… Suppose that a family lives in Moscow, consisting of a husband, a wife and only two children (and two usually come already 3 years after marriage). A husband - an official or a middle-class clerk - receives 50 rubles a month. This salary is good, because not very long ago the Minister of Finance recommended hiring mainly people with higher education in this department, and the initial salary is something about 30 rubles a month. Until recently, candidates for judicial positions served for a long time free of charge, and only recently they were assigned something about 50 rubles a month. Hospital doctors receive the same amount. Therefore, it will not be an understatement if a salary of 50 rubles is good for people without higher education.
Now we will calculate the monthly budget of this family, making the calculation for items not even the first, but the first necessity.
An apartment of 1 1/2 rooms with a kitchen is cheaper than 20 rubles. in a month it is impossible to find, and even then somewhere closer either to heaven, or to the underworld, if in the center of the city, or - at the "devil on the kulichi".
Put 5 rubles on firewood and coal for samovars and ironing. a month will not be an exaggeration.
It is impossible to spend on lighting, on average, less than one pound of kerosene per month. Let's take the worst grade at 1 rub. 20 kopecks
Tea and sugar a month, with the most extreme frugality, will come out not less than 3 rubles. (counting the smallest portion).
For lunch, dinner and breakfast for soup (or cabbage soup) and roast, take 3 pounds of beef a day, moreover, the lowest grade, the so-called human, 12 kopecks each. pound, a total of 36 kopecks per day, and 10 rubles per month. 80 kopecks Black bread (there is nothing to think about), 3 pounds a day, spices (potatoes, onions, roots, salt, etc.; perhaps there is also nothing to think about cucumbers) for 15 kopecks; total for 4 rubles. 50 kopecks per month.
For one of the children, milk porridge is required; counting only 10 kopecks. per day, you get 3 rubles per month.
Promotional video:
Water carrier 1 ruble per month.
Minor expenses: postage stamps, paper and envelopes, ink, pens, pencils, wax for cleaning boots, needles and thread for sewing and darning, breaking dishes and lamp glasses, matches, etc. - put 2 rubles on everything. per month.
Now the servant. After all, the husband is at work in the morning, the wife cannot run to the shop and leave the children alone or carry firewood and water herself, clean boots, etc. But … let me summarize the previous expenses:
Flat ………………. RUB 20 00 kopecks
Heating and coal ………. RUB 5 00 kopecks
Lighting ……………… 1 rub. 20 kopecks
Tea and sugar …………… 3 rub. 00 kopecks
Beef ………………. RUB 10 80 kopecks
Bread and seasoning …………. RUB 4 50 kopecks
Milk porridge …………… 3 rub. 00 kopecks
For water ………………… 1 rub. 00 kopecks
Little things …………………. RUB 2 00 kopecks
Total 50 rubles. 50 kopecks
Maidens in cubicles. Donskoy smart costume. 1875-1876
Oh God! The budget has already been exceeded! What to do?
We rent a small room of 15 rubles from a tenant. This gives a reduction in the apartment of 5 rubles, for heating - 5 rubles, for water - 1 rubles; beef we will take 2 pounds - savings of 3 rubles. 60 kopecks, total savings 14 rubles. 60 kopecks But when making food at home, kerosene will be released by 1 ruble. 20 kopecks The total reduction is 13 rubles. 40 kopecks. The hostess cook should be given at least 1 ruble. - total 12 rubles. 40 kopecks. The monthly budget is 50 rubles. 50 kopecks - 12 rubles. 40 kopecks. = RUB 38 10 kopecks With an income of 50 rubles, 11 rubles will remain for all other expenses. 90 kopecks. a month, and the family lives in a kennel room with a tenant.
But let's move on to other necessary expenses.
Laundry is essential. Soap is needed, and if the hostess allows access to the kitchen, she will take it for water and coal. No matter how spinning, but cheaper than 2 rubles. washing will not cost a month, so only 9 rubles will remain for other expenses. 90 kopecks. Of course, the wife herself does the washing and ironing, and starch the shirts for her husband, and the husband cleans his boots and dress himself.
But the husband must always be dressed decently, and the wife and children also cannot walk in the costume of Adam and Eve. The wife sews everything for herself and for the children, and the husband already needs to buy ready-made linen. Let's make an estimate for this expense item.
