The Slavery of Our Times

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Chapter I: Goods-porters who work thirty-seven hours

An acquaintance of mine who works on the Moscow-Kursk Railway as a weigher, in the course of conversation mentioned to me that the men who load the goods on to his scales work for thirty-seven hours on end.

Though I had full confidence in the speaker's truthfulness I was unable to believe him. I thought he was making a mistake, or exaggerating, or that I misunderstood something.

But the weigher narrated the conditions under which this work is done so exactly that there was no room left for doubt. He told me that there are two hundred and fifty such goods-porters at the Kursk station in Moscow. They were all divided into gangs of five men, and were on piece-work, receiving from one rouble to iR. 15 (say two shillings to two and fourpence, or forty-eight cents to fifty-six cents) for one thousand poods (over sixteen tons) of goods received or dispatched.

They come in the morning, work for a day and a night at unloading the trucks, and in the morning, as soon as the night is ended, they begin to reload, and work on for another day. So that in two days they get one night's sleep.

Their work consists of unloading and moving bales of seven, eight, and up to ten poods (say 252, 280 and up to nearly 364 pounds). Two men place the bales on the backs of the other three who carry them. By such work they earn less than a ruble (two shillings, or forty-eight cents) a day. They work continually without holiday.

The account given by the weigher was so circumstantial that it was impossible to doubt it, but, nevertheless, I decided to verify it with my own eyes, and I went to the goods-station.

Finding my acquaintance at the goods-station, I told him that I had come to see what he had told me about. "No one I mention it to believes it," said I.

Without replying to me, the