An artel, then, was, in its origin, no other than an association of craftsmen for their mutual support against the miseries of city life, just as the commune was an association of laborers for their mutual support against the miseries of country life. Each sprang, in its turn, from a sense of the weakness of individual men in struggling with the hard necessities of time and place. One body sought protection in numbers and mutual help against occasional lack of employment; the other against occasional attacks from wolves and bears, and against the annual floods of rain and drifts of snow. An artel was a republic like a commune; with a right of meeting, a right of election, a right of fine and punishment. No one interfered with the members, save in a general way. They made their own rules, obeyed their own chiefs, and were in every sense a state within the state. Yet these societies lived and throve, because they proved, on trial, to be as beneficial to the upper as they were to the lower class; an artel offering advantages to employers of labor like those offered by a commune to the ministers of finance and war. If an English banker wants a clerk, he must go into the open market and find a servant, whom he has to hire on the strength of his character as certified from his latest place. He takes him on trial, subject to the chance of his proving an honest man. If a Russian banker wants a clerk, he sends for the elder of an artel, looks at his list, and hires his servant from the society, in that society's name. He seeks no character, takes no guaranty. The artel is responsible for the clerk, and the banker trusts him in perfect confidence to the full extent of the artel fund. If the clerk should prove to be a rogue--a thing which sometimes happens--the banker calls in the elder, certifies the fact, and gets his money paid back at once. These things may happen, yet they are not common. Petty thieving is the vice of every Eastern race, and Russians of the lower class are not exceptions to the rule; yet, in the artels, it is certain that this tendency to pick and steal is greatly curbed, if not wholly suppressed. "Honesty and truth," from being a phrase on the tongue, may come at length to be a habit of the mind. A decent life is strenuously enjoined, and no member is allowed to drink and game; thus many of the vices which lead to theft are held in check by the public opinion of his circle; yet the temptation sometimes grows too strong, and a confidential clerk decamps with his employer's box. Another merit of these artels then comes out.