Return of the Cossacks from the fair to the Tsimlyanskaya stanitsa. 1875-1876
A. Estimate for husband
The cheapest, but decent for service, a vice-uniform pair or a simple one costs 25 rubles, not cheaper. You need at least one other pair, home, 15 rubles. Assuming their change only once every three years (???), we get the annual cost of repairs in (25 + 15): 3 = 40: 3 = = 13 1/3 rubles. It would not be an exaggeration to admit the same expense for the repair of outerwear, hats, caps; total for the top and bottom dress we get about 27 rubles. per year of consumption.
We won't mention gloves, but handkerchiefs, cufflinks and ties are unlikely to cost less than a ruble a year, totaling 27 + 1 = 28 rubles.
Boots, on the assumption that the husband will not even dream of a horse tram (not to mention cabbies), two pairs of 6 rubles a year are needed. 50 kopecks (cheap varieties) and galoshes, too, two pairs of 2 rubles. 25 kopecks, and in total (6 1/2 +2 1/4) x2 = 17 rubles. 50 kopecks
Suppose the wife sews the underwear herself for the whole family. Still, we need: calico, buttons, threads, and repair of the sewing machine. Let's put everything on 3 rubles a year, really, a little.
As a result, in order to maintain the husband's attire in any bearable form, we receive:
Top and bottom dress … … 27 rubles. 00 kopecks
Cufflinks, ties and so on … … 1 rub. 00 kopecks
Shoes …………………. RUB 17 50 kopecks
Underwear ……………. RUB 3 00 kopecks
Total RUB 48 50 kopecks
Don Cossack shooter, seventy-five years old. 1875-1876
B. Estimate for wife, children, etc
We saw above that for everything except the most urgently needed items, 9 rubles remain from the budget. 90 kopecks. per month, i.e. 9 rubles. 90 kopecks. x 12 = 118 rubles. 80 kopecks in year. But a husband absolutely needs 48 rubles. 50 kopecks - for a family, therefore, only 70 rubles remain. 30 kopecks
If a wife dresses like a cook, she still needs at least three chintz dresses for 5 rubles a year; linen, like her husband, for 3 rubles., shoes and galoshes, like her husband, 17 rubles. 50 kopecks, 15 rubles for the repair and repayment of the upper dress; on pins, hairpins, scarves, etc. 2 rub. - total 15 + 3 + 17 rubles. 50 kopecks + 15 rub. + 2 rub. = 52 rubles. 50 kopecks Remains 70 rubles. 30 kopecks - 52 rubles. 50 kopecks = RUB 17 80 kopecks, this is for children and minor needs, such as repairing lamps and burners, brushes, combs, soap for washing, etc. It is easy to say without calculation that the amount is hardly enough.
At the same time, it is assumed that the husband does not smoke tobacco and does not drink a glass of vodka or a bottle of beer a year, that there is never a single guest, that the wife herself runs to the shops, leaving the children unattended, that she washes clothes herself, sews and repairs his own, husband's and children's underwear and, if the husband sleeps, cleans his boots and dress, that all this happens in a kennel for 15 rubles. per month.
Well, what if homeland, christening, illness happens? What if there are not two, but four children? What to bury if one of them dies? etc.
There is only one answer; complete poverty, even if the husband came to work in a very elegant deputy uniform (after all, now it is a general requirement that employees, even from men, should be dressed quite decently). Poverty and hunger together - hopeless, hopeless, increasing every year, taking away the strength of a family worker … Family life, contrary to the proverb "with a dear heaven and in a hut", turns into a real hell, from which the only salvation for the husband is in vodka, and the family let him eat one potato for months …
Cossacks before going to the service. 1875-1876
Here's another interesting piece:
This is what explains the seemingly strange fact that many highly educated people marry almost illiterate people. I knew a highly educated professor who married his cook. Everyone, of course, knows many cases when gymnasium teachers, for example, marry dressmakers, milliners, etc., while young ladies who speak two or three foreign languages, either sit in girls, or stand behind the counter of a shop with 9 hours morning to 8 o'clock. evenings for a salary of 25 rubles. per month, or are engaged in other professions (telegraph operators, teachers, etc.), which make it possible to eat cheap sausage with bread, vegetate and … dream of grooms.
Mothers and young ladies should consider this. I assure you that if, by chance, the groom finds the young lady ironing her linen and all soiled with soot, then he will like it much more than if he found her overdressed, powdered, suffocated. If we add modesty and unpretentiousness to simplicity, then this will be a magnet for grooms.
