Russia's Factory Children: State, Society, and Law, 1800–1917

3. Public Debates and Legislative Efforts

93 3 Public Debates and Legislative Efforts As noted earlier (see chapter 1), during the early nineteenth century , most state officials perceived child labor as a normal practice essential for the upbringing and education of children. Prominent statesmen and public figures, such as N. S. Mordvinov and P. S. Nakhimov, viewed child labor as morally justified and useful. During the 1860s, however, such attitudes began to languish and gradually gave way to voices that opposed child industrial labor. Unfavorable information about the impact of the new factory environment on children’s health induced contemporary commentators to question the moral aspects of employing children in industries. Many state officials and public figures began to doubt that the factory was an appropriate place for children’s apprenticeship and work. From initial approval, their attitudes shifted toward emphasizing the need for restricting the employment and labor of children. The appeal for child labor protection laws initiated by state and local bureaucrats produced an important public discussion of child industrial labor among state officials, industrialists, academicians, and all others concerned about the issue. During the 1860s and 1870s, the government organized several commissions whose purpose was to inspect labor conditions , review existing factory legislation, work out new factory labor regulations, and promote discussion of these regulations. Although the impetus for this discussion usually came from local and imperial government officials, during the 1870s, it also involved much broader segments 94    Public Debates and Legislative Efforts of society, including academics, medical circles, and industrial and other public associations, as well as journals and newspapers. The debates about child labor helped form new perceptions of children’s industrial employment and education. What impact did the debates have on general perceptions of childhood ? How did the debates change the attitude of state officials about child labor? What impact did all of this have on actual legislation about child labor? The answers to these questions are important in and of themselves, in no small measure because existing historiography has not even raised, much less exhausted, these issues. The whole matter takes on added significance, however, because it opens up an entirely new perspective on late tsarist lawmaking and governance, challenging certain long-dominant historiographical interpretations. Early Legislative Proposals and the Discussion of Child Labor By the late 1850s, government officials recognized that the existing labor regulations for private businesses—the 1835 and 1845 decrees—no longer suited contemporary needs.1 This in essence signified the beginning of the labor question in Russia, as mentioned in Reginald E. Zelnik ’s study of the early labor movement. Still, Zelnik and other scholars link the issue of early labor laws primarily to Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. This study adheres more closely to the preoccupations of state and society as expressed in the documents that emerged from the discussions and from the commissions appointed to formulate new factory regulations. These documents in fact mainly reflect concern about working conditions in factories and especially emphasize the negative impact of industrial labor on children.2 One governmental report admitted that “the frequency of work-related accidents among workers, and especially working children, requires new regulations” for factory labor.3 In 1859, the imperial government set up two commissions, one under the Ministry of Finance to review the Factory and Apprenticeship Code, and a second under the St. Petersburg governor to “thoroughly investigate ” working conditions in the city’s private factories and workshops Public Debates and Legislative Efforts    95 and formulate new employment and labor statutes for St. Petersburg.4 Both these commissions were headed by A. F. Shtakel’berg, an expert on legal issues regarding factories and workshops in Russia and Europe.5 Both commissions included local and imperial government officials, public figures, physicians, educators, and a few business representatives. The appointment of these commissions signified the beginning of a process of labor-related legislation and debates in Russia. Without exaggeration , one might say that this launched the Russian labor question. Local offices of the Ministry of the Interior and, in particular, its district medical and police departments were usually the primary institutions to consider local labor issues. On an ongoing basis, they settled labor conflicts and dealt with work-related accidents in private industries. Therefore, it was not accidental that the initiative for studying labor conditions and introducing labor protection laws came from these concerned local bureaucrats . When the St. Petersburg commission examined working and living conditions in...