220 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR 
boiler on wheels, a disinfection chamber, a portable stove, a pump, 
a water barrel, a tarpaulin for cold water, besides several light 
pieces of equipment and accessories. The total cost of a bathhouse 
was 1,900 rubles, whilst that of a laundry 1,400 rubles. The cost of 
equipment for the entire detachment comprising ten bathhouses and 
four laundries, and including the transport facilities, amounted to 
48,000 rubles. The monthly cost of maintenance, including the cost 
of soap, wood shavings, and birch brooms, was calculated at 25,000 
rubles. The staff was estimated at twenty-five permanent and forty 
temporary attendants. A bathhouse installed in a peasant cottage 
was expected to provide as many as five hundred baths a day.** 
Subsequent detachments were formed along the same lines. By 
July, 1916, the total number of bathhouses on the western front was 
157, of which 130 were independent units and 27 connected with 
other institutions, such as hospitals, canteens, etc. On January 1, 
1917, a census of bathhouses revealed a total of 171, the majority 
of them being located with the army at the front, only eight bath- 
houses being in the immediate rear. Cities and towns had only five 
zemstvo bathhouses; railway stations, fourteen; all the others had 
heen put up in villages, and five were erected in the midst of forests. 
The usual type of a zemstvo bathing station was a peasant two- 
room cottage. With a few simple changes four rooms were obtained ; 
(1) the room for undressing, where the men left their soiled under- 
wear and clothing; (2) the bathroom proper; (3) the steam room; 
(4) the dressing room, where the men found fresh underwear and 
their disinfected clothing. Of the men who used the bathhouses 28 
per cent received clean underwear from the Union of Zemstvos. 
Soiled linen would be sent to the laundry and thence to the repair 
shop, after which it would again be put to use. The laundries were 
so located that usually one laundry attended to the needs of ten 
bathhouses. Fifty-two per cent of all the bathhouses had tea rooms 
connected with them. The soldiers were supplied with soap, etc. In 
the course of 1916 the number of soldiers who used the bathing sta- 
tions of the Union of Zemstvos on the western front was 8,533,505, 
of whom 88.7 per cent were non-commissioned officers and men; 2.1 
per cent, officers; 2.8 per cent, trench laborers; 5 per cent, refugees 
and other civilians; and 1.4 per cent, prisoners of war. The cost per 
22 Isvestia (Bulletin), No. 9, pp. 8-15.