Of course, such an increasing number of educated people marry dressmakers and seamstresses is an undesirable phenomenon; of course, it would be nice to talk to my wife about something more lofty than the economy. But what to do: we do not live in heaven, but on earth.
This is how today's suitors reason.
Father and son before the hunt. Vyatka province., Glazovsky u. 1907
However, is it really necessary to go against the education of women? It would be more than unfortunate. A woman's education is an excellent dowry, and we will prove it here with numbers.
Suppose the mother knows languages, music and science in the gymnasium curriculum. Obviously, she herself can (but will she!) Teach her children, and this is very expensive; we will calculate according to the Moscow rate.
A music teacher or teacher costs no less than 15 rubles a month. - 180 rubles per year
You can't find a decent tutor for less than 20 rubles a month - 240 a year.
To learn languages, you must take a governess, too, with a salary of at least 20 rubles, and her maintenance (including a separate room) will cost 25 rubles. - a total of 45 rubles per month, and 540 rubles per year. Putting everything together, we get 180 + 240 + 540 rubles. = 960 rubles. It is obvious that the wife, putting her labor and knowledge into the family, puts capital of about 25,000 rubles.
It is impossible for a woman to earn this amount on the side of a woman: the lessons for all are knocked down to the extreme, and it is obviously impossible to enter the governess - in a word, women's labor has the most rational application in her family; this is the best solution to the women's question, I dare to assure you. There is no calculation to rush to the side, because the above calculation has not yet indicated how much the farm will lose from the lack of supervision of the hostess, and this can be valuable and very expensive.
Educated, but at the same time modest, unassuming wives, who, after a lesson in music and French, are able to mend stockings and iron their linen for children, for the same children, are almost an extraordinary rarity. But the secret is that it is not uncommon. Let the tongues replace the piano, and then the needle and iron. Such a young lady will always find a groom, and time, though perhaps not long, for her ideal dreams, so that, at least for a while, she will float up the swamps of life that pull us down …
Salaries in pre-revolutionary Russia:
The servants received a month: from 3 to 5 rubles for women and from 5 to 10 rubles for men.
Further, according to the increasing wages in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, there are workers of provincial factories, village manufactories, laborers, loaders. Their salaries ranged from 8 to 15 rubles a month. Moreover, it was not uncommon when one tenth of the salary was given out in cards, which could only be purchased in the factory store at overpriced products, far from the first freshness. Mostly workers earned more at metallurgical plants in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The wages of these workers at the beginning of the 20th century in Tsarist Russia ranged from 25 to 35 rubles. And representatives of the so-called labor aristocracy, i.e. professional turners, locksmiths, foremen, foremen received from 50 to 80 rubles a month.
Employees
The smallest salaries at the beginning of the 20th century were for junior civil servants in the amount of 20 rubles a month. The same amount was paid to ordinary post office employees, zemstvo primary school teachers, pharmacist assistants, orderlies, librarians, etc. Doctors received much more, for example, in zemstvo hospitals they had a salary of 80 rubles, paramedics 35 rubles, and the head of the hospital received 125 rubles a month. In small rural hospitals, where there was only one paramedic on the staff, he received a salary of 55 rubles. High school teachers in women's and men's gymnasiums received from 80 to 100 rubles a month. The chiefs of postal, railway, and steamship stations in large cities had monthly salaries ranging from 150 to 300 rubles. State Duma deputies received a salary of 350 rubles, governors had salaries of about one thousand rubles,and ministers and high officials, members of the State Council - 1,500 rubles a month.
Military personnel
After the increase in 1909, the salary in the army was like this.
The second lieutenant had a salary of 70 rubles a month, plus 30 kopecks a day for guards and 7 rubles an additional payment for renting housing, for a total of 80 rubles.
The lieutenant received a salary in the amount of 80 rubles, plus the same apartment and guardhouse, another 10 rubles, in the amount of 90 rubles.
The staff captain received a salary from 93 to 123 rubles, the captain - from 135 to 145 rubles, and the lieutenant colonel from 185 to 200 rubles per month.
A colonel of the Tsar's army received a salary from the Tsar in the amount of 320 rubles a month, a general as a division commander had a salary of 500 rubles, and a general as a corps commander - 725 rubles a month.