146 LUDIndustrial wages in the era before the full expansion of the market economy
form a subject of great complexity. In Polish history, with three Partitions to
reckon with, it defies all generalizations (including this one). In view of the vast
reservoir of manpower in the countryside, unskilled labour was cheap; and
prior to Emancipation it had often to compete with that of unpaid serfs. Skills
and services, in contrast, were at a premium. Differentials were bound to be
large. Highly-qualified technicians possessed great earning power; labourers did
not. Even so, in view of very low food prices, it is often surprising how much
low wages could in fact buy. Statistics collected by Tadeusz Korzon from the
last days of the old Republic show the Grand Secretary of the Crown earning
14,000 zt. per annum, a University Professor up to 10,000 zt, an architect 2,000
zl., a carpenter up to 1,095 zl., common soldier, 262 zt. At the Matechowski's
forge at Koriskie in 1788, the forgemaster earned up to 8,000 zt. per annum, the
lowest paid workman 4 zt. per week. At this same time, a pound of meat cost
only 10 groszy; a pair of men's boots 15 zt.; a cow up to 50 zt., and a yard of the
finest Tyzenhauz silk 18 zt.; the upkeep of a beggar cost the Warsaw Police
Commission 280 zt. per year. From this, one might well conclude that it was bet-
ter to be a Warsaw beggar than a royal soldier. Forty years later, at the Biatogon
Foundry, William Preacher, the English technical director, was paid 1,040
roubles (6,890 zt.) per annum; Jan Hurhaut, a mechanic, 600 roubles; and the
factory carpenter, no roubles. At that time, a suit of clothes cost 200 zt.
The politicization of the proletariat took place at a slightly later date than
that of the peasantry. The organization of proletarian political parties was pre-
ceded by the spontaneous formation of zwiqzki zawodowe or Trade Unions.
The Polish Trade Union movement sprang to life in Prussia and Austria in the
1890s, and in Russia after the Revolution of 1905—7. In the early decades, its con-
stituent unions were extremely local in character. Being 'horizontal' in struc-
ture, with each union encompassing a wide variety of trades and interests, they
could exert a strong influence in their particular factory or district, but defied
any moves towards centralized amalgamation. They were subject to the most
variegated political patronage. They were courted by nationalist organizations,
by Catholic charitables, by Jewish, German, or Ukrainian societies, and in
Russia by the Tsarist police. Socialist, and still less Marxist, inspiration was
a relative rarity. Their first concern was for the pay and conditions of their
members, not for political ideology or for national independence. Attempts to
construct a common political front invariably failed. In the inter-war period, at
least five separate Trade Union Federations came into existence, each claiming
some measure of competence over the working class as a whole. The Union of
Trade Associations (ZSZ), dominated by the left-wing of the PPS counting some
501,000 members in 1921, stood in constant rivalry with the Amalgamation of
Polish Unions (ZZP), dominated by the National Democrats counting in 1919
some 570,000 members. Each spawned splinter organizations, but both con-
trived to avoid direct government control. The socialist Trade Unionists,
headed by Jan Kwapinski (1885—1964), launched a successful drive to unionize