How Much Bolshevism Is There in America?

By ARNO DOSCH-FLEUROT

(World European Staff Correspondent)

Who Has Lived for Years Under the Bolsheviki in Russia and Has Just Completed a Tour Over the United States Studying Social Unrest

The Dosch-Fleurot Articles Appeared in The World Jan. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

Also a Series of Articles Entitled:

“Russia From the Inside”

By HECTOR BOON.

A New York Business Man, Recently Returned From a Long Stay and Extensive Travel in Russia

Published by

New York, January, 1921

The Hector Boon Articles Appeared in The World Jan. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Study of Conditions in Various Sections of the United States, From the Point of View of Europe, Convinces Arno Dosch-Fleurot That Same Problems of Unrest Do Not Affect Our Workmen and Ground Is Not Fertile for Insurrection—Prosperity of Workingmen Cause for Thanksgiving Rather Than Complaint.

The biggest questions in industrial, social, political and economic life in America are:

Is Bolshevism finding root here?

Is America facing a political revolution?

Are we tainted by the vast social unrest now so characteristic of England, of all Europe, as well as Asia?

What impulses common to those countries are to be found in our labor structure?

In an effort to throw light an these vital matters, The World brought Arno Dosch-Fleurot back from Europe, where he has been the last four years, to make an investigation. The results of his extensive inquiry, covering the past three months, during which he has visited those centres of activity from which he could best obtain first hand information, are set forth in five articles.

For the past three years I have been living in the midst of the social revolution in Europe. A great deal of it has been active revolution, with the machine guns in the streets. During this time I have often wondered how much of this unrest was being communicated to America or how much we were developing here on our own account.

Looking at America from the point of view of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, I have wanted to know—

First—How the Bolshevik revolution in Russia affected America.

6Second—Whether the class war into which the World War developed had hit America too.

Third—How the United States was readjusting itself to the inevitable social changes.

At the time the Bolsheviki seized the power in Russia, we Americans who were there used to say to one another as we discussed the industrial and social problems that faced the world, “At home we are going to work this thing out another way.”

Are We Working Out the Problems in Another Way?

For several weeks I have been able to search for the answers to my own questions. I have been going about the United States studying the social and industrial unrest. To some of my questions I have answers which are satisfactory, at least to myself. Behind others I must still leave interrogation points. In addition I have seen things I had not thought of, some of them tranquilizing, others disquieting.

In this and the succeeding articles I shall give my impressions of the unrest in America and its significance from my point of view.

In the first place, I am overwhelmed by our wealth. I had been away long enough to forget how rich we were, and we have in the mean while grown much richer. That fact is of prime importance. Being rich, there is not the gruelling struggle for existence that makes the problems of unrest in Europe dangerous. It eases off enormously on whatever strain there might otherwise be.

Everywhere I turn, in every city, every street, every shop, every home, there is so much wealth it is hard to believe. After Europe one would be inclined to say we are disgustingly rich, if the new-wealth, in spite of the war fortunes, were not so widely distributed. I hear people complain that workmen have been making so much money they have been buying themselves $10 silk shirts and their wives are wearing $50 hats.

It does not seem to me a cause for complaint. Rather it would appear to be cause for thanksgiving that such things can be. I have myself seen factory workmen, men who make their living with their hands, men who belong to unions, going to work in their own automobiles. I should like to tell that to some workmen of my acquaintance in Moscow.

Wealth Obscures Depression.

Even though the country is going through an industrial depression there is so much money about that a casual traveller would not know it.

In Detroit, where 150,000 factory workmen have been laid off, it is interesting to see how little difference it has made in the daily life of this city of a million. Half the families in the city are affected, but they have money and go on spending it. I could not believe so many people could be out of work without evident sign of suffering somewhere, but I spent half a day unsuccessfully trying to find a soup kitchen or a bread line in Detroit.

Yes, we are rich, and that has spared us much. But with wealth have come pride and intolerance. I was in a measure prepared for this, but I did not expect to find it generally accepted as right and proper.

George Russell, the Irish writer, said to me just before I came home: “War is an exchange of characteristics. You have been fighting Prussians. You may find America full of Prussianism.”

I should have thought our sense of liberty were proof against contamination, but apparently not. As the first sign of Prussianism we seem to have curtailed free speech. In a dozen cities where I have been a man need only get on a soap-box and he will land in jail. The corner orators who used to act as safety valves for over-heated brains don’t dare show themselves. Men have gone to jail for reading sections from the Declaration of Independence. I admit they did it with mocking or malicious intent, but what of it? Since when, has the democracy of America grown so weak it needs policemen to protect it? In the West a man need only carry an I. W. W. card in his pocket to get arrested. They say in Seattle, “The Red Squad has driven the cards into the shoes.” There are 3,000 “Reds” in jail for various causes. The most important ones are serving long prison sentences.

There seems to be a common impression 7that the Imprisonment of “Reds” is suppressing Bolshevism in the United States. My observations lead me to the belief the only chance of revolution, and that not immediate, might come from continuing to keep these men in prison. Those who are under prison sentence were convicted under the extraordinary conditions developed by war. These extraordinary conditions no longer exist, but these men are still under sentence. The longer they stay in prison the stronger grows the resentment at their imprisonment. I find an undercurrent of bitterness, not very wide but deep, that can breed trouble. The small minority that is thinking about revolution is thinking about it hard. If these so-called revolutionists were turned loose without further ado, under a general amnesty, it would ease off on that hard thinking and would be helpful to the liberal movement in industry that is trying to “work this thing out another way.”

The same spirit in the country which is backing the red squads of the police seems to be actuating a Nation-wide, open-shop campaign. Men with any liberalism at all—and there are liberals managing great industries—are not in favor of either. They do not want the closed shop, but the ruthless way many employers’ associations and groups of associated industries are trying to use the present reaction as well as the existing depression to “break the back of labor” is regarded by them as the madness of power and wealth.

I find only two groups of rebels against democracy who view with favor this knock-down-and-drag-out fight for the open shop. I might call them roughly Bolshevik employers and Bolshevik employees.

As I travelled about the country I found that the active advocates of the open shop frequently referred to it as “the American plan.” The employers’ association which is pushing it also has a way of ostentatiously flying the Stars and Stripes. This is particularly noticeable in the mining communities where there are large bodies of foreign laborers. At first I could not understand how one group of Americans came to have the temerity to arrogate to themselves the word “American.” Then I discovered it was a survival of the war period. In fighting the Prussian we have adopted some of the Prussian’s disagreeable characteristics. The war is over, but we have licked militarist blood. What surprises me most is how few people recognize the danger of it. The phrase “American plan” has been allowed to stand without protest, though it practically says to union men who are just as good Americans as the members of employers’ associations that they are not Americans if they persist in their union ideas. It is not difficult to imagine how this is misused in the daily contact between workman and boss. It cannot help but do harm.

In Butte I was walking along the street with some labor leaders, bound for their headquarters. Thinking we had reached it, I started to turn into a building over which the Stars and Stripes were flying. “That’s not it,” said one of them. “Don’t you see the flag of the American plan?”

No Serious Bolshevism Here.

And yet there is no serious Bolshevism in the United States, I have been looking for it, and I have not been able to trace a consistent effort at a Bolshevik movement. There are no doubt enough people who believe in Bolshevism who would like to start a Bolshevik movement—but they have not been able to do it. At least they have not succeeded in starting it among wage-paid workmen, and there is no other place to start it.

There is, however, something which is called Bolshevism, and, as it is also rebellious against the existing order of society, it has been labelled Bolshevik, but it is really something different. I refer to the rather crude and unscientific but active, anarcho-syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The two have been confused even by some of the leaders of the I. W. W., so it is not surprising that the general public, not to mention the Red squads of the police, have not always been able to make the distinction; but the difference is there and is of sufficient importance to prevent the growth of Bolshevism.

Bolshevism, by which is ment the idea that lies behind the Bolshevik Government in Moscow, is a long way from the One Big Union—the effective idea behind the I. W. W. Bolshevism has proved to be state Socialism in action. The I. W. W. is anarcho-syndicalism trying to make headway in industry.

But even the I. W. W. is not getting anywhere. It may some day, because it has a broader philosophy than Bolshevism behind it and because it is aiding in the movement toward industrial unionism, which is making some headway. But as an immediate revolutionary movement the I. W. W. is powerless before the powerful forces that oppose it.

Chief of these is the American Federation of Labor. The I. W. W. has never even had a chance to play a serious role in the United States because the A. F. of L. has fought 8it consistently since its inception fifteen years ago.

Industrial unionism, when revolutionary in purpose, even when developed apart from the I. W. W., has met the same opposition. If there had been no system of craft unionism in this country there might have been industrial unionism in this country long ago. Certainly the I. W. W. would have had a much freer hand. In that case the employers of the United States would, like the employers of Europe, have been faced with labor syndicates instead of labor unions, and that is a very different story.

In Europe labor leaders look upon the American Federation of Labor as almost a part of the capitalist system. Rumors that the big American industrials were trying to break the power of the A. F. of L. had come to Europe before I left and it could hardly be credited. The syndicalist labor leaders could not understand why the American manufacturers were fighting their ally.

Since I have been travelling about the United States I have also found many employers of labor who can also not understand why there is this vicious open-shop campaign. The industrial manager of one of the greatest industries in the world said to me hotly:

“If Judge Gary and Wall Street knew what they were leading to they would stop this anti-union campaign. They are trying to break down the conservative American Federation of Labor. If they succeed in destroying the power of Gompers they will remove the only barrier that stands between us and a real revolutionary labor movement, industrial unionism.”

Just how revolutionary industrial unionism is I shall examine later on, but it is certainly much more revolutionary than the A. F. of L. And as the craft unions of the A. F. of L. find it increasingly harder to breathe under the smothering process that is going on under the “American plan,” the industrial unions find a freer field to work in. The revolutionists of America, such as they are, could ask nothing better than the carrying of the open-shop campaign to its most ruthless finish.

Right now the enemies of union labor of any kind can do about what they please. There are plenty of men looking for work and they can break almost any strike that might be declared. Union men and I. W. W. leaders alike are sitting tight and are trying to save what they can to go on with when the fight is over. They are not afraid of being done in forever. They know this period of depression will pass, and, even if meanwhile the open-shop campaign were carried to the point where every union in the country were killed off, the union movement would spring up again. Next time, however, they believe it might take the more revolutionary form of industrial unionism.

LITTLE OF BOLSHEVISM FOUND IN I. W. W., MOST RADICAL OF AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENTS

The most radical labor movement in the United States, the one that makes the most to-do over its revolutionary programme, is the I. W. W. Whatever there may be of revolutionary tendency in America is in the I. W. W., or closely affiliated. But looking at America from the point of view of Europe, if that is all we have produced in the way of revolutionary material we are certainly in no immediate danger of becoming a “Soviet republic.”

9The I. W. W. is popularly considered Bolshevik, and has thus been advertised by the attacks the police have made upon it. There have also been “criminal Syndicalist” laws passed against it which have enhanced its importance. But an examination of what it is does not give cause for serious alarm.

The I. W. W. has never been able to boast of much of a membership, and it has barely enough members now to keep it alive. During the past few weeks I have taken a fairly close look at the I. W. W., or what I could find of it, and I should say it is more of a purpose, more of a labor philosophy, than a movement. It is out for One Big Union, but it has not even one small union that stays put.

Provided Organization of Labor Where No Other Union Could

It has provided a chance for organization when there was no other union to do it. It went into the woods and the harvest fields and organized the migratory workers. It had a free and easy way of organizing, and they were free and easy men. In the woods it acquired some permanency. The loggers of Oregon, Washington and Idaho are about the only active members it has. The important consideration is how much revolution did it instil into them? According to my observations, very little.

The loggers were told about the preamble of the I. W. W., the theme of which lies in its first words: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” With those sentiments the loggers were in hearty accord. They knew better than the I. W. W. organizers how true it was in the woods. They wanted better camp conditions. The I. W. W. gave them a chance for organized protest, so they joined. They are frontiersmen with the virtues of the frontier; they stand by their friends. So they stand by the I. W. W. But to say they become class-conscious revolutionists is absurd.

The leadership at the I. W. W. has syndicalist purpose, but its membership is merely looking for better working conditions. The average man who joins the I. W. W. would as willingly join a union that had less to say about revolution if it were there. The I. W. W., like the Salvation Army, works where more bourgeois organizations fail. At the I. W. W. headquarters in Chicago is turned out a varied supply of I. W. W. reading matter, but you do not see workers pouring over it. They glance at occasional pamphlets, but they do not bother themselves with the anarcho-syndicalist theories. Some few harvest workers have tried sabotage, and that is about the most serious charge against the I. W. W.

No Consistent Idea.

Out of the scores of leaflets and pamphlets they can get no consistent revolutionary idea. They are a confusion of syndicalism, anarchy, Socialism, Communism and Bolshevism. That is inevitable, as the writers, not always very thoroughly informed, have tried to adapt their individual conceptions of the various social revolutionary movements in Europe to American conditions. The I. W. W., being the one outstanding revolutionary movement, has drawn to it so many different types of revolutionists they have mutually destroyed each other’s theories.

The Bolshevists in the I. W. W. have recently had a serious jolt. They tried, without success, to induce the loggers to support the Third Internationale, the propaganda body of the Bolshevik Government in Moscow. They told the loggers that, as part of the proletariat, they should give their indorsement to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the organization of the world revolution from Moscow.

The loggers are not very long on political ideas, but they wanted to know about it first. So the editor of the Northwest Industrial Worker, one of the I. W. W.’s most important publications, explained it. He is himself a syndicalist and no Bolshevist. Moreover, he lives in Seattle and knows the loggers are not to be turned into rubber stamp revolutionists by the propaganda of the Lenine-Zinovieff school. So in the Northwest Industrial Worker for Oct. 20 he printed the following editorial:

“A vote for the indorsement of the Third Internationale by the members of the Industrial Workers of the World means a vote indorsing the actions of the small political group which now holds Russia under its rule, the Communist Party. There should be no doubt in the minds of members as to that fact. If the vote for indorsement carries, members should realize that we shall have indorsed a political state that is not only upheld by bayonets but which has sent conquering armies to invade other countries.

