Page:Tolstoy - Slavery.djvu/30

24 piece-work, receiving from 1 rouble to R. 1.15 (say 2s. to 2s. 4d.) for one thousand poods (over sixteen tons) of goods received or despatched. They come in the morning, work all day and all night at unloading the trucks, and, when the night is ended, they again begin to reload, and then 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 eighteen, twenty, and up to nearly twenty-six stone). Two men place the bales on the backs of the other three, who carry them. By such work they earn less than a rouble (2s.) a day. They work continually, without holidays.

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 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 weigher called to someone in a shed: "Nikíta, come here."

From the door appeared a tall, lean workman in a torn coat.

"When did you begin work?"

"When? Yesterday morning."

"And where were you last night?"