 Payment for a completed job was distributed according to verbal agreements, quite often in equal shares.Often artels were for seasonal industry; fishing, hunting, harvesting of crops, logging, and gathering of wild plants, berries, and mushrooms were prime examples of activities that were in many cases seasonal (although not invariably).In a 1918 article on Russian education and social structures (as of the late period of the Russian Empire, just before the Soviet Union took shape), Manya Gordon described the artel as follows