“It is unfortunate that members of the I. W. W. have never received any accurate information as to the actual condition of the workers of Russia. We have heard many generalizations as to the conditions of the Russian people, singing the praises of the Soviet Government. But have members of the I. W. W. ever heard a report made by industrial unionists or by syndicalists containing reliable information upon the following matter?”

Questions Are Asked.

“Are the workers of Russia permitted by the Government to organize upon their own lines without interference?

“Are the workers of Russia permitted to freely travel through the interior looking for employment?

“What percentage of the workers in the large industrial sections are organized, and upon what basis?

“Are workers permitted to maintain their own press without governmental interference?

“Until the members of the I. W. W. have information upon these and many other matters they are voting in the dark upon something of which they know nothing. They have a right to know whether Soviet Russia is a ‘working-class government.’ Communist Party propaganda will not afford satisfactory answers to these queries.

“We are endeavoring to get enlightenment upon such matters at first hand, and have already secured some information, but we realize that we have no right to influence, or attempt to influence, the vote upon a referendum which is pending. We want the truth about affairs in Russia. We are interested in the Russian workers more than we are interested in anything pertaining to that country.”

Absurdity of Label.

I have reproduced this editorial in full partly to show the absurdity of simply labelling the I. W. W. movement Bolshevik and letting it go at that. Also, I have never seen an abler editorial against Bolshevism. And this, mind you, was published in the most important organ of the I. W. W.

There were people in the I. W. W. movement who did not like it, and they brought pressure to bear to remove the editor, J. C. Kane, from his editorial chair. But the loggers read the editorial and liked it. They would probably never have read it if there had not been a fuss raised; but, at any rate, they did read it, and approved. Then they heard that the editor had been fired and they got a little “mass action” into play and put him back. And they did not indorse the Third Internationale.

That is a long way from Bolshevism. Nothing like that could happen in Russia. As an incident it is symptomatic. It shows the members of the movement insist on running it according to their individual will. In other words it is not a Bolshevik movement directed by a highly centralized labor autocracy. It is rather an anarcho-syndicalist movement bossed from the “job.”

Is “Job-Controlled.”

The Bolshevik-minded within the I. W. W. do not really belong there. The I. W. W. happens to be the most radical band wagon and they have climbed on. Incidents such as I have just quoted show them where they get off. The men who understand better the I. W. W. movement know it must be based on “job control.” Every time it has ever done anything it has been a case of “job control”—in other words, the men on the job decided what they were going to do. Their successful strikes in the woods the summer of 1917 were, for instance, declared in the camps.

In the I. W. W. dogmatic concepts do not get far. Revolutionary phrases take on new meanings and disconcert their originators. The phrase “direct action,” for example, is well understood in the revolutionary patter to mean direct revolutionary action to put a workers’ dictatorship into governmental power. But it does not mean that in the logging camps. It means direct action by the camp crew and not action according to the decision of the I. W. W. headquarters.

Are Fundamental Democrats.

Fundamentally the I. W. W. members are democrats like the rest of us. They have no far political vision, and they wish to ameliorate the condition in life of workingmen, but they could be trusted in the final analysis not to 11follow any doctrinaire revolutionist who had thought it all out for them and told them to come along. Lenine could do that with the Russian workers. But no one could do it with American workers. And the membership of the I. W. W., particularly in the woods, is largely American.

The I. W. W. has its ups and downs, and just now it is down. But it will not go out of existence and disappear because it stands for an idea, industrial unionism. There are other labor organizations, such as the Automobile Workers, which also stand for industrial unionism, but the I. W. W. has proclaimed it loudest, though it has perhaps done less effective organizing than some of the others.

Industrial unionism is essentially inimical to the craft unionism upon which the American Federation of Labor is built. The individual unions in the A. F. of L. could unite along industrial lines, and some have, but the results have not been sufficiently striking to remove from the I. W. W. further excuse for existence.

Not Essentially Revolutionary.

There is nothing essentially revolutionary in industrial unionism, though the I. W. W. tries to make it so, concluding its well known preamble with the sentence: “By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” But that is largely rhetoric. In the body of the preamble is written: “We find that the centring of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class.” All industrial unionists are of this point of view. Their position was well described to me by William A. Logan, President of the Automobile Workers, who is not a member of the I. W. W.

“Industrial unionism is no one’s invention,” he said. “It naturally follows the combination of manufacturers in an industry. Manufacturers absorb industries which furnish them, so labor does the same thing. The combinations of industries in large plants has so highly specialized the work that no one workman need be a rounded mechanic. Men can also be shifted easily from one machine to another. Common and semi-skilled labor has almost entirely taken the place of skilled labor in industry. I used to be an auto-fitter. There is now no such job. The manufacture of even such a finished article as an automobile has been specialized to a point where one man need know very little. He may have merely to start a nut. So all the men in the industry are on the same footing. There is no longer point in splitting them into crafts. The logical way to organize them is industrially.”

Merely New to United States.

That is all there is to industrial unionism. It is comparatively new to America, but it is an old story in Europe. To organize industrially is just as democratic as to organize by crafts. It all depends upon what is done with the organization once it is formed. Industrial unionism only becomes revolutionarily syndicalistic when a union of industrial unions announces it is going to take over the Government in the name of its syndicalist workers.

The I. W. W. says, “The army of production must be organized not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown.”

The less revolutionary automobile workers, whose correct title is United Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers of America, say more conservatively: “We know that the workers will never know how to manage the State if they should gain that responsibility through political action, until they learn how to act collectively in getting some of their immediate needs satisfied.”

Nothing to Fear.

The I. W. W. foresees the uniting of all the different industrial unions in one big union. It says, “One union—one label—one enemy.” The automobile workers say more modestly, “One union, one industry.”

So the industrial union may, or may not, be used with revolutionary intent. Of itself it is nothing to be afraid of.

Practically industrial unionism has between it and success what even the comparatively mild automobile workers refer to as the power of “Czar Gompers and his Grand Dukes.”

Theoretically the A. F. of L. is not opposed to industrial unionism. Any of the crafts may join forces. But practically the A. F. of L. machine prevents it.

At Akron, O., where the rubber industry swelled to enormous proportions in the last few years, business dropped like a skyrocket recently and there were reports of tens of thousands of men thrown out of work. So I went to Akron to see how great were the sufferings of the “proletariat.”

Here, at least, I thought I should find a mass of unskilled labor and a proletarian class consciousness such as I have been in the habit of associating with big industry in Europe.

I found Akron pretty well shut down, but there was no proletariat about. There were no bread lines, no soup kitchens. Still there was no question but that there were some 50,000 fewer men working in the small city than there had been a short time before. Where were they?

They had gone home. They had acquired no stake in Akron. Most of them were from West Virginia. They were migratory workers, and when they were not wanted conveniently disappeared. They went to other towns, other industries, back to the land. Broadly they were a migratory class, but they had no consciousness of class. To-day they were seeking the highest pay in the factories, to-morrow they will be tilling the soil. To a would-be proletarian leader they must be exasperatingly elusive.

I found the manufacturers of Akron deeply grateful to them. They came when they were wanted and took themselves away when they were no longer wanted. Without them it would have been impossible to build industries so rapidly to meet the demands of a day, and if they did not take themselves off when the slump came they would create a disagreeable responsibility for the manufacturer who got them together. It is a situation that is purely American and would leave bewildered any one who tried to fix European ideas of industrial organization upon American institutions.

No Upheaval When Labor Turnover Makes Jobs Vacant

At the plant of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron I was told that the plant had been reduced from 30,000 men to 6,000 men in less than six months without turning men off wholesale. The labor turnover did the trick. The plant stopped taking on new men several months ago, when it began to look as if the strong demand for tires was not going to hold. Each week thereafter some of the migratory workers left. Normally they would have been replaced by new migratory workers who presented 13themselves for jobs, but in this way each week the payroll decreased automatically. Week after week the usual number of men called for their time and struck out, some because it was summer and their native mountains called them, some to wander further afield into other industrial towns. This went on all summer and fall and when, in November, it became necessary, the management thought, to curtail production sharply there were only 14,000 instead of 30,000 in the plant. The rest had disappeared in the normal labor turnover. In the other rubber plants in Akron the same process went on, so it was not a case of turning tens of thousands of men into the streets when the real slump came.

Much the same thing happened in Detroit. Last year it had more than 100,000 more people than it could properly house. These people had been drawn into Detroit by the high wages. Handy men with intelligence were getting $15 to $30 and more a day. Then came the slump in the automobile market. Beginning last May, the demand for labor in Detroit began to decrease, factories took on fewer men, but the city did not become crowded with idle men. For a certain number took their time each week and moved on. The overpopulation began to disappear. Detroit as a working man’s bonanza was working out. Coming eastward in November from the Pacific Coast, I encountered everywhere men with a few hundred dollars in their pockets, “easy money,” made in Detroit, looking now for something else. By the time I reached Detroit I found the factories had 150,000 less workmen than they had four months before and there was no idle “proletariat” standing about.

Not Possible in Europe.

It is only in wonderfully rich America such things can happen. Here alone we dare organize industry on this bonanza scale. In Europe the big industrials know that if they build in this rapid fashion they must be prepared for the slump. The soil will not reabsorb the migratory workers as it has done for Akron and Detroit. In Europe the workers belong to a proletariat divorced from the soil, descendants of a long line of workmen. They are also class conscious and they do not conveniently disappear in the labor turnover.

Thanks to the different state of affairs in America the present readjustment in the country is going on with little difficulty from the side of labor. In Europe, where there is a process of social revolution, there can be no thought of a readjustment of any kind without first finding out what effect it is going to have on the working classes. But here there is no proletariat, no hard and fast working classes, hence no class consciousness.

I have found recently in my travels about the country that all kinds of people are agreed that prices, rents, wages, everything must come down to somewhere near what they were. Before talking to labor leaders I find the same reasonableness. This would be impossible if there were any sentiment for class war.

Now is the time to test how much of the social turmoil in Europe has been communicated to us. Flush times are passing and whatever discontent there is is sure to show itself. I may be looking for something too precise, but I do not find it. There is the usual discontent over the struggle for existence, but it is not class conscious, as the phrase is used in revolutionary circles abroad. The situation has not even increased the following of the I. W. W. or of the industrial union movement. It would seem like a propitious moment to make a drive, a campaign of instruction, in the effort to convince workmen that industrial unionism is their way to economic freedom. But I see very small signs of such activity.

In Eastern Europe in its present frame of mind a readjustment could not take place without workmen seizing rifles and machine guns and making armed demands. Such doings are not in the American picture.

Workers Are Not Organized.

One reason may be that the portion of the working classes most hit is not organized. Craft unionism has not kept pace with the growth of industry. The important centres of diversified industry, as well as what the Germans call the heavy industries, are not unionized. In the Pittsburgh district there are approximately 400,000 workmen and whatever organization exists among them is too small to count. No big manufacturing centre in America is now union. Chicago, for instance, is industrially open shop. So is Detroit or any other city where industry has had rapid growth. It amused me in asking about the open-shop movement to see the eagerness with which I always was informed that the open-shop principle had always maintained in whatever community I might be asking about.

The truth is, of course, that the big industries have been able to prevent unionizing by keeping a steady flow of immigrants coming into the country and they were clever enough to take them from the farms in Europe, so they did not bring any class consciousness with them. Ever since 14the famous Homestead strikes the steel industry has been non-union. It was only when the flow of immigrants was dammed by the war that a chance to unionize it came. It was then that John Fitzpatrick and William Z. Foster began. But they tried out organizing industrially first in the Chicago stockyards, and the steel manufacturers watched them from afar, so, as one steel man said to me in Pittsburgh, “We saw them coming and we were ready for them.”

What struck me as an interesting comment on the unionizing of factory workers was made to me in Detroit by Mr. C. M. Culver, director of the Employers’ Association, an institution which handles the labor problem for its members. He said:

“When employers do not combine to hold down wages, unionism does not grow. When employers are competing for workmen, as they have been doing here in Detroit, when they are too busy turning out machines, when the inventive minds are just boiling and the native American genius is concentrated on getting results, men do not join unions.”

Unionism certainly made very little headway in Detroit. The A. F. of L. played a very small role there and the automobile workers had succeeded in enrolling less than one-twentieth of the men who were eligible to this industrial union. It is significant, however, that the automobile workers, even with their small membership, have their importance in the industry, and the manufacturers consider their growth alone a possible menace. It shows the power that would pass into the hands of the factory worker if industrial unionism ever gets a hold on American industry.

In Detroit the percentage of foreign or foreign-born among the workers is about 70 per cent. In Pittsburgh it is even higher. Manufacturers in both places say they do not fear labor organization as long as this percentage persists. Labor organizations built among the foreign workers do not last. They can be organized quickly, as William Z. Foster found when he organized the steel strike in 1919. They give their money freely and enthusiastically for organization, but they expect quick results and do not stand up under adversity. I have just passed through the steel region in Ohio and Pittsburgh where Foster organized most successfully a year ago and there is hardly a trace of his work to be found. With difficulty I found the emaciated skeletons of the flourishing unions Foster developed in a few months.

After visiting the steel towns and the modern factory cities I agree with the I. W. W. that American industry is not organized. Labor, as distinguished from industry, is organized, but the factories, with their hundreds of thousands—added together, their millions—of unskilled and semi-skilled labor, are quite unorganized. The A. F. of L. has not interested itself in them, and the I. W. W. has tried to do it on so pretentiously revolutionary a scale that it has not succeeded. The field is open. The American field of industry is practically unhampered by the prejudices or the hard conditions of Europe. The European-trained agitators have sown the American industrial field time and again with their European-born ideas, but they have not yielded a crop.

