by including formulary lists from the collections of other Siberian archives (GATO, the Kuzbass State Archive and the Krasnoyarsk Territory State Archive (GACC), which also cover the period from the 1860s to the beginning of the XX century.

As is known, the salary was established in the period under review by rank or by the staff schedule of the position. Despite the established salary standards, there could be deviations from them depending on the degree of responsibility and "technical knowledge required by some positions" ^{[8, p. 143]}. Therefore, a database based on formulary lists will allow you to identify how the salaries set by the staffing table corresponded to the actual ones, to trace the difference in salaries by position, as well as by different institutions and enterprises.

Demanding statements for the issuance of salaries to employees of institutions and enterprises of the mining sector can be considered as an additional source that reflects the fact of real payment of wages by month during the reporting year. These sources are available for almost the same institutions and enterprises of the Altai Mining District as the form lists and lists of ranks. However, not all of them have statements, since 1861, most of the surviving documents relate to the period from the 1880s. Another feature is that for the same institution / enterprise there are statements not for all the years of the studied period. The best documented in this regard is the issuance of salaries to employees of the Main Laboratory, the Drawing Room and the department of private gold mines of the Altai Mining Board (for all of them there are statements starting from the 1860s-70s).

The statement itself at different enterprises and institutions could have slight differences in the form of presentation of information, but its main part was the same: the statement included an indication of the position, surname, first name, patronymic of the employee, the amount to be issued on hand. The data that were not available in all the statements include the amount of the annual salary, the amount to be paid for the month and various deductions from it. Also, the rank was not always indicated in the demanding statements. Despite these shortcomings, according to this source, it is possible to trace the presence or absence of changes in wages for different years at specific enterprises and institutions, the difference in wages per month at different enterprises and for different positions.

Unlike the first group of sources, one of the main documents from the second (on wages of different categories of workers) are just demanding statements. These documents, despite incomplete preservation, are sometimes the only ones where you can find information about the amount of wages of workers of mining enterprises and institutions.

The form of the demanding statement for the issuance of wages to workers could have even more differences at different enterprises and institutions (than in the statements on salaries of employees and lower ranks), since the form of remuneration differed: it could be piecework, daily, monthly. The remuneration of labor depended on the type and duration of the work performed, on the place of work, on the qualifications of the worker and age. In this regard, the demanding statements may or may not have indicated the type of work, the number of days for which wages are paid, the number of day laborers, the rate of output, etc., and also indicated various kinds of deductions from wages. At the same time, the position was not indicated everywhere, since laborers or art workers were paid for a specific type of work (for example, for a gold spool, for lifting rocks, transporting firewood, washing floors, etc.).

All these discrepancies in the form and types of wages and, accordingly, demanding statements that differ in the presentation of information, impose certain difficulties in studying the inequality in workers' wages. This circumstance once again leads to the need to consider sources and compare wages primarily with respect to the place of work (mine, mine or factory/factory). Despite the indicated features, the source in question makes it possible to establish the amount of wages (somewhere exactly, somewhere approximately) by type of work or by position and compare them with each other, as well as compare the payment of similar work at different enterprises and in different territories. Demanding statements for the period from 1861 to the beginning of the XX century were identified and analyzed in the funds of the GAAC, GATO, the study of the scientific reference apparatus gives reason to say that they are available in the State Archive of Kuzbass and GACC.

Another of the main sources of information on the wages of workers is "Information on labor productivity and earnings of workers of factories, mines and mines", which the Altai Mining Board and the Administration of the Altai Mining District compiled for the newspaper "Government Bulletin". This source was identified in the funds of these institutions in the GAAC, and covers the period from 1869 to 1887 ^[14,15]. Moreover, for the period 1869-1882. there are cases for each year.

The "Information" indicated the amount of workers' earnings for a year, a month (for contract workers), day labor (for free employment), plus piecework. The document in tabular form indicates factory operations and responsibilities for them, and already inside this – payment by profession / occupation. In addition to information on each enterprise, there are separate summary statements for mines and separate ones for factories, which indicate positions and the amount of payments for the day, month, 9 months and year. Thus, the advantage of this source is the systematic information for each year on a fairly large number of enterprises: Kolyvan grinding factory, 7 factories, 6 associations of mines, 3 coal mines, state-owned gold fields and mines. Therefore, it is possible to compare the amount of earnings for different types of work and at different enterprises.

All the sources listed above can be attributed to primary. There were no aggregated statistical materials showing the average wage for various positions and enterprises among the archival documents. The only source where information on average wages was found are reports on private gold mines/fisheries and private mining, as well as statements on gold mining and sand washing. These documents are contained in the fund of the Altai Mining Board ^[16], the Tomsk Mining Department ^[17] and the District Engineer of the Tomsk Mining District ^[18].

The reports provided in text form the sizes of the minimum and maximum average wages in the mines of a certain district as a whole without division by specific mines. In some reports, you can find a division of information about the amount of wages for adults, adolescents and minors, as well as for mining and auxiliary work. The statements on gold mining and sand washing list the mines in tabular form with an indication of the owner, the size of the mine, etc., in one of the columns the average working fee for the operation is given (the operation meant the period of operation of the mine in a year). In both sources there is no indication of the type of work, since workers performed almost the same types of work at the mines and were obliged to develop a certain norm (lesson). The Vedomosti has a wide territorial coverage (Tobolsk-Akmola district, Altai Mountain, South Yenisei, Achinsk-Minusinsk, Mariinsky and Semipalatinsk regions), which makes it possible to compare the average salary at different mines in different districts. Another feature is that they characterize private mines and crafts. Information about wages at state-owned gold mines can be found in the information discussed above for the "Government Bulletin".

If we turn again to the historiography of the issue, it can be noted that it was the mines that were mainly the object of study by pre-revolutionary researchers, which again is explained by the presence of a larger body of available archival materials (including those that have not survived to our time). The earnings of workers in gold mines, especially in private ones, were the most covered by sources and information on salaries in this area for the period of the 1860s-1890s is systematic. However, the preservation of primary materials for the 1860s is currently the lowest (the gap can be partially compensated by information from published pre-revolutionary studies). In the future, relying on the data of pre-revolutionary works, as well as on preserved sources, modern researchers have already turned to the study of the economic situation of workers in the mines of Siberia. Thus, from the places of work considered at the beginning of the article (mines, mines, factories/factories and institutions of Siberia), mines in the question of the economic situation of workers are more or less studied by researchers today.

In general, all the materials considered allow us to compare wages for different categories of workers, with different qualifications, for different types of work and at different enterprises. The information about salaries in gold mines is most reflected in the sources, the lowest coverage is typical for employees of institutions outside the mining industry. At the same time, the greatest information potential, from our point of view, has information for the "Government Bulletin" as a source that provides systematic material on workers' salaries for 1869-1887 for the main mining enterprises and institutions. Then there are form lists reflecting the annual salaries of ranks and employees, and covering the entire period we are studying. Demanding monthly payroll statements have no less information potential, but their safety and systematicity for the 1860s and 1880s are much lower than those of the previous two sources. Statements and reports on gold mining and the work of private gold mines are more narrowly focused, reflecting the average earnings of workers at each mine, but without dividing into types of work.

In general, it is possible to identify inequality in all available materials in the complex both within each of the two designated groups (employees and freelancers) and between groups. Unfortunately, not all sources cover the studied period completely, which to some extent deprives them of systematicity and completeness, however, it is possible to supplement them with data from pre-revolutionary studies considered in this article.