In the cells I saw a vagrant who had chopped off two of his fingers. The wounds were wrapped in a filthy rag. Another vagrant had a shotgun wound through his body. The bullet had fortunately entered along the external edge of his seventh rib. His wound was also bandaged with a dirty rag.4
It is always quiet in Due. The ear soon becomes accus- tomed to the measured clang of chains, the roar of the surf and the hum of the telegraph wires, and because of these sounds the impression of dead silence becomes even stronger. The aspect of grimness is not only due to the striped posts. If someone unexpectedly happened to laugh out loud on the street, it would sound shrill and unnatural. From the very beginning of Due, local life took on a form which can only be expressed by these inexorably brutal and hopeless sounds and the fiercely bitter wind blowing from
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the sea into the gap during the cold nights, which alone sings what it must.
It is therefore strange when in the silence you suddenly hear the singing of the Due eccentric Shkandyba [Limper]. He is a convict, an old man, who from the very first day of his arrival on Sakhalin refused to work and every con- ceivable measure was used to break his unconquerable, com- pletely untamable spirit. They put him in dark cells, beat him innumerable times, but he stoically endured his pun- ishments and after each flogging he would say, "I still won't work!" They took a lot of trouble to try to change him, and finally abandoned the endeavor. Now he strolls around Due and sings.5
As I already stated, coal is mined one verst from the post. I was in the mine. They led me through dark, damp corridors and courteously informed me about methods of production, but not being a specialist, I find it very diffi- cult to describe them. However, anyone interested can read the special work by Keppen, the mining engineer who formerly supervised the mines here.6
At the present time the Due mines are exclusively owned by a private company called Sakhalin, whose repre- sentatives or owners live in St. Petersburg. According to the twenty-four-year contract signed in 1875, the company derives profit from a strip of land two versts long by one verst deep along the western bank of Sakhalin. It is pro- vided without charge with convenient areas for coalyards in the Primorskaya region and on the adjacent islands. The company also receives free of charge all construction mate- rial for buildings and labor; the transportation of all articles needed for technical and agricultural work and in the con- struction of mines is provided duty free. For every pood of coal purchased by the Navy, the company receives fifteen to thirty kopecks.
Every day no less than 400 convicts are commandeered to work for the company's benefit; if less than this number are sent out ro work, for each missing worker the treasury pays a fine to the company of one ruble per day. The re- quired number of people can also be supplied to the com- pany for night shifts.
In order to fulfill the agreed obligations and to protect the company's interests, the treasury maintains two prisons near the mines, the Due and the Voyevodsk, plus a military detachment of 340 soldiers, the annual expenditure on which is 150,000 rubles. If then the owners of the com- pany living in St. Petersburg number only five people, the treasury guarantees them annual profits of 30,000 rubles each. This takes no account of the fact that in order to maintain these profits, putting aside all the problems of the agricultural colony and the complete mockery of ordinary rules of hygiene, the treasury must maintain more than 700 convicts, their families, soldiers and officials in such terrifying holes as the Voyevodsk and Due gaps. Nor does it take account of the fact that in releasing convicts to serve a private company for financial gain, the administra- tion sacrifices the aims of reform to industrial considera- tions, which mean.s that it is repeating the old mistake, one which it has always condemned.
The company, on the other hand, must fulfill three chief obligations. It must develop the Due mines properly and maintain a mining engineer at Due to supervise their proper exploitation. Twice annually rem must be paid for the coal and for the services of the convicts. In working the mines, convict labor must be used exclusively. These thret: obligations exist only on paper, and obviously they have long ago been forgotten. The mines are worked unscrupu- lously, on the kulak or tough peasant-owner principle. "No improvements in production techniques nor modifications for assuring a stable future have been made," we read in the report of one officiaL "The different kinds of work, insofar as they consist of economic production, have all the earmarks of plunder, and the last report of the regional engineer concurs."
The mining engineer which the company is obliged to furnish does not exist, and the mines are supervised by an ordinary foreman. As to payments, we are reminded of the report I have just mentioned: the official says it has "all the earmarks of plunder." The company profits from the mines without paying anything. It is obliged to pay, but for some reason it.does not pay.
The representatives of the other side should have called on the authorities long ago in view of such blatant disre- gard of the law, but for some reason they have been delay- ing, and what is worse, they are continuing to expend i 50,000 rubles a year to guarantee the company's profits, and both sides conduct themselves in such a manner that it is difficult to say when these abnormal attitudes will termi- nate. The company has entrenched itself as securely as Foma7 in the village of Stepanchikovo, and, like Foma, is implacable.
As of January i, 1890, it owed the treasury 194,337 rubles, I 5 kopecks; a tenth of this money by law goes to the convicts as wages. I do not know when and how they pay off the convicts, who pays them or whether they get anything.
Some 350 to 400 convicts are assigned to work every day, while the remaining 350 to 400 living in the Due and Voyevodsk prisons form a reserve force. There must be a reserve, because the contract calls for convicts "capable of work" to be supplied every day. Assignments for work in the mine are made at five o'clock in the morning at a so- called dispatch meeting. The convicts enter the presence of the mining administration, which consists of a small group of private persons who make up "'the office."
On the discretion of "the office" depends their assign- ment, the daily amount and load of labor for each indi- vidual convict. For this reason "the office" is supposed to see that the prisoners' sentences are distributed propor- tionally. The prison administration itself is only concerned with controlling their behavior and preventing escapes. It washes its hands of everything else.
There are two mines: the old and the new. The con- victs work in the new mine, where the height of the coal strip is about two arshins; the width of the shafts is the same. The distance from the mine entrance to the present mining area is about 150 sazhens. A worker dragging a sled weighing a pood crawls up along a dark and dank corridor; this is the most difficult part of the work. Later, after loading his sled, he returns. At the entrance the coal is loaded into coal cars and sent by rail to the coalyards. Each convict must crawl up with his sled not less than thirteen times a day, and here we deduce a lesson. In 1889-90, each convict mined on the average of 10.8 poods a day, 4.2 poods below the norm established by the mining adminis- tration. In general the mine production and the results of convict mining are not great; they vary between 1,500 and 3,000 poods daily.
Settlers are also hired for labor in the Due mines. They work under far worse conditions than the convicts. In the old mine the coal layer is no more than one arshin wide; the working area is now 230 sazhens from the entrance. The upper layer sweats profusely, which forces them to work in a continually damp atmosphere. They live at their own expense, in premises far worse than the prison. In spite of all this, their labor is more productive than that of the convicts by 70 and even 100 percent. So great are the advantages of free hired labor over forced labor! Hired workers are more convenient to the company than those they must maintain under contract, and therefore if, ac- cording to the custom here, a convict hires a settler or another convict to take his place at work, the mining ad- ministration enthusiastically agrees to such irregularities. Hence the third obligation has long ago split at the seams.