There are, broadly, two kinds of employers in American industry. There is the “catch ’em young, treat ’em rough and learn ’em nothing” kind which is loud in support of “property rights” and is backing the ruthless open-shop “American plan.” The steel, coal and copper industries, the heavy industries, are dominated by this spirit even at this late date. To them labor has no rights. It is enough to make a Bolshevik out of any workman who comes in contact with them. Take Butte, where the Anaconda Copper Company rules. If a miner comes to Butte he must go through the copper company’s passport bureau before he can even apply for a job. If he succeeds in getting a “rustling card,” a sort of passport bearing a description of him, he can seek work at the mines. If he is a member of a union that is not in favor, he has to lie about it and say he is not or he does not get a “rustling card.” This is industrial feudalism, and there is no calling it by another name. I was in the office of the Bulletin, the labor paper published in Butte, and I noticed half a dozen rifles in the corner of the plant. “Have you got a Red Guard?” I asked. “No, but the company has a White Guard,” was the answer; “we have to protect ourselves, especially around election.”

Efforts to Solve Problem.

Combating this spirit there is a type of American employer who realizes he has a responsibility toward the men he gathers together in his factories. He comes nearer representing the modern spirit in American industry. He usually begins with some patronizing welfare work, but ends up with whole-hearted co-operation. Men of this type see the gulf between capital and labor, and instead of trying to widen it and perpetuate industrial strife like the leaders in the heavy industries they are throwing out flying bridges across 15the gulf. They are trying to establish a decent human relationship between employer and employee and give the lie to the I. W. W. preamble that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”

The men who are making these attempts are fairly sane and do not think they are “solving the labor problem.” They are trying to re-establish in modern industry the touch that was lost between the master mechanic and the journeyman mechanic when they stopped working over the same bench. Some are having a real success. Others cannot make it go. It depends upon the amount of sincerity in the undertaking. But there are some 700 plants in America being run on this voluntary “industrial conference” system. They do not pretend to be throwing more than a flying bridge across the gulf, but they may have some permanency. At any rate, it is the most interesting experiment in American industry. If it succeeds it will establish new standards in industry and we shall be able to say that America has succeeded in working out another way the industrial problem that has led to the social revolution in Europe.

INDUSTRIAL COUNCILS SHOW EMPLOYER AND WORKER WAY TO REAL PEACE AT HOME

There is a way to peace, at least comparative peace, in industry. The warfare that is forever being carried on through the open shop, the closed shop, the strike and the lockout, is coming to be considered just as uncivilized as any other form of warfare. All that is considered necessary is the give-and-take of “industrial councils.”

The idea is being worked out in one way in England and in another way here. The English have had to come to it, forced by the fact that their factory workers are organized in industrial unions. Here it is voluntary, for the industrial workers are not organized in America. The British factory workers are organized because they are all, or nearly all, British. The American factory workers are largely foreign. In England it is a question of Englishmen dealing with Englishmen. Here it is Americans dealing with foreigners.

The British have tried to get down to a uniform system or “industrial conference,” known as the Whitley system. There it is an even game, with organization and intelligent leadership on both sides. Here the homogeneous leadership is all on one side. The industrial workers are at such a disadvantage, in the fact of their not being all Americans, that they cannot get together and hold together, like the workers of England, France, Belgium or Germany, where industrial unionism is already traditional.

The American situation is peculiar to itself. It can only be approached from one point of view, that of the employer. The employee has only so much power as the employer may consider wise to yield him. This might not seem like a very successful starting point for an idea that is supposed to be leading to industrial peace, but at that it appears to be so doing. At any rate it is a very important move in the history of American industry, and, whatever it may be leading to, it is going to have a far-reaching effect.

It may, for one thing, put an end to unionism, or render it much less important. It is pretty sure to interfere with the organization of industrial unionism, which might prove to be the road to revolution. While union leaders in England favor the idea because they can approach it on an equality with the employers, in America, union leaders fear it. Instead of stabilizing unionism as it is doing in England, here it is choking unionism out.

“Chattel-slavery,” said John Fitzpatrick, President of the Chicago Federation of Labor, when I mentioned the industrial conference. “A way to get men into such a position of humble obedience that they belong body and soul to their employer.”

What the I. W. W. has to say against it is worse. It is, whatever may be the means, easing off on the social unrest, and the I. W. W. thrives on discontent.

Big Industries Independent.

On the other side the heavy industries, coal, steel and copper, refuse to have anything to do with it. The United States Steel Corporation has not even an industrial manager. Similar great industries in Europe cannot take so independent an attitude, but here it is obvious that neither now nor in the immediate future can the great masses of factory workers get together and force recognition. They will eventually, of course, if the situation demands, but they are, on account of their lack of organization, for the time being helpless.

This makes the American experiments in “industrial councils” the more interesting. While they have been motived often by an expensive strike that set employers to thinking, the actual development of the system comes from a sense of the practical. It is also growing rapidly enough to make it appear American industry may be soon dominated by the idea. A year and a half ago there were perhaps fifty concerns working with shop committees. Now there are at least 700, and there may be many more.

Impersonal Capital.

To give a list of the important concerns is like reading the Stock Exchange list, General Electric, Westinghouse, du Pont, General Motors, International Harvester. These are concerns of a similar type. Most of the money invested is from the outside, mere impersonal capital. The managements have grown up from within the plants. The labor is in much closer human relationship to the management than the capital. If capital earns big dividends it is satisfied, but the other two elements, management and labor, live and work together every day. Once an industrial council is established reuniting the management and the workshops, it is rarely let drop. It eases up the day to day difficulties. No matter what system is used the daily contact is certain to avoid some strikes. There are three systems, generally speaking, in vogue:

To organize the industrial councils on the same plan as the Federal Government, with Senate, House and President the employees elect the House, the Senate is made up of superintendents and the President and his managers are the Cabinet. This plan is popular in the textile trades. It keeps firm control in the hands of the management.

A second plan, which also keeps the control firmly in hand is arrived at by the management asking the employees in a factory to form a “shop committee,” which will recommend, but has no vote.

Third Plan Outlined.

The third plan, the one that best expresses the spirit of the movement, provides for a joint council with definite voting powers. This council usually handles everything relating to what goes on within the factories up to and including wages. It has nothing to do with the outside business, buying or selling, and, in the final analysis, does not settle the general scale of wages. But, within the factories, under these limitations, it comes to agreement about every detail, or there is an appeal to the manager or President of the company. Arbitration boards are even provided for, but that is hardly necessary, as 17the whole affair is only a domestic arrangement.

All these plans are mere devices for smoothing out the daily industrial life, and have nothing to do with large economic questions. But it is extraordinary how much trouble they avoid. When it comes to a showdown they can prevent neither strikes nor the lowering of wages. That is not their importance. They prevent the misunderstandings which grow out of the lack of human contact, and experience is beginning to show that most industrial trouble comes from minor considerations.

In one case an effort is being made to utilize the idea to a far greater extent. It has been brought into use to control a whole industry, lumber, in the Pacific Northwest. The movement has a peculiar history which needs to be explained.

Handling of Migratory Worker.

The lumber workers and loggers are mostly migratory. They had no unions to speak of until the I. W. W. began working among them during the war. It met with quick response and by the summer of 1917 was able to carry on a serious strike, which the Government had to settle, as fir and spruce were badly needed in the manufacture of ships and aeroplanes. With war on, it was impossible to use extraordinary repression and make unusual appeals. Gen. Brice P. Disque, who was in command, induced an agreement by which both the employers and the employees were to leave the settlement of all labor questions, including wages, to the Government. The men agreed not to strike.

The movement got a certain momentum while the war was on, and when the armistice came, it continued to function by agreement. Its very name, Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, indicates the circumstances behind it, but, nevertheless, it was found to be a workable arrangement. It controlled, and still controls, 75 per cent. of the lumber production in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. These three States, which produce half the lumber of the country, are divided into twelve districts, each with representatives from both the lumbermen and the loggers on an equal basis, and they settle all questions under the Chairmanship of Norman F. Coleman, President of the “Four L’s,” as the organization is called for short.

Such a body could hardly have been created without the unusual conditions of war, but its progress since is interesting. It has had to keep the good will of the loggers on a falling market.

First Crisis Is Avoided.

When I was in Oregon a few weeks ago, it had just weathered its first crisis. It was one of the principles of the organization that, regardless of the minimum wage, $4.40 per day, the “going wage” was to be determined “on the job.” In the Coos Bay District in Oregon, wages last May, June and July went to $5.30. On Aug. 1 the lumbermen asked to go back to $4.80. A district council of the “Four L’s” was held, the operators producing figures to show why wages must come down and the loggers showing the cost of living was too high to permit it. An agreement was reached by which the loggers agreed to increase production sufficiently to earn the extra 50 cents a day, and did it.

But the lumber market went steadily down and the operators appealed again for a lower wage. This time it was admitted by both sides that the price of everything would have to come down this winter to a lower level, and they would find a way to let down wages and living costs at the same time. So they called in the local merchants of Coos Bay, who agreed to the same facts and promised to make a 15 per cent. cut at once. This was sufficient to cover the cut in wages, and the only persons affected were the merchants, who admitted they had to pocket the loss anyhow.

This instance is illuminating, because it shows how far this idea can be carried and how much trouble can be avoided by men getting together with those to whom they pay wages and coming to an understanding.

Works in Unsteady Market.

If the lumber market should be bad all winter it is apparent the strain would be too great for even so elastic an organization as the “Four L’s,” but by what it has already done it has proved what can be done by human contact. If it can work at all in the lumber industry, which is subject to a very unsteady market, it could certainly work in any other industry. Nor is lumbering a kid-glove industry. The average lumber operator is a plunger, and until the “Four L’s” got started it was always a question of whether the operators were going to “break the back” of labor or whether the loggers were going to “break the back” of the operators.

None of the concerns which have seriously adopted the “industrial council” system pretend they have solved everything. They say they are simply restoring the human relationship which was lost through the growth of industry. They pretend 18to have found no new principle. Some go in for profit-sharing as a stimulus, others say it is not desirable. That is a matter of opinion. The important consideration is the spirit with which the problem is approached. The mere fact that the management of a factory wishes to introduce such a system would indicate it has not a pinchpenny attitude. But those who oppose it, mostly labor leaders, hold that it is a farsighted scheme to get a bunch of faithful slaves who acquiesce in the smooth arrangements prepared in council, so that they become wage-slaves of the most hopeless kind. They also say, and with justice, that the system removes the incentive for joining labor unions, and, even though the management plays perfectly fair with union men, unions wither up and die, as they get no nourishment.

Makes Men Feel Safer.

At the rate at which the “industrial council” idea is catching on it can be safely predicted that it is going to interfere with the growth of industrial unionism which would otherwise begin to show itself. It has a tendency to make men feel surer of their jobs, which induces them to buy homes and unite their destinies with the industries they serve. It makes them feel they have a stake in the industry. If the spirit behind the movement is wrong this could, as Mr. Fitzpatrick said, lead to a sort of chattel-slavery. But I have noticed in the few plants with “industrial councils” which I have been in that there was a spirit of service. I notice that the bigger American plants have become in a sense institutions, they have a code of conduct developed out of the special world which the institutions create. The people who get the dividends are far away, but the management and the plant are in intimate daily contact.

As I wandered through these plants, each with its own life, it occurred to me that within these plants was developing what the modern sociologists call the social conscience. If it has not such a spirit it does not succeed. The calculating employer who is only pretending mutual interest will not get the service in return.

These same modern sociologists hold that the present era is chiefly remarkable for having created the individual conscience, and the next era will produce the social conscience. They point to Russia and maintain that the theories of Lenine develop the social conscience. Any one will go so far as to say that a social conscience is necessary if Lenine’s ideas are to have a fair show. It would be ironic if the social conscience were to develop quicker in the despised American bourgeois republic than in Bolshevik Russia.

FARMERS’ GROUPS PORTEND FAR-REACHING CHANGES IN NATION’S ECONOMICS

American farmers are organizing industrial unions. The wheat men are getting together in one union, cotton in another, wool in another. They may not call their organizations “unions,” but it is a part of the new industrial alignment. They are organizing for mutual backing, and the wheat farmers have gone so far they are carrying on a strike.

Labor has not made much headway in organizing industrially because there are too many difficulties in the way. These are principally the American Federation of Labor, and the associations of manufacturers. The organizers of industrial unionism also stand in their own light, as 19they try to organize labor industrially and cry revolution at the same time. And there is no revolutionary spirit in America.

Certainly there is no such spirit among the farmers, but what they have in mind means such a decided change in national economy as to be a real revolution, one that may make a decided change in the life of the country and carried on by effective organization, instead of by the silly parade of arms and loud talk about the proletariat, the way it is done in Europe.

The revolution the farmers have in mind is this: They refuse longer to be dominated by the cities; it is their purpose to dictate terms to the cities. As it is, they are held under what they consider a financial tyranny directed by the powerful interests of the country. They purpose organizing so effectively that, jointly, they will not only be as powerful as the financial interests, but having the staff of life in their hands they will be able to force their will.

The wheat farmers are right now in revolutionary foment. They are carrying on industrial strike. They refuse to sell their wheat. They are asking a high price, but that is merely symbolic. What they want is to get the price at which the wheat is finally sold. They are striking for the profits now made by the operators, the elevator owners, the speculators and the shippers. They have not yet carried their strike to the point of refusing to plant more wheat unless they get the full profit they demand, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Kansas and North Dakota Non-Partisan League Centres

The strike is being carried on most effectively in North Dakota, where the Non-Partisan League has been actively organizing the farmers for several years, and in Kansas, where the Wheat Growers’ Association of America is busy. The Non-Partisan League, while active politically, has as its principal purpose the uniting of farmers into a group that can get governmental action. Its chief field of operations is the Northwest, North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but it is also spreading further and was concentrating its attention on Nebraska when I was out there a short time ago. The Wheat Growers’ Association of America is also operating in Nebraska and is spreading its influence over Oklahoma and Texas as well as Kansas. It claims 100,000 membership.

Between the two they control the wheat producing States, and if there were not a big idea behind the revolt it might prove to be a serious kind of industrial strike.

The story of the revolt was best told to me by Senator Edwin F. Ladd of North Dakota. He is the original champion of the wheat growers in North Dakota, and as head of the chemistry department of the North Dakota Agricultural College, went out years ago and told the farmers they were not getting their share. He is a born agitator, it was his work that made the Non-Partisan League possible, and he has just been elected on the Non-Partisan League to the Senate of the United States. He is going to Congress to represent wheat. I saw him recently in Fargo, N. D., where he was laying his plans for his revolutionary coup in favor of the farmers.

