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p This week I had the pleasant fortune to lunch with a group of American women who are here to inspect the factories, especially with regard to sanitary hygiene, the working conditions and occupational diseases. These women are specialists, holding positions under the Government at home, and in American colleges, and have extended their journey here from a European conference, at the invitation of the Sovyet Government. They are Liberal women, quite unafrighted by the press tales at home. And yet,—"To think,” they exclaimed, "that we should actually see a Red Flag flying over a Government Building!" They were as pleased as children who had really seen a fairy or a giant, even a child-eating giant. And so I was especially interested in their unbiased report; to the effect that in these respects Russia is doing more for the workers than are our industrialists at home.

p To me this was not a surprising discovery,—for consider the Capitalist handicap. Our industries are run for profit, the interests of the workers demand expensive safety equipment, short hours and healthful working conditions. These things cut down profits, and when you weigh your own profits against the welfare of the workers, it is easy to predict which side goes down. In Russia, production 115 is for use, the Government is the employer, and the workers are the Government, and the profits go back into improving conditions for the workers. In every factory, a shop committee works with a committee from the Government, the industries are unionized on the industrial, not on the trade basis, and strikes are encouraged from above, if complaints do not bring results. There is no clash of interests, —it is simply for all sides, a question of efficiency balanced with health and comfort. The labor papers and factory wall-papers are filled with frank and amusing criticisms and complaints, and these too are encouraged by the Government.

p Women in industry are freed from home drudgery by the canteens and co-operatives in the factories, where not only they but their children are fed. We are shown through these, and treated to borshch—it really isn’t by design that I happen into such places at lunch-time, for I never yet have discovered what lunch-time is. At the banks, tea is always just coming in, and committee-heads who confer with you, generally have a tray brought in and snatch a substantial meal while they talk. Here we get the soup straight from the kitchen pot, and after pronouncing upon it favorably, we are taken on to the nursery. We are admiring a crowing rosy thing, half-naked in the late Summer heat, when in comes a smiling young women in her factory clothes and takes the child up to nurse. She receives our compliments with pleased pride, and tells us she has had two or three months off work with pay before the child was born, and the same since, and that all working mothers have this, and time off to nurse their babies. Later the child goes into the factory Kindergarten. The same 116 arrangements are made for peasant mothers. There is no fear ahead of unnecessary ill-health, and its dreaded expenses, for medical care and preventive measures are provided as a worker’s right. It seems like a Utopian dream —doesnt it?—Fear, that constant specter at the workers’ side, Fear banished from their lives. It is not pretended that all factories are thus completely organized, or all workers so fortunate, though medical aid is free to all; but gradually, rapidly even, while you watch, working conditions are being brought up to this model.

p They have their clubs, their classes, their reading, lecture and concert rooms, in fact their whole community life lies within their factory boundaries. Tickets for opera and theater too, are distributed in blocks to the different factory organizations at nominal prices, while I must pay almost what I would in New York. Look about you at the Grand Opera House. In the best seats, blouses predominate. On the opening night of the season, an opera is given based on a folk-tale, and all the stage-boxes and adjoining balconies are packed with workers’ children. If the workers are ill, they are sent to rest homes or sanitoria, if their children are ailing, they are sent out to the forest resorts and datchas maintained for them. Injurious conditions are remedied if possible, or the workers changed off before the occupational diseases attack them. Is it any wonder that with all this emphasis on the workers’ wellbeing, Russia’s industrial conditions should be found to rank high?

p Slowly, too, they are building sanitary homes and garden cities, to replace the old primitive housing, and such improvement is extended to the farms. Here the Government 117 encourages co-operative production. Why indeed should farming lag along on the old inefficient individual basis, while other industries evolve collectively? Little, comparatively, is done for the individual peasant, but groups and communes are given every possible help and encouragement, in the way of instruction, high-class seeds and easy credits for modern machinery. This is drawing the individual farmers into co-operative colonies. The best lands are retained for Government experimental farms, and yesterday the young man with whose unit I came over, climbed my four nights to wave triumphantly before me his contract for a 49% interest in a fine Government “Sovkhoz” in the rich Kuban district, all sealed with a red seal and a brown hemp string. This 49% is one of the safety devices for keeping Government control of foreign investments. Besides that hempen string, there are many and many strings attached even to such sympathetic venturers as the Ware group, with its broad