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The state and private factory and mine owners in the Urals developed, before the Great Reforms of the 1860s, an effective system of charitable assistance to supplement wages paid in cash. Drawing on traditional paternalistic principles, these owners nurtured a patriarchal socioeconomic culture that supported workers and their families in the early nineteenth century but left them vulnerable after the abolition of serfdom in 1861 forced them into greater self-sufficiency.