I went to him to talk about the Non-Partisan League, but, though he had just acquired his seat in the Senate on the Non-Partisan ticket, he talked perhaps ten minutes on the league, and an hour or so on the revolt of the wheat growers and the other farmers.

Farmers Realize Situation

“The farmers who grow wheat,” he said, “are in revolt because they have come to understand their position in the economic life of the country. They know they do the work of growing the wheat and the profit is largely taken by others. Here in North Dakota the situation is so 20simple it is easy to grasp, and once seen, cannot be forgotten. The rich city of Minneapolis is exceedingly prosperous on the money it made out of the wheat grown in North Dakota. There stands Minneapolis and here are the North Dakota farmers who realize they are not richer on account of the wheat operators.

“The method of handling the wheat crop is also simple enough for any farmer to understand. During the spring and summer the banks lend money to the farmers to grow and harvest the crop. Their notes fall due early in the fall, when they are supposed to sell their crops. The small banks, which did the lending, backed by bigger banks in the bigger cities, reassemble this money, ship it back to the big city banks, which lend it over again to the operators and speculators who handle the wheat through its second period. They are in turn supposed to make the turnover in a few months, to sell and repay the banks, which lend the same money for a third time to the shippers who finally dispose of the wheat.

“The farmer now asks why he should be forced to liquidate his crop so quickly. Is it only so other men can clean up fortunes yearly on the manipulation of the crop he has raised? He wants to know why. He sees no reason why he should let this process continue. So he is making the only protest possible. He is sitting on his wheat and refuses to play the game as it has always been played. He will not hasten to liquidate his crop right away in order to finance the wheat speculator.”

North Dakota Banks Close

“Here in North Dakota the refusal of the farmers to sell has closed thirty or more banks. These banks are not insolvent, but they have no money. It is all in the wheat upon which the farmers are sitting and refusing to budge. When they decide to sell they will pay their notes and the banks will again be able to resume business.

“It is a strike, if you want to call it so. It is a protest against the economic system and shows the spirit that is moving. The Non-Partisan League has been voicing this protest and organizing it. That is why it has grown and is growing now faster than ever in spite of the political fight that has been put up against it. It may look for a harder fight as the organized bankers and wheat manipulators see their profits threatened by the preparations the farmers are making to voice their protest even more effectively through the American Farm Bureau.

“This is what is really happening among farmers. One way or another they are beginning to understand they have been the victims of disorganization. They have marketed all together and have bred speculation. Now they intend to change. They do not mean to hold up the country, but to force a change, so they are organizing, the wheat men in one group, the corn in another, the cotton and wool in still further groups, &c. There are dozens of different organizations all working to the same end, and their strength is being united in the Farm Bureau. They wish to sell through their own organizations and make the full profit.

“So far in the United States only the raisin growers of California and the prune growers have organized effectively. They sell their crops co-operatively.”

Canada’s Wheat Financing

“The wheat growers and the others mean to do the same thing. The method is simple. It is only necessary to get the different groups organized and the banks will have to finance us. I have just been making a study of how it is being done, and how it has been done for the past six years, in the three wheat provinces of Canada. There it was operated through the Canadian Government during the war, but it is now being operated by the banks. There are some 700 co-operative elevators where the farmers can store their wheat, and from which it is finally disposed of.

“The method there, which we shall adopt, is to pay the farmer a price on delivering the wheat and giving him a receipt which entitles him to a share in the future operations. Last year when the wheat was placed in the elevators the farmer was paid per bushel $2.15 in cash. When the price was more definitely fixed he was paid another 30 cents, and when the transaction for the year was ended another 18 cents. So he got all that was coming to him. According to the system in vogue here he would have got the $2.15 perhaps, and that is all he ever would have got. The other 48 cents per bushel, which totals up on the year’s crop to millions of dollars, would have gone to enrich the speculators and wheat manipulators, ‘Minneapolis,’ as we say here.”

“What we need to do is to organize ourselves as they have done in Canada, store our wheat in our own co-operative elevators and make the banks finance us through the different periods in the handling of the 21crop. There are three periods now, the farming, the holding and the handling of the wheat. It only needs co-operation for the farmer to share in all three periods.

“In this period of unrest following the war is beginning a new era in agriculture. Following the Civil War came the growth of manufacturing. After this war comes the reorganization of agriculture. For years now two-thirds of the population has been dependent on one-third. The cities have dominated. Now the country is going to share equally with the cities.”

Senator Ladd has vision. There are others too, but there is danger in vision. The farmers, being in revolt, want to do everything at once. They want to develop the Farm Bureau into an economic machine that would rival the power of the Federal Government. They want to centre the selling of the whole agricultural crop in a single body. It would be much more successful for each type of farmer to organize apart and go forward slowly as the raisin and prune growers they emulate have done.

League Voices Protest

I wish to say just a word about the Non-Partisan League. It is a farmers’ organization, but it has been developed largely by the energy of a single man, A. G. Townley. It has, in consequence, made many mistakes, mostly political. But its enemies, fighting by fair means and foul, have not been able to kill it off. As a league it is chiefly important because it expresses the protest. That is also why nothing can kill it. The one convincing thing about it, to any one, is the way the farmers will unhesitatingly pay the $18 dues it demands. Farmers are not so notably open-handed they would cheerfully hand over $18 if they were not after something the league was working for. It is economic independence.

The League’s purpose, and its only excuse for existence, is the establishing of a new and fairer method of marketing wheat, but where it is at work politically it is always fought on other issues—because it is “socialistic,” because “Townley is radical”—anything but the real issue. It was defeated in Minnesota this fall because it was declared to be a movement in favor of free love. It appears some books of Ellen Key, bearing on sex problems, were found in the North Dakota public school reference library. Promptly its enemies cried down these books and virtuously declared against the “free love movement.” In Minnesota its enemies quickly seized upon the party cry. The wheat manipulators of Minneapolis, who, being rich, dominated socially, sent their wives out to tell the women of Minnesota to vote against this “free love” party. These ladies, being rich and powerful socially, went with the virtuous plea into every town in Minnesota and, being known as rich and prominent socially, swept the woman vote of Minnesota with them. The Non-Partisan League, that organization of free-loving North Dakota Scandinavian farmers, was not allowed to pollute the virtuous State of Minnesota.

It is ironic, but it cannot stop the farmers’ protest. If Senator Ladd is right, the protest will be organized so effectively that the farmers will all be in industrial unions long before the industrial workers.

22

Hector Boon, Trading Expert, Describes in Series of Articles Prepared for The World Conditions Under Regime of Soviet Which He Believes Will Not Last More Than Two Years Longer—First Instalment Relates Experiences in Eastern Siberia After Defeat of Kolchak—He Sought to Recover 5,000 Furs Stolen by Bandit Chief Semionov.

Here is Russia from the inside as seen at close hand for ten months by an unusual observer—not an author, not an artist, not a propagandist, not a sympathizer, not an enemy, not a Socialist, not a reformer, not a reactionary, but a hard-headed, clear-seeing, unimaginative, fair-minded, give-the-other-fellow-a-chance kind of American business man.

Hector Boon saw things as they are—not as some one else says they are—not what Russia promises but what Russia is performing. And in a series of articles which he prepared exclusively for The World he tells plainly and with exactness what he has observed, what he has heard, what he has thought.

Mr. Boon, although of English nativity, is a thorough New Yorker—a keen, wideawake, practical man of affairs, whose business as a financial expert and trading expert, particularly for fur importers, has taken him to many parts of the world. He has just returned from Russia, into whose condition he had opportunities for thorough insight. It was not new territory to him; he knew the country before the Red regime and is able to draw contrasts between that period and the present. He believes the Soviet rule will not last more than two years longer.

The World offers his narrative to its readers for exactly what it is on the face of it—the actual and recent experiences of a plain business man in the land which has been so clouded in mystery despite the reports of writers of various types. Mr. Boon stands sponsor personally for all the statements and opinions contained in his articles.

Sitting here comfortably in New York, with peace and plenty on all sides, I find it hard to realize that it is only a little more than ten months ago since I said goodby in Harbin to one of the principals of the New York firm I represent, and then set forth on my long and interesting journey into Soviet Russia.

26During the summer of 1919 we had purchased large quantities of raw furs in Eastern Siberia, and with the defeat of Kolchak these had fallen into the hands of the Bolshevists; so my object in going into Russia was to induce the Soviet authorities to release these furs.

Brands Wells’s Articles as Skilful Bolshevik Propaganda

I entered Soviet Russia on April 6, and left it on Oct. 12, when I crossed the Russian-Latvian line at Sebesh. I arrived in London on Oct. 19, spent some time there recuperating from the effects of months of semistarvation in Moscow, and reached New York Dec. 23.

During my stay in London I read the diary of Mrs. Clare Sheridan, the sculptress; Mr. H. G. Wells’s articles on Russia which were published in the London Sunday Express, and Mr. Winston Churchill’s reply to that modest gentleman who permitted the newspaper in which his articles appeared to describe him as “the world’s greatest living author.”

As these articles have doubtless also appeared in American journals, I venture to believe that the American public will be interested to read the experiences of a New York business man in Russia (notwithstanding that he is an Englishman) and compare them with those of Mrs. Sheridan and Mr. Wells.

I have no aptitude for “sculping”; I lay no claim to literary ability; I am not endowed with the sweet womanly nature which would render me sad at the thought that I should never see again that foul, blood-drenched scoundrel Dzherjinsky; I am simply a business man, and at that have had no experience of life behind a draper’s counter. Had I had, I should probably, like Mr. Wells, be able to tell England and the world how to trade with Russia.

Mrs. Sheridan’s diary, piled with sympathy for the butchers and precious little for their victims, can be dismissed as a breach of good taste on the part of a notoriety seeking female, but we cannot thus lightly dismiss the articles of Mr. Wells. Whereas Mr. Wells’s experience of the Bolsheviks, according to his own admission, was gained as the result of a two weeks’ stay in Russia, mine dates from the time of Lenine’s first attempt, in July, 1917, to overthrow the Kerensky Government.

I regard Mr. Wells’s articles as the most skilful piece of propaganda which the Bolsheviks have so far put forth. Mr. Wells makes no attempt to cloak the appalling conditions of life which to-day obtain in Petrograd and Moscow. In fact he has drawn a very faithful picture of them. Having done so he proceeds to tell the world that these conditions were brought about not by Bolshevism but by the imperialism and capitalism of the Czar’s regime. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I propose, in the course of this series, to show that the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks alone, are responsible for the deplorable condition in which Russia finds herself to-day. In order to do this I shall take the reader with me on my journey through Russia.

In June, 1917, I travelled from Vladivostok to Petrograd over the Trans-Siberian Railroad. On that occasion the journey took ten and a half days, all stops included; this year our actual running time (all stops excluded) was twenty-eight days.

In 1917 I remained in Russia until September, when I went to New York, returning to Petrograd in December, where I remained until April, 1918, when, with my assistants, I was forced to escape on sledges through Karelia into Finland. In October, 1918, I arrived in Vladivostok and remained in Siberia, a close observer of the Kolchak regime, until I crossed the Urals in June this year on my way to Moscow.

In June, 1919, the Ataman Chief Semionov stole from my firm some 5,000 white fox skins at the Station Manchuria, and in July I proceeded to his headquarters at Chita to negotiate for the return of them. I was unsuccessful and went to Omsk, where I spent two-and-a-half fruitless months endeavoring to secure compensation from the Kolchak Government.

Dictator in Name Only.

During my stay in Omsk, where I came into contact with the leading members of the Government, I had an opportunity of studying the methods of Kolchak and his Cabinet. Kolchak, admittedly a man of great personal 27courage, was a dictator in name only; he possessed none of the qualities fitting him for such an onerous position; his Cabinet consisted principally of unscrupulous adventurers who neglected no opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the cause, which they ultimately, by their corruption and treachery, destroyed.

In October, realizing that the fall of Omsk was imminent, I left and went to Chita and reopened negotiations with the bandit of the Trans-Baikal. My stay in Chita was somewhat unpleasantly disturbed by a ten days’ sojourn in the Ataman’s jail which was brought about by my calling him a thief to his face. On my release from prison, which was secured by the British Military Mission, I remained in Chita until the first week in December when, having secured a promise from the Ataman that he would pay for the stolen foxes upon presentation of certain certified statements, I went to Vladivostok to get them.

I left Vladivostok on the return journey toward the end of January. On my arrival in Harbin, however, I was called to Tientsin for a conference with my principals. At this conference they requested me to make an effort to get to Irkutsk from Chita and endeavor to secure the return of a large quantity of furs which we then had in Irkutsk and the surrounding district.

On my return from Tientsin to Harbin I found my friend, Capt. H. S. Walker, the British Military Mission’s representative in China, who had recently left there under the impression that Semionov’s days were numbered. My chances of getting through to Chita looked decidedly small, and when Consul Gen. Harris with the consular staff, and Col. McMorrow with the 27th United States Infantry from Verkni-Udinsk blew into the town with much the same story as Walker’s, they looked even smaller.

However, I decided to try and break through and left on the post train on the 22d of February for the Station Manchuria, although I was assured in Harbin that it was impossible to get past that point as the Baikal Railroad was blocked on both lines with the Czech evacuation. At Manchuria, by great good fortune, I found Lieut. Lee of the American Railroad Corps, with a train of flour destined for the coal miners west of Chita who were supplying coal for the Czechs, and he very kindly agreed to take me through in his private car. We made the journey in 32 hours, a remarkable performance considering that it had taken evacuating Americans ten days.

Saw Remnants of Army.

We got to Chita just in time to witness the arrival of Gen. Voitzikofsky with the remnants of the Kolchak Army, which had retreated from west of Omsk, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, partly on sledges and partly on foot, in the depth of winter, through a semi-hostile country—a magnificent feat of courage and endurance.

