Worker's Income in Western Siberia in the late XIX - early XX century

In emerging capitalism of the early XX century income of Siberian workers was often composite. The main part of it consisted of wages (for many of them it already was the only source), but the other, quite a significant part was accounted for by agriculture, crafts, home-based work, rental of residential premises etc. Significant dependence on farmsteads was observed in workers living in rural areas, as well as some categories of urban workers. However, qualified workers did not even have a private farmstead. The study of several groups of workers in Western Siberia in the early XX century showed that workers living in rural areas had the greatest reliance on land: the village Zavod Ploshchadka of the Kuznetsk district. Here, the percentage of those having farmsteads was the highest. Similar results were produced for workers of the Cabinet enterprises of the Altai territory, which is not surprising, since they lived in rural areas. However, workers of enterprises in the city of Barnaul, as seen from the «Lists», also had considerable property coming close for this indicator to workers living in rural areas. The indicators among workers of Novonikolaevsk in 1923 are completely opposite - here, the percentage of owners of all kinds of property is quite small. The indicator is even smaller among skilled workers of Tomsk in 1901, where only one candidate for the position owned a private house. Insignificant is this percentage and among workers of Tobolsk as well (1929). In the last three cases one can hardly speak of any substantial reliance on land. In other cases it is relatively large. It is also true for other categories of industrial workers of Siberia. The comparative analysis shows that the dependence of Siberian workers on agriculture was close to the all-Russian indicator which is other evidence that proves the presence in Western Siberia of developed industrial proletariat constituting a small percentage of the population though.

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