“In the service of factory...”: everyday work of a factory inspector of Simbirsk province in the end XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries

Introduction. One of the key institutions that influenced on the industrial development of Russia in the late XIX - early XX centuries was the factory inspection. Closely integrated into the system of public administration, it went through several stages of its formation and development. Being in the very center of social contradictions within the increasingly aggravated “the workers’ matter”, the factory inspection was often criticized by various political forces, as well as by businessmen and the public. At the same time, factory inspectors were almost the only guarantors of the implementation of factory and labor legislation, defending the legitimate rights of workers and obliging owners and administration of industrial enterprises to fulfill their social obligations. Methods. To solve the tasks of the paper the elements of the methods of socio-institutional and legal analysis were used, which made possible the inclusion of the object of research in a broad system of socio-economic and institutional-legal relations. The application of the modernization theory enabled to include social transformation processes in the trend of industrial modernization. The method of micro-history allowed to consider the activity of a factory inspector in the focus of everyday life. Discussion and conclusion. In general, on the example of the activities of factory inspectors of Simbirsk province in the early XX century it is possible to see the huge amount of work they did, even in the provincial region, which was not among the advanced in the industrial sense. In resolving situations involving the violation of factory legislation and accompanied by labor disputes and conflicts between workers and entrepreneurs arising on this ground, factory inspectors were required impartiality and objectivity. In this case, quite often factory inspectors were forced to enter into a rather tough confrontation with the owners and administration of industrial enterprises. The above data allow us to state with full justification that factory inspectors had tried to perform their duties responsibly and skillfully. In fact, their professional activity was a kind of service to the state, to which there was a very quivering attitude in Russia and which continued to occupy an important place in the system of social values. Although it should be added here that service to the state in the activities of factory inspectors was supplemented by another important mission - the service to society.