Those of us who were anti-Semionov had great hopes of Voitzikofsky. We looked to him to oust the bandit and his pillaging, murdering associates, and set up a democratic form of government in the Trans-Baikal. When E. B. Thomas, the American Vice Consul and myself interviewed Voitzikofsky, a few days after his arrival, he indirectly led us to believe that he intended to depose the Ataman.

However, he delayed action and his army diminished daily as the result of wholesale desertions. He was credited with having 27,000 officers and men when he arrived. Three weeks later this force had dwindled to 7,000 and Semionov, who had been quaking in his shoes, gradually began to assert himself. When the Japanese finally decided not to evacuate the Trans-Baikal, which had been their intention as soon as the Czechs had passed through, Semionov was once more in the saddle and Voitzikofsky dropped into comparative obscurity.

My negotiations with Semionov came to nothing. It is true he signed an order on the Finance Department to pay the claim in gold (of which he had plenty, having stolen it from a Kolchak echelon some months previously), but when the order was presented the Finance Department declined to honor it and referred us back to Semionov. The Ataman, who obviously had no intention of paying, then impudently referred us to the Czechs for payment, stating that as they had been entrusted with the safe conveyance of the Russian gold reserve to Vladivostok, they were the people to apply to. This, of course, had reference to the action of the Czechs at Irkutsk when, in order to insure the unhampered evacuation of their forces, they traded Kolchak and the gold in return for noninterference with their movement eastward.

I applied to the Japanese Military Mission for assistance, but although the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokio had pledged us, through the American Embassy, the active assistance of their mission in Chita, the Military Mission not only declined to intervene but disclosed to the Ataman private and confidential documents belonging to me, which caused me great embarrassment and undoubtedly 28endangered my position in the town.

Troops Permitted Thefts.

The Japanese, throughout their occupancy of the Trans-Baikal, acted in a manner prejudicial to the real interests of the White cause. Their troops were engaged in guarding the railway, but they never on any occasion intervened to prevent Semionov from levying on supplies en route to the front or stealing goods belonging to Russian and Allied merchants.

The seizure of goods by Semionov reached such proportions during the summer of 1919 that merchants in Eastern Siberia refused to forward goods through the Trans-Baikal, and in consequence Western Siberia was deprived of the supplies which, if they had been forthcoming, would have done much to win the support of the peasantry and townspeople for the White cause.

Capt. Walker and his assistant, Capt. R. C. Carthew, returned to Chita after I had been there a few days, and at once commenced, with the assistance of the American Railroad Corps, who had a direct wire to Verkni-Udinsk, to make inquiries in respect to the officers and men of the British Railway Mission who had been captured by the Bolsheviks at Krasnoyarsk.

When Capt. Carthew induced the Bolsheviks, through Krassnochokoff, the Commissar at Verkni, to have these prisoners brought to Irkutsk, he obtained a safe conduct to proceed there with food, clothing and medical supplies and kindly offered me a place on his car provided I was able to procure a similar safe conduct.

I then telegraphed Krassnochokoff intimating that I wished to go to Irkutsk for the purpose of discussing trading possibilities with the authorities there, and requested a safe conduct. He telegraphed me back the Russian Socialistic Federated Soviet Republic’s full safe conduct to travel to Irkutsk, guaranteeing my liberty of movement while there, and the right to leave the territory of his Government at my will.

Armed with these documents we said goodby to “Johnny” Walker and Thomas on a bitterly cold afternoon in April and proceeded with a special train consisting of our private car and a goods wagon for our interpreters and servants. We flew a large Union Jack from our observation platform which created a great deal of attention at the stations at which we stopped. We met the last Czech echelon east of Moxon and felt that we had then said goodby to civilization, Carthew for a couple of weeks and I—indefinitely.

PROSPEROUS IRKUTSK REDUCED BY RULE OF REDS

At Irkutsk we found a small Japanese outpost under the command of a junior officer who, although we presented our papers signed by the Japanese Chief of Staff in Chita, declined to allow us to proceed until he had first communicated with the staff. Eventually we were permitted to go on, and reached the advanced Red position at 1 P. M. We called upon the military commandant, who was careful to impress upon us that we were not in Soviet territory but in that of the Far Eastern Republic, at that time called the Buffer State. We were quite willing to take his word for it, but we noticed with amusement that the entire population was sporting hastily improvised red stars and rosettes. In the course of the afternoon our wagons were attached to the post train which was already running daily between Hilok and Irkutsk.

We arrived at Verkni-Udinsk at 11 A. M. the next day and the Commissar 29Krassnochokoff’s aide-de-camp met me at the station with a motor car and conducted me to the Commissar’s house. I found Krassnochokoff, who had spent many years in America as the head of a Jewish orphanage in Chicago, living in a small room modestly furnished with a deal table, a few chairs and a truckle bed. He made a very pleasant impression upon me.

When, however, he asked questions concerning the conditions in Chita and the intentions of the Japanese, I had to decline to answer them. He was at some pains to impress upon me that the Bolsheviki I had known in 1917 and 1918 had changed decidedly for the better since that time. He went on to say that he realized, however, there was still a strong disinclination on the part of the Entente and America to have trade relations with the Far Eastern republic, and he therefore felt that the establishment of the Far Eastern Republic, extending from Verkni-Udinsk to Vladivostok, would provide a medium for trading with the Soviet. He assured me that there would be no confiscation or requisitioning of private property and that the communistic system would not be indulged in.

Buffer State Only a Fiction; Is Part of Soviet Russia

Krassnochokoff, who is certainly a man of some ability, spoke of his plans in a sincere and convincing manner, and I really think that at that time he believed the scheme would be carried through just as he outlined it to me. However, I must admit I was sceptical.

I had seen, drawn up in the station, the Bolshevik propaganda train, in charge of Dvornik, who had been employed as an interpreter by the American Railroad Corps until he was imprisoned by the Kolchak Government for propagating Bolshevism. It did not augur well for a truly democratic state. Subsequent events have shown that my estimate of the situation was correct. The buffer state exists only in name. It is part of Soviet Russia, administered by Moscow on the communist system. The population is embittered, being half starved. All industry has died and so have men and women at the hands of firing squads, because they unwisely expressed their disapproval of commissar rule.

Krassnochokoff was in Moscow this summer. His efforts to persuade Lenine and company to moderate their policy in the Far Eastern Republic met with fierce disapproval, and for some weeks he walked on thin ice. The butcher Dzherjinsky, of the extraordinary commission, was thirsting for his blood, but he weathered the storm and eventually returned to his job at Verkni-Udinsk.

We left that night for Irkutsk. I was most anxious to get there. I wanted to see our prisoners and get into touch with uncamouflaged Bolsheviks. I hoped to find the latter as Krassnochokoff had described them. The atrocities committed by the whites in Siberia had alienated all my sympathies for them. I was above all else anxious to see whether the wild beasts I had known in 1917 and 1918 had become tame.

I was at this time predisposed in favor of opening up trade relations with the Soviet power, feeling that this would do much toward solving the Russian problem. These were my feelings and my hopes on the eve of my entry into “Lenine’s Paradise” in April. I left that “Paradise” in October determined to do everything in my power to dissuade the outside world from having any dealings whatsoever with the Bolsheviki. They were scoundrels in 1917—they are even greater scoundrels to-day.

We received a great welcome from Major Vining and his six officers and seven men when we arrived in Irkutsk at 3 o’clock the following afternoon. We found that they had with them a party of British civilians who had been captured in Krasnoyarsk. These were evacuated by Carthew. We found that the whole party had been through trying times. Some of them had been dangerously ill with typhus, and all of them looked worn and undernourished. They told us that the sight of the Union Jack flying from our car as we rolled into the station was one which made them thrill with pride. Months later, 30when in Moscow, I was suffering severely from want of food and my position seemed desperate. I realized just what the sight of that flag must have meant to them.

The day of our arrival in Irkutsk was a “prasnik” or church holiday, and it was therefore impossible to call on the President of the Revolutionary Committee until the morrow.

The town, even making allowance for the fact that it was a holiday, looked dead. All the shops had been closed and their contents removed. Many of the windows on the main street had been perforated by bullets, and over everything there hung that air of gloom so indissolubly associated in my mind with Bolshevism.

I had visited Irkutsk, several times during the Kolchak regime, when it was a thriving trading centre, and now I found it hard to realize that this red-beflagged, poster-besmirched conglomeration of buildings could constitute the same town. The prosperous, well dressed, happy looking townspeople of the past had been replaced by drab and dirty workpeople, peasants and soldiers, all liberally bedecked with red stars. I discovered later that all those who wore red stars were by no means Bolsheviks; in fact, the great majority of them were “radishes,” or red outside and white within, as the Russian phrase goes. With the Reds in power it is advisable to present at least a red exterior.

Wherever one went on the main or side streets, one met lavish displays of gaudy posters; some of an educational character, others blatantly lewd. The majority had for their object the stirring up of class hatred.

Hotels Taken by Bolsheviki.

We found that all the hotels had been taken over by the Bolsheviki for the housing of Soviet officials and their families. The restaurants had either been closed or converted into Soviet dining rooms for Soviet employees, where meals of exceedingly poor quality and consisting mainly of cabbage soup, without meat, and “kasha” (millet). These meals were served at nominal prices on production of the inevitable card.

On the following day I called on Jansen, the President of the Revolutionary Committee. He gave me a very cordial welcome and expressed himself as most anxious to enter into trading relations with American firms. He arranged a meeting with the heads of the various Government departments. This meeting, which took place on the following day, was the forerunner of a great many conferences which extended over a period of nearly two months, and which brought me into close touch with the leaders of the Soviet Government in the town, and afforded me an excellent opportunity of studying their characters and their methods.

I found Jansen, at all times a reasonable, moderate and above all humane man. He had a pretty good grasp of his duties and executed them with efficiency and despatch. He was always ready to render me assistance, and in all my personal relations with him I found him straightforward and reliable.

Of the other leaders, Saxs, a nervous, highly strung little Jew, who had spent many years in prison during the Czar’s regime for political offenses, I found to be a very decent fellow. Despite the fact that his mind has become politically unbalanced, he had remained human and there is more than a little of the milk of human kindness in his make-up.

Waxhoff, who, despite his youth (he was about twenty-three), occupied a position of importance as the head of a Government department, was the source of unfailing interest to me. He was the son of a rich manufacturer in South Russia and had commenced his career by organizing strikes in his father’s factories. He was a youngster of natural ability, but his head unfortunately was crammed full of half-digested revolutionary theories. I found him even a lovable companion, warm-hearted, honest to a degree and incapable of harming a fly. He travelled to Moscow with me.

Reduces the Town to Penury.

Taking then all in all, the men who held the reins in Irkutsk were moderate men, but none the less in carrying out the orders of Moscow they reduced that once prosperous and well-fed town to penury and semistarvation within a few months.

The market was officially decreed closed, but the peasants still continued to bring in foodstuffs until the “Chika” (the Extraordinary Commission) commenced raiding it and arresting sellers and buyers, confiscating their goods and imprisoning them. When I left Irkutsk only a small number of peasants were bringing food into the town.

Siberia, even allowing for the land which has been allowed to go out of cultivation in recent years, still produces, or did during the Kolchak regime, enough to feed the whole of 31its population and still permit her to export a considerable surplus to European Russia. Notwithstanding this fact, which is incontrovertible, there is not a town of any size in Soviet Siberia which is not suffering from a shortage of food. The Entente blockade is certainly not responsible for this state of affairs: it is the Communist system which is at fault.

I found in those Government departments which I visited a superabundance of staff, occupied mostly in doing nothing. The people in these departments had been forced to work for the Soviet, but they took good care to do as little work as possible and that as badly as they dared. Outside the spy service there is little or no real organization in Bolshevik institutions.

FOOD IS SCARCE IN OMSK, AND MOSCOW IS NO BETTER OFF

Thanks to Jansen, I was able to live in an apartment of six rooms, quite an extraordinary privilege, bearing in mind that people were being crowded four and five in a room. When I took possession of it my drawing room was occupied by an engineer and his family and four other people, making in all nine persons. This engineer, a well-known member of Irkutsk society, had been turned out of his house to make room for a Commissar. His presence in my house led to an unpleasant incident which gave me a glimpse of the methods of the “Chika.”

I was awakened one morning at 2 A. M. by my servant with the news that the house was being searched. On going out to investigate I found half a dozen soldiers and a Commissar busily engaged in searching the effects of the engineer and his family. I formally protested to the Commissar, but as he most politely informed me that my personal rooms would not be disturbed, I was left with no alternative but to go back to bed. I took the precaution, however, of leaving my servant on guard, and he reported to me at breakfast that the search party had left at 6 A. M. with the engineer under arrest.

I inquired into the charges against this man and found that he had been arrested primarily because he was supposed to be rich and also because he had been associated with an organization for sending comforts to the troops during Kolchak’s regime. He was still in prison when I left Irkutsk.

Lack of Food in Omsk Due Solely to Soviet’s System

After two months’ negotiation with the Revolutionary Committee it was found impossible to arrive at any definite arrangement in respect to trading, and I received a telegraphic invitation from the Siberian Revolutionary 32Committee to go to Omsk and discuss the matter with them, which I accepted. Jansen placed a compartment at my disposal in a private car which was attached to the post train, and I left for Omsk with my two assistants and my servant on the 22d of May.

The journey to Omsk was quite uneventful. We found the town a replica of Irkutsk, a superabundance of red flags, posters, soldiers and a scarcity of food. The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers, and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures in order to coerce them.

The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will have none of it. I am confident that the Bolsheviki will never succeed in forcing the peasants to accept their theory of government and that if they resort to military measures the peasants will come out on top.

Method Embitters Peasants.

In the early summer of this year the Bolsheviki ordered the peasants in Western Siberia to deliver a certain stipulated quantity of grain to the railway stations nearest their farms. Only 25 per cent. of the quantity demanded was delivered, which represented the quota of those whose farms were in close proximity to the towns. The balance, despite blood-curdling threats, was not forthcoming. This method of requisitioning farm produce embittered the entire peasantry of Siberia, and the net result was nil. Owing to the lack of transport the grain obtained by the above method has not been sent to Moscow, for which it was intended.

We spent ten days in Omsk. We slept on the train and took our meals in a peasant’s house in which I had lived during the previous summer. At that time my full board and lodging cost me a dollar a day; this summer, however, dinner alone cost us $2 a head, and I doubt whether the landlady made any profit. At this house I met a great many peasants and small townspeople. All were without exception bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviki. The majority of them had already suffered from requisitions and they were terrified of the “Chika.”

I had a long talk with Smirnoff, the President of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. I found him very moderate in his views and a man of heart and vision. He is regarded with suspicion by the ardent Communists on account of his humane and kindly qualities, and but for the fact that he enjoys the personal friendship of Lenine the “Chika” would make short work of him.

I found it impossible to do anything in Omsk for the simple reason that no one there had any authority to enter into trading agreements, and when Smirnoff invited me to go to Moscow I accepted.

Our wagon was attached to a service train conveying supplies for the Polisa front, and there travelled with us several Commissars and their wives and families. The journey, which the post train makes regularly in six days, took us twelve, as we broke down constantly owing to running hot boxes, and when we did not break down we laid up for hours at a stretch in order to arrive at search stations in the small hours of the morning when the militia would be too lazy to bother about us. These precautions were rendered necessary because our good Commissar’s friends had with them a good wagon full of contraband, chiefly foodstuffs, which they were taking to Moscow for their own use and also as a speculation.

On one occasion, when, owing to some miscalculation on the part of our master speculator, the train commandant, we arrived at a search station in the early afternoon a most amusing incident took place. The search party consisted of an officer and six men. The officer informed our commandant that he intended to search the train, whereupon our man called out his guard of two N. C. O.’s and fourteen men, gave the order to load, and then with a twinkle in his eye invited the officer to commence his search. Thanks to our superior numbers no search took place, but the militia got some white flour and sugar to help them keep their mouths shut.

The heat throughout the journey had been intense, so that when we arrived in Moscow we heaved a sigh of relief and were indeed glad to have got there. We arrived on the afternoon of the 22d of June. As we pulled into the goods station I noticed with mixed feelings a number of British general service wagons and other British stores which had been captured by the Bolsheviki in Archangel.

Waxoff offered to take me to the Moscow Soviet to inquire for rooms. We took a cab outside the Jaroslavski Station. The driver at first demanded 10,000 roubles—i. e., $5, but after some bargaining agreed to take us to the house of the Soviet, which was formerly the residence of the Military Governor of Moscow, for half that sum. The pre-war fare was 15 cents. At the Soviet we saw a Commissar, who gave me a letter to the Foreign Office, which, it appeared, arranged all accommodation for foreigners. As this man interviewed us he partook of his dinner, which I was interested to notice consisted of very good cabbage soup with a large piece of meat in it, followed by a large plate of meat and vegetables, good black bread and tea with sugar. This certainly did not look like starvation. I later discovered to my cost that only Commissars were fed thus well.

At the Foreign Office we met a Jew named Contorovitch, who spoke English fluently. He furnished me with rooms at the Foreign Office Guest House at No. 10 Mala Haritonofskaya, which formerly was the home of a wealthy German merchant. At this house the first person I met was Mrs. Harrison, the correspondent of the Associated Press.

The other people living in the house were Bobroff, a naturalized American Jew (former Russian subject), who was soliciting orders from the Bolsheviki; an Esthonian representative, two tame Bolsheviki from Siberia, two red, or seemingly red, delegates from Corea, and Axionoff.

This man, formerly Colonel of the Imperial Guard, scion of a noble Russian family, was ostensibly working in the Foreign Office, but was in fact a spy for the Extraordinary Commission. He was specially planted in the house to watch the movements of foreigners and report their conversations to Mogilevski, the Chief Commissar of the Foreign Department of the Vetchika (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission).

During my stay in Moscow I saw a great deal of this mustache-twirling, beard-combing, smirking, Iscariotic apology for a man, and the more I saw of the cowardly renegade the more repulsive I found him. Axionoff, however, was not the only member of the aristocracy I met who had sold his honor and purchased a modicum of comfort and a degree of safety by spying on and betraying his friends. By far the most dangerous spies in Moscow were those recruited from the upper classes.

Potatoes a Delicacy.

The meals at No. 10, which is one of the best guest houses in the city, consisted of tea and black bread and butter or cheese for breakfast; water soup, decorated with particles of vegetables and kasha, or occasionally rice, for dinner, and black bread and again kasha for supper. On rare occasions we were given as a special delicacy boiled potatoes sprinkled with minute portions of meat. As the meat had invariably been a long time dead we found it advisable to remove it before eating the potatoes.

As at all the Soviet guest houses there were two soldiers always on guard at the door, who carefully noted one’s comings and goings. Visitors were only allowed to enter on production of their documents, particulars of which, together with the name of the person visited, were entered in a book which was periodically sent to the Vetchika. In addition to the guard we had a rat-faced commandant who padded about the house in noiseless boots, probably relics of his former occupation.

On calling at the Department for Foreign Trade, which had been presided over by Krassin before he left for Scandinavia and England, I met a Commissar of the name of Voronatzki, who expressed himself as most anxious to trade with us. He proved to be a very decent fellow, but possessed of little or no knowledge of the matters he was handling. The proposition I made him was the same as that which I had advanced in Irkutsk, namely, to supply the Irkutsk district with goods forwarded via Mongolia and the Jakutsk district, in the fur-bearing region northeast of Irkutsk, via Olan, a port on the Pacific, provided the Soviet power agreed to return to us the furs they had seized in Eastern Siberia; payment for the goods to be supplied by us to be made in furs.

These propositions were referred to the Economic Department of the Foreign Office, which declined them on the grounds that they were of no political interest.

The negotiations I have just described had taken about ten days, and during this time there had been several fresh arrivals at No. 10, notably Boni, the correspondent of the New York Sun, who was later thrown into jail because it was alleged he evinced too much interest in the affairs of the Third Internationale. He attended the opening of the conference in Petrograd as the guest of Radek, the Bolshevik editor.

Shortly before the advent of Boni, Mrs. Harding, an Englishwoman, the correspondent of The New York World, arrived. She was in the house exactly four hours, during which time Rozinzki, formerly a tailor in the East End of London and now a spy for the Vetchika, never left her side. On the pretext that she was to be lodged in another guest house, she was taken off in a motor car, accompanied by Mogilevski, and driven straight to the Vetchika and placed in solitary confinement.

Others Thrown Into Prison.

The same treatment was later meted out to two American correspondents, Estes and Flick, who on their arrival in Moscow were driven direct from the station to the Vetchika, where they were thrown into prison and were still there, in a semistarving condition, when I left Moscow. As in the case of Mrs. Harding, they obtained the Soviet power’s permission to enter Russia before they left Reval.

The Italian correspondent, Pennuncio, who stayed while in Moscow at No. 10, also had a dose of prison. It seems that an article appeared in his newspaper which dealt with the morale of the Red Army. Without troubling to inquire whether this had been written by him, they threw Pennuncio into prison and kept him there for ten days.

In arranging for my passport to be visaed for England I came into close contact with the Foreign Office, and in particular with one Rosenberg, a Jew, who had spent several years in London as a master tailor in an East End sweatshop. In 1917 he was secretary to Raymond Robins of the American Red Cross in Petrograd. When I arrived in Moscow he was in charge of the Western Section of the Foreign Office, and as the agent of the Vetchika had the handling of all foreigners in Russia.

This man is without exception the most unpleasant individual I met during my stay in Soviet Russia. He was invariably rude to every one, ofttimes insolent, consumed with his own importance, and violently anti-English, the country which for years had given him an asylum.

When some American friends of mine were arrested on an absurd charge and thrown into prison I ventured to address a letter of protest to Chicherin, the Commissary for Foreign Affairs. This letter came into the hands of Rosenberg, who threatened me with imprisonment for insulting the Soviet Government. I reminded him that I was in Moscow under the protection of his Government’s safe conduct, to which he was pleased to reply that that would not keep me out of prison.

This Threat Effective.

The situation appeared to call for bluff, so I invited him to put me in prison and assured him that within twenty-four hours of my arrest Comrade Krassin (the Soviet’s representative in England) would find himself in prison in London. The threat was effective, for during the whole of my enforced stay of three months in Moscow I retained my liberty. I need hardly say that I do not believe that the English Government would have arrested Krassin or that they would have done anything for me if I had been arrested.

Once upon a time the British Government was a by-word among the nations of the earth for the promptness with which it protected its nationals. To-day the British Government has so little regard for its own 35dignity that it carries on negotiations with a gang of marauders while its nationals are being ill treated by them, and even appears anxious to elevate that gang to the dignity of a de facto Government. At any rate this is the feeling of those unfortunates who were allowed to starve in prison in Moscow while Krassin was enjoying the comfort of his office on the “Bondski Prospect” and revelling in the luxury of his quarters in Curzon Street, Mayfair.

Repulsed by Krassin.

Just as I was preparing to leave for London Krassin returned to Moscow and I postponed my departure in order to see him. Two days after his arrival I interviewed him in his office at the Foreign Trade Department. He was very full of his supposed success in London, assured me that the trading agreement would be signed and speedily followed by complete recognition of the Soviet Government and went on to tell me that he would have no dealings, direct or indirect, with American merchants until the United States Government fully recognized the Soviet.

He remained adamant on this point but suggested that I should see him again on my return to London. Krassin impressed me as a very shrewd business man, quite unscrupulous and ready to adopt any means to an end. His personal conceit is colossal and he demonstrated it in many ways at this interview.

When he attended a meeting of the Supreme Economic Council, which was held during his stay in Moscow, he was questioned by an ardent Communist as to why he proposed to give away Russia’s riches to British concessionaires. His repay was typical of the man.

“Never mind,” he said. “Don’t fear; we shall give away nothing. We shall get the concessionaires to put in their money, experience and machinery, and when they have done that we will hang them.” This illuminating incident was related to me by a man who was present at the meeting, a man whose reputation is beyond question.

Lived in Commissar’s House.

Almost immediately after this interview with Krassin, and when the Bolsheviks realized that they had nothing to gain from me, I was ordered to vacate my room at “The House of Spies,” viz: No. 10, at two hours’ notice. This was the work of Rosenberg, but he cut off his nose to spite his face, for during the rest of my stay in Moscow I lived in places where there were no guards on the doors or aristocratic spies to entice me into making counter-revolutionary statements.

As the Bolsheviks made no effort to provide me with other quarters I was forced to live in a friendly Commissar’s car at the railway station, which was then waiting to take him back to Siberia. I remained in the car for a week and then found a room in an apartment house on the Kuznetzki Most, the Bond Street of Moscow. The house, which was tenanted chiefly by Soviet employees, was indescribably dirty and verminous.

It was only when, after having been forced to leave No. 10, I had to provide my own meals that I realized what it cost to feed oneself even in the most frugal manner. Taking the exchange current at that time, viz.: 2,500 roubles to the dollar, and converting the rouble prices into their American equivalent, black bread cost 25 cents a pound, white bread $1, butter $2.50, rice $1, meat 50 cents, sugar $2.50, tea $6 and potatoes, which were comparatively cheap, 4 cents a pound.

The foregoing are so-called speculative prices for foodstuffs which are purchasable on the market, whereas the Soviet prices for food obtainable with cards are only a fraction of these.

Buying and selling, except by and to the State, is illegal and the market itself is an illegal institution. As, however, it provides a source of large illicit income to the Commissars of the Emchika (Moscow Extraordinary Commission) it is allowed to operate. The only sellers on the market who are not subject to sudden arrest are those who have an understanding with the Commissars and pay them a regular fixed sum per month for their protection.

The market is raided by the soldiers of the Emchika daily. The arrests per raid average about 60 persons, buyers and sellers. The arrested are herded from the market to the point of preliminary inspection, which is in close proximity to the market place. Here those who are able to make it worth the while of the examining Commissars are set at liberty after their goods have been confiscated; those less fortunate are thrown into prison where they remain sometimes for months without ever being brought before the semblance of a court.

The saddest sight in the Muscovite city is the place I named the Lane of Tears. It is an alleyway between two rows of permanent stalls on the Sukarefka, where women and men, old and young, almost entirely of the educated classes, with the exception of a few professionals who occasionally compete with them, foregather and sell their personal effects in order to keep body and soul together.

For three months I went to the market daily and never failed to visit the Lane of Tears. I have seen gently nurtured women selling their silken underclothing to the vulgar wives and mistresses of Commissars, who, all unmindful of the feelings of the seller, held up the garments for all to behold amid the ribald laughter and lewd jokes of the soldiers standing near. I have seen a young widow selling an officer’s tunic and strive to gulp down the tears as, with the proceeds, she hurried off to the bread pitch. If I read the story right, that tunic had been dear to her as the last remaining remembrance of the young husband the firing squad had taken from her.

Begs Money for Bread.

One day as I was having my shoes cleaned, a luxury which later I was unable to afford, an elderly lady addressed me in rapid Russian. I did not understand her as she spoke so swiftly and I told her so. She immediately asked me in French, German and English, with hardly a trace of an accent, what language I spoke. She told me in torrential French that she was starving (she looked it), and begged me to give her a little money with which to buy bread. She said all this as if she had learned it by heart and had then had to summon up her courage to say it, as after asking for the money she told me in a faltering voice that she would not have done so but that she had not tasted bread in four days.

I took her to a food stall and insisted on her joining me at an early dinner. The food was rough but good. As we ate I got her to tell me her story. Her eldest son, an officer, had been killed in the war against Germany; her second son and her husband had been shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the crowning blow had fallen only a few months previously, when her only daughter and her husband were executed.

Having sold all her possessions, she was now starving, and, as she told me, had only one wish in the world, to fall asleep one night and never wake up. I gave her what I could. I never saw her in the market again. I have often wondered whether her wish was fulfilled. I trust it was; for that poor lady and thousands like her, death can hold no terrors, only relief from untold suffering.

A lady getting on in years, whom I often met on the Sukarefka, selling her clothing and other little trifles, has, I am glad to learn, arrived back safely in England. She is an English governess who had been in the service of a rich family living in the provinces. She made repeated applications to Rosenberg of the Soviet Foreign Office to be allowed to return to England, which were brutally refused. While the French Red Cross was in Moscow she was fed, but when it was evacuated she found it hard to keep alive. I was unable to help her, as I was desperately close to starvation myself. This lady was living at the English home, where I visited her several times. It was eventually taken over by the Soviet, and the remaining English women were herded four and five in a room, while the Bolshevik inmates lived in comfort in a room apiece.

Brutality of Bolsheviks.

The seizing of St. Andrew’s Home was only an instance of the brutal 37manner in which the Bolsheviks treated the British and the Americans in Moscow. The action was all the more despicable and cowardly inasmuch as the people living there were for the most part poor governesses, quite destitute of funds.

When Krassin left Moscow I applied to Rosenberg for permission to leave, which was refused on the ground that the frontier was closed. When the frontiers were opened I again asked to be allowed to leave and was put off with the excuse that the frontiers were still closed, although I knew them to be open, as several foreigners had left. It was only when Nuorteva, who came from Marten’s bureau in New York, took over Rosenberg’s job that the Foreign Office put its cards on the table and stated that they refused to honor my safe conduct and that they intended to hold me as a hostage. It took me a month to persuade Nuorteva to allow me to go. Nuorteva, leaving aside natural differences of opinion, behaved like a white man and showed himself both kind and considerate toward all the foreigners and genuinely desirous of helping them so far as the Vetchika would allow him to.

During the last three months of my stay, while waiting for permission to leave, I went closely into the life of the city. I visited all sorts and conditions of Russians in their homes and gained an intimate knowledge of how they lived, if one can use such a word to describe their bare existence.

In nearly every house there was overcrowding, four and five and even six people living and sleeping in one room. Their staple diet was black bread, kasha, salt herrings and potatoes. If a family was able to afford a little meat once a week and some milk, sugar and fruit, they were living in comparative luxury.

Card System a Farce.

The card system, except for the new aristocracy, that is to say the members of the Communist Party, who number only 500,000 in all Russia, is a farce. The bulk of the commodities one is entitled to purchase with cards do not exist. The cards are really only good for the bread ration, kasha, salt herrings and occasionally a little cooking oil, sugar, tea and potatoes.

The bulk of the people exist on black bread, kasha and unsweetened tea. The rations are just sufficient to maintain life. The people, to judge by their outward appearance, which medical men can probably explain, look healthy, but in reality they are terribly undernourished and are without any reserve strength. If an epidemic broke out in Moscow the people would die like flies.

The children are well taken care of. There are numerous creches, children’s homes and children’s dining rooms. However, even in the care of children the Soviet differentiates between the children of Communists and the offspring of non-Communists. The main reason why the Bolsheviki take good care of the children is because it enables them to bring up the coming generation on Bolshevism, Communism and class hatred from the cradle.

The sanitary arrangements of Moscow are deplorable. Most of the piping broke during the winter of 1918–1919 and no effort has been made to repair it since; in fact, no repair work of any description has been done during the past three years. The roads and pavements are full of yawning cavities and one risks his limbs if he goes out after dark. The streets are unlighted.

No regular scavenger service is maintained. The work of cleaning the streets, the railway stations, &c., is done by forced levies of bourgeois and “eye wash” parties of Communists, who work on Saturday afternoons for propaganda purposes. The street cars are running on a limited service and are invariably crammed to suffocation. The shops, of course, are all closed, with the exception of a few which sell milk, fruit and vegetables. There are no restaurants and no hotels open to the public. There are no newspapers except those published by the Soviet and which are crammed with lies from cover to cover. There is not the slightest freedom of pen or speech.

The population lives in a state of terror. The soldiers of the Chika are dressed in weird Mephistophelian headgear in order to terrify the people. House searches are invariably made at night or during the small hours of the morning. People are arrested daily on the flimsiest charges and thrown into prison without any form of trial. People accused of speculation and counter revolution are shot in thousands, being given no chance of proving their innocence. Eight thousand paid agents are employed in Moscow alone. The Soviet spy system is probably the most highly developed organization of its kind in the world.

“Veritable Bird of Prey.”

The most hated man in all Russia is Dzherjinsky, the head of this system. He has done to death literally hundreds of thousands of men and women. He is a man without a heart or a conscience, a veritable bird of prey, whose appetite for blood is insatiable. When the Reds overran Siberia after the fall of Kolchak, they 38announced as they advanced into the country the abolition of the death sentence and guaranteed to all White officers who surrendered a full pardon and permission to return to their families.

This undertaking was broken almost immediately after they gained complete control of the country. Thousands of Whites were butchered throughout Siberia. The man who ordered this was Dzherjinsky. Mrs. Clare Sheridan wrote in her diary that when she said goodby to him it made her feel sad that she would never see him again!

I have talked with all sorts and conditions of people in Moscow, from the lowest to the highest, and failed to find one person, apart from those in favored positions in the employ of the Soviet, who had a good word to say for Bolshevism or Communism or any other “ism.” On the other hand, the working classes have no wish to be again under the old regime. They all want the same thing—a Government that will give them a chance to earn a decent living and will leave them alone. They are tired of decrees, weary of rationed food and Communistic control and, above all, they loathe the “Chika.”

The majority of the girls and women working in the Government offices are leading irregular lives with the Commissars who furnish them with additional food and clothing. Girls who in pre-revolutionary days, would never have prostituted themselves, even in Russia, where morality was always on a low scale, to-day are forced to sell themselves in order to keep body and soul together. Bolshevism is the foulest prostituting agency the world has ever seen.

SOVIET RULERS A GANG OF THIEVES, BOON DECLARES

I left Moscow on Saturday, the 10th of October, by the courier’s train which was carrying despatches for Joffe, the head of the Soviet Peace Mission, and arrived in Riga on the morning of Tuesday, the 13th.

There travelled with me an English officer, Capt. J. S. Campbell, late of the Gunners, who had been captured by the Reds in January when on the Pechora River, East of Archangel, on a timber survey, and who had spent a considerable time in prison both in Archangel and in Petrograd. My other travelling companions were Mr. Hopwood, the assistant manager of Kodak, who had been in Moscow for eighteen years, and his two daughters.

Both Campbell and myself will always affectionately remember the charming reception given us by Col. Tallents, the British Commissioner to the Baltic states, and the assistance which was rendered us by Mr. Louden the British Consul. While in Riga we also saw Mr. Young, the American Commissioner, to whom we gave all the latest information respecting Americans held prisoners in Moscow.

In Riga we found it difficult to realize that we had finally escaped from the Bolsheviks, and it was only when we arrived in London, on Oct. 19, having travelled via Berlin, that we really felt that at last we had reached safety and civilization.

‘Gang of Marauders.’

In London I found people who were interested in Russia actively discussing the proposed trading agreement with the Bolsheviks, but nobody who had had any experience of them supported the scheme or were other than 39strongly opposed to it. I have spent the best part of the last three years in Russia, partly with the Reds and partly with the Whites, and during the whole of that time I occupied myself as a business man.

All my personal business interests are centred in Russia, and I have everything to gain by resumption of trade with that country, but notwithstanding, I am absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to any trade relations whatsoever with the Soviet power. I shall have nothing whatever to do with Russia in so far as trading is concerned while the Bolsheviks remain in power. I regard trading with the gang of marauders who now wield power in that country as unsound in theory and in practice.

The basis of all business is credit, and the basis of credit is reputation. The Bolsheviks are thieves. Their word is worthless and their stock in trade is principally stolen gold, and I decline to become a receiver of stolen property even at the instigation of the British Government.

Mr. W. B. Vanderlip told me in Moscow that as soon as Mr. Harding took office the United States would recognize the Soviet Government and trading between the States and Russia, would be in full swing this coming year.

With all due respect to Mr. Vanderlip and his fantastic contract (which is not worth the paper it is written on) I do not believe that the United States of America will have anything whatever to do with the Soviet Government or that the United States Government will follow the lead of the British Government by entering into an ignoble contract with the biggest bunch of murderers and scoundrels the world has ever seen, or do any act which will tend to increase the power of a gang of marauders whose aim is to smother the truly democratic form of government which obtains in the States, and in the building up and protection of which the sons of America have so gallantly shed their blood in the past.

I should like the people of America to know that, apart from Mr. H. G. Wells and certain misguided members of the British Government, there are only two classes of people in England who desire that England should trade with the Bolsheviks, viz: those manufacturers and merchants who have large stocks of goods on hand which they are unable to dispose of, and the Direct Action people and their associates. Outside these two classes the people of England are opposed to any dealings with Lenine & Co.

“The Enemies of Mankind.”

For those manufacturers and merchants, whether they be English or American, who wish to trade with the Bolsheviks, I have nothing but contempt. They are the sort of people who fleeced their respective countries during the war, who lost no opportunity of taking advantage of their country’s plight, and to-day they are willing to deal with the enemies of mankind, if by so doing they can fill their own pockets.

There are not more than one per cent. of real Bolsheviks in the whole of Russia. The anti-Bolshevik elements in that country are unitedly opposed to the lifting of the blockade. Whilst they appreciate that to a certain extent their present deplorable conditions of existence would be somewhat improved by the importation of goods of first necessity, they prefer to undergo still greater hardships if by so doing they can bring about the overthrow and final destruction of Bolshevism.

Mr. Wells has stated that the Russian population is roughly content with the Bolshevist rule. I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Wells gained the impression of “roughly content.” Had Mr. Wells spent a year in Russia, as a free agent, unhampered by Bolshevik guides, and then made the statement that the population was “roughly content,” I should have characterized it as a cold, calculated lie, but inasmuch as he only spent two weeks in Petrograd and thirty hours in Moscow (I was there at the same time), we can attribute the statement to ignorance; in fact, Mr. Wells has shown himself as remarkably ignorant in relation to many of the vital factors of the Russian situation.

I do not believe that the honest trades unionist in any country is in favor of that form of government which the Bolshevists have instituted in Russia. I cannot but feel that if the genuine trades unionist in England and America possessed the same first hand knowledge that I do of Bolshevist rule he would be willing that the Government of his country should trade with the Soviet Power and thereby strengthen it.

Nowhere in the world to-day is the genuine workingman so badly treated as he is in Russia. Labor is conscripted and trades unions have been abolished. The workingman has apparently no rights and no voice in the government of his country. He is denied the right to strike or to protest against his grossly inadequate wages.

The Bolshevist government is the government of the militant minority. That minority comprises principally the criminal elements of the country. Lenine time and again stated that the people, taken as a whole, are too ignorant to be allowed to have a voice in the government of their country. 40He maintains that the country should be governed by the dictatorship of strong men who should decide what is good for the people, and, having decided, should enforce their will upon the people by means of military power.

I would recommend the workmen of America to note and inwardly digest:

(1) The people of Russia have no voice in the government of their country.

(2) There is no freedom of pen or speech.

(3) Labor is conscripted.

(4) People accused of offenses against the Soviet laws, which are not stable but are altered from day to day, are thrown into prison without trial.

(5) There are no juries.

(6) Trade unions have been abolished.

(7) The right to strike is denied.

(8) There is military conscription.

And, having done so, to say whether or not they desire to bring about the same conditions in their countries. I don’t think they will. I think they will agree with me that such a government is impossible. Those foreigners who have lived in Russia under the Soviet rule are unanimous in denouncing it as the worst government the world has ever seen.

Wells Knows Nothing About It

Mr. Wells, after two weeks’ stay in the country, tells us that the Soviet power is the only possible form of government for Russia at the present time. He conveys the impression that inasmuch as he has decided that “there is now no alternative to that Government possible,” that that settles the matter and we must do as Mr. Wells advises us. Mr. Wells ridicules Marx and yet, almost in the same breath, tells us that the Bolshevist Government, which is a Communistic government, is the only possible government for Russia.

It would seem to me that we are entitled to judge the value of Mr. Wells’s advice on these two statements alone and that it is not necessary to delve further into his impertinent literary gymnastics except to say that Mr. Wells, despite his boast that he was not hoodwinked during his stay in Russia, if judged by what he has written, was fooled up to the hilt.

Mr. Wells states: “Much that the Red Terror did was cruel and frightful; it was largely controlled by narrow-minded men, and many of its officials were inspired by social hatred and the fear of counter revolution, but if it was fanatical, it was honest. Apart from individual atrocities it did, on the whole, kill for a reason and to an end.”

Again, I suppose, we must attribute this statement to Mr. Wells’s ignorance. There has never been in the history of the world a more corrupt and dishonest organization than the Extraordinary Commission. There is no greater scoundrel than a Dzherjinsky, the President of it. But, ignorant and bumptious as you are, Mr. Wells, who are you to tell the world that the Extraordinary Commission is honest? What do you know about it? What have you seen of its methods? I venture to say that you have seen nothing and that you are writing, as you frequently do, of things you know nothing about.

You live in a free country, free from all persecution, enjoying every human comfort, under an established Government; and you go to Russia, spend two weeks there with your bleating, mouthing perversion of humanity, Maxim Gorky, and come back and tell your countrymen that they must support a set of blackguards.

A final word with you, Mr. Wells—leave Russia alone. You have done a lot of harm and you have earned the just resentment of every true friend of Russia. If you must dabble with poison, write another “Ann Veronica.” The Russian problem is one which will be solved by men, not by literary acrobats.

In conclusion, I would like to remind the great American people that they fought in the great war to make the world safe for democracy. You helped to destroy German militarism, but remember that German militarism was nothing as compared with that of Soviet power. Having set out to rid the world of militarism and make it safe for democracy, have you any right to leave the task undone? Is there not a moral obligation resting upon you to crush the militant minority which is exploiting and terrifying 99 per cent. of the Russian people?

41

More than thirty-seven years have passed since that utterance was made. During all that time The World has tried mightily to realize the supreme ideal thus set for it and to that end it is striving with all its power now.

So it is not unbecoming to point out the degree of success which The World has attained. There can be no boasting in measuring the altitude this newspaper has reached in its ever soaring flight; no braggadocio in reiterating its aims, in setting forth its claims.

For the millions of persons who read The World agree that it does big things in a big way. Else they would not read it. Nor would they crowd its columns with advertisements, themselves most interesting and important reading.

Even to enumerate the big things The World has done in the last twelve months, to rehearse the public services it has rendered, would take too long here. But consider for a moment the last of these. The World’s determination to improve the housing conditions of this city resulted in its discovery and exposure of unprecedented building graft. The inquiry by the Joint Legislative Committee on Housing, compelled by The World, has resulted in further amazing revelations. No prophet is needed to foretell that infinite good may come of it.

Really, it seems not impossible, if the Legislature will do its 42share, that a New Yorker of moderate means will be able to house his family decently and have enough money left to buy food and clothing.

THE EDITORIAL PAGE

The newspaper that would obey the precepts laid down by The World’s founder has need of an editorial page, sound, strong and independent.

That The World’s attitude on public questions is guided by these instructions of Joseph Pulitzer is generally agreed by the reading public. Its editorial policy is one of intelligent liberalism. It would seek for the evils of democracy a cure in more democracy. It would welcome the widest opportunity for change and experiment in fitting popular government to new conditions, while setting its face like a flint against revolution by force and the subversive doctrines of anarchy. It finds in freedom an assurance of safety alike from reaction and Bourbonism and from half-baked soap-box theories of “direct action.”

Yet any man or woman who has something really worth while to say and who can say it briefly and with propriety may find a hearing in The World’s Editorial Forum.

A cartoon is an editorial—when it is one. The daily cartoons of Rollin Kirby upon The World’s editorial page are almost as often reproduced in Europe as in the United States as the finest examples extant of American public opinion portrayed at a glance in pictorial form. They thus combine present-day political effect with permanent historic value.

POLITICAL WRITERS

The World is particularly fortunate in its political writers. In that direction, the greatest achievement of the year was Louis Seibold’s interview with the President of the United States. By the courtesy of The World the interview was published in newspapers all over the country. It and the writer were lauded by magazines, reviews and papers devoted to journalism.

Equally remarkable was the expose, by the same political authority, of the underwriting of Gen. Leonard Wood’s campaign for the Presidential nomination.

Charles Michelson heads the admirable staff of the Washington Bureau of The World. It goes without saying that the White House and all the departments are visited daily. Mr. Michelson never needs to deny or amend his accurate despatches.

In Albany, Charles S. Hand reports the open sessions and the “inside” doings of the Legislature with equal impartiality and fearlessness.

Women in politics, who since the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment have taken their place in the Parties side by side with the men, serving as associate leaders in District, County or State organizations, are closely and accurately followed in their newly authorized activities.

The New York World’s telegraphic news service in the United States extends north and south from Duluth, Minn., to Brownsville, Tex., and east and west from Eastport, Me., to San Francisco. Any point in the country can be reached, no matter how small, through arrangement with a correspondent in the nearest large town. Every city in the United States, large and small, either has a World representative or has one within telephone call.

The news queries to The New York World cover every section and every variety of news, and are on the wires either by telegraph or telephone at every emergency.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE
and General European News

Good Americans native born and good Americans of foreign lineage have an interest equally deep in foreign news. This good American newspaper has built up a superb organization to gather news from the most authoritative sources all over the globe and to despatch it by cable, wireless—by courier, when necessary.

The high standing and reputation of The World’s correspondents abroad give them easy access to heads of Governments, prelates, diplomats, scientists, captains of industry and leaders of labor.

James M. Tuohy, the London representative of The World, is the dean of London correspondents. His knowledge of European affairs is admirable. Joseph Pulitzer appointed him as head of the European clearing house for news for The World and Mr. Tuohy has appointed correspondents for The World in all the capitals of Europe, being personally acquainted with each man and woman he selected. No one knows more than Tuohy about politics in Ireland and British rule in Ireland, subjects in which tens of thousands of The World’s readers are engrossed.

Every reader of The World is familiar with the names of its staff correspondents abroad, for they, being certain of the facts they state are only too glad to accept public responsibility for them. Lincoln Eyre, in Paris; Arno Dosch-Fleurot, who has a roving commission at the moment; Cyril Brown, in Berlin; Miss Beatrice Baskerville, in Rome, have become the friends, even the guides, of the thoughtful who support this newspaper—whenever and wherever the interest of mankind is focused, there and then a staff correspondent of The World is present; at the front headquarters of battling armies, at all important conferences of diplomats, at discussions of bankers, at congresses of labor—in Moscow, Constantinople, Vienna, Spa, Versailles and Geneva—anywhere. And the lines of immediate communication stretch from London to the remotest corners of the earth.

The editorial and reportorial staffs of The World are composed of highly trained, intelligent, quick-witted men, peculiarly gifted as writers. They have broad human sympathies, which make them swift to see news and stories of interest to humanity. These writers and news collectors have been drawn from all parts of the country and from many countries. Each one of them has some specialty, some unique gift of understanding, so that when a story “breaks” the City Editor can select from his staff the one man peculiarly fitted by nature to understand, unravel and write it. As matters of great moment in business, finance and commerce, and court trials, sporting stories, crime and detective stories, social affairs, political intrigues, adventures, accidents, sea and shipping yarns, war stories, hunting escapades, stories of nature, music, art and the theatre are constantly “breaking,” it is necessary to have on the staff of a great metropolitan journal men who can instantly “jump out” on the story and grasp it, gather its many strands and come back in a few minutes, or few hours, ready to write not only an entertaining but a truthful and accurate story.

Through long experience—many of the men have been on the paper almost from boyhood and others were trained in the best editorial rooms in the country—these men have acquired professional skill, great reverence for their work and a decent regard for the rights of the reading public. The World, because of its complete local staff organization, has knowledge of practically every news event in New York and prints everything that is of interest to the public.

FINANCIAL

Forecasts made in the columns of The World as to the operation of underlying of economic factors in finance have proved so accurate during the upheaval attending the Great War, as to give the Wall Street Department, conducted by Samuel S. Fontaine, an enviable reputation both at home and abroad. Some of these predictions have been as startling in the fulfilment as in their conception. Here is one notable illustration:

In the fall of 1914, when British bankers demanding almost hysterically that the United States ship unlimited quantities in liquidation of current liabilities and sterling was quoted at $7 a pound, the financial editor predicted that, before the end of the Great War this country would not only have purchased all United States securities held abroad, but that the debit balance of England in this country would grow to such startling proportions that the pound sterling would be driven below $4 in New York. English economists were aghast at such financial iconoclasm. They dismissed it as a bit of Yankee ignorance and insolence. Every high school boy knows how abundantly this prediction has been fulfilled.

45When the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the suggestion of the Federal Reserve Bank, first began its campaign to force deflation by means of high interest rates imposed on borrowers on stock collateral, the Financial Editor of The World called the attention of the Washington authorities of the fact that the necessity for liquidation was not confined to stocks, but that it extended to all quarters of the country and that the profiteering that was causing most discomfort to the people was centred very largely in the South, where the banks had loaned enormous sums on cotton at fictitious prices, and in the West, where unwarranted credit was being extended grain and food orders.

The truth of this was immediately conceded by the national banking authorities. Rediscount rates were made uniform at all regional institutions, and the great price readjustment movement, which has led to a universal decline in the cost of living resulted.

The World through its financial columns began nearly a year ago to call public attention to the usurious rates charged by some of the profiteering banks of Wall Street, which, it declared, amounted to the proportions of a public scandal. These charges were taken up by Comptroller of the Currency Williams, and confirmed in every particular. In denouncing these factors the Comptroller took occasion, in an interview given the Washington Correspondent, to pay a high tribute to the Financial Editor of The World;

Mr. Fontaine has not only rendered a public service but he has shown all along a remarkable grasp of the situation.

Some notable articles pointing out the necessity for economy at the hearthstone, if the country is to return to the thrift of pre-war days, have appeared in The World’s financial columns and have been widely copied by the press of this country. They have met not only with widespread approval, but they have been real factors in promoting a wholesome spirit of economy of the land.

THE DRAMA

No other city in the world contains so many theatres as New York, or is the centre of so great activity in every branch of the stage’s art. The entertaining articles on plays and acting by Louis V. De Foe, for more than twenty years The World’s dramatic critic, are everywhere recognized as a dependable guide to the theatregoer—this, because of his fearlessness and fairness and the authority of his opinions and impressions gained from more than a quarter of a century of constant observation and study of the most popular and generously patronized of all the arts.

ART

Art affairs are covered by reviews of important exhibitions in the museums and galleries, news mention of other exhibitions, reports of sales of major interest and summaries of art activities in other cities where museums are maintained.

46Special attention has been given for years to projects for the physical beauty of cities and to the movement for industrial art education whereby American craftsmanship may win and hold distinctive place in the world’s esteem. This movement, to which the leading museums and many manufacturers have committed themselves, looks beyond the art courses in the public schools to the establishment of schools of design, aided if not wholly supported by public funds, in which the talented young may be assured training as thorough as is given in any of the schools of Europe of that type, to the end that an industrial art worthily American may become a real national asset.

MUSIC

The World’s music department is in charge of one of America’s most competent critics, James Gibbons Huneker. His daily observations on operatic and concert doings are eagerly looked for, not only because of their immediate analytical value but also because of their informing spirit. The critic’s comprehensive knowledge and wide experience enable him to discuss music in its relation to all its sister arts.

Mr. Huneker’s opinions are authoritative because he is primarily a musician. From the time he first stirred his readers as a raconteur, his enthusiastic followers have kept step with him on his progress through the whole seven arts.

His last book “Steeple Jack” has attracted attention.

BOOKS AND LITERATURE
“What You Want to Know About Books You Want to Know About”

Once a week, in The World, a page under the editorship of E. W. Osborn is devoted to “Views and the News in the World of Books.” Here the latest offerings of the publishers, in books of history, of essays, of poetry, of general facts and of fiction, are treated in the simplest fashion as matters of the current news. The department has no interests to serve save those of its readers, to whom it aims to furnish exact information, with a measure of entertainment as generous as the books may afford and the editorial intent may achieve. The Book Page under its present policy has been a feature of The World practically for the last twenty years. Within that period it is believed to have established something of credit for timeliness and for fairness of judgment. While recognizing the diverse tastes and desires of a great body of readers—as a newspaper book department must do—this page has no helping word for a volume deemed in any way unworthy of any reader’s attention.

Robert C. Benchley’s column, “Books and Other Things” is concerned more with books than with other things. But he writes so entertainingly about a book that, if you do not read the book, you surely will read Benchley again.

The World publishes the latest news about the women and men who are prominent in New York and in all social centres. It tells not only of the entertainments the fashionable and wealthy give for their own amusement, but of those they hold to aid the charities they maintain. Weddings, the first appearance of debutantes, theatre parties, all the diversions of those who are worthy of mention, are described precisely and picturesquely in the columns of this newspaper. So are receptions to official personages—in a word, all the functions where culture and good taste are displayed.

WOMEN IN NATIONAL REFORMS

The World, since the inception of the woman’s movement, has chronicled the advance of women in organization from the small individual club working for development along conventional lines to the great federated bodies who throw the influence of educated and enlightened womanhood on the side of national reforms. The germ of practically all philanthropic endeavor has either sprung from or been promoted by organized women, and the columns of The World bear ample testimony to the detailed care with which these ambitions have been aided by publicity.

AVIATION

As a forward-looking newspaper The World was prompt to see the possibilities of aviation. The earliest experiments of the Wright brothers at Killdevil Hill were reported by a staff correspondent, and The World’s interest in the science of flying has been unflaggingly demonstrated ever since. Glenn Curtiss’s historic flight from Albany to New York, the longest accomplished up to that time, was stimulated and rewarded by $10,000, the gift of The World.

When the war broke out in 1914 The World was promoting in all possible ways the cause of civilian aviation, notably by lending its columns and aid generously to the projected transatlantic flight for which Mr. Curtiss was building a machine. Since the armistice it has continued to display its faith in the future of flying. The Pulitzer Trophy, one of the handsomest ever designed for a flying event, attracted to Mitchel Field, Mineola, this year an unprecedentedly large field of fast aviators. As a consequence of this meet American interest in the speed possibilities of the airplane will undoubtedly be greatly enhanced.

A Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play has been maintained by The World since July 7, 1913. Its objects, as stated by Ralph Pulitzer in the order creating it, are:

“To promote accuracy and fair play, to correct carelessness and to stamp out fakes and fakers.”

In establishing the Bureau and sending official notice of the organization to its correspondents, inviting their co-operation, The World not only insured better and more conscientious service in its own columns, but it spread the gospel of accuracy and fair play in journalism throughout the newspaper world. Every notice sent out by the Bureau to correspondents was prefaced by the following declaration:

“The World aims to be accurate. It aims to be fair and just to every person who reads it and to every person whose name it prints.

“Accuracy and fair play are inseparable in journalism. Inaccuracy often means injury to innocent persons. A newspaper’s influence is measured by the number of people who read it AND BELIEVE IN IT.

“The words ‘accuracy and fair play’ sum up the law of libel. If what is published is true and fair the writer need not worry about the libel law, civil or criminal.”

On the reverse side of the notice sent to correspondents, in order that all might be impressed with the very decided views on accuracy and fairness entertained by Ralph Pulitzer, and by his father before him, were printed extracts from their public utterances on the subject.

All complaints involving the question of accuracy or fair play received in any department of The World are turned over to the bureau. These complaints include libel actions, letters from attorneys and others, and complaints made in person at The World office. The bureau makes careful inquiry and determines whether or not these complaints are well founded, and, if they are, who is responsible for the matter complained of. Having determined that a complaint is well founded, the necessary correction is prepared and turned over for publication to the managing editor of whichever edition of The World published the particular matter complained of.

A card-index record is kept showing who are responsible for inaccuracies and unfair publications, and this record indicates who are habitually inaccurate or unfair. Deliberate faking, which, happily, is extremely rare, is invariably punishable by dismissal. Carelessness or unfairness may be punished by reprimand, suspension or dismissal. Chronic carelessness results in dismissal.

Such is The New York World. Such is its manner of obeying the precepts of its founder—of doing its duty to itself—and of fulfilling its obligation to the multitude of readers who maintain it so generously, and who have raised it to the supremacy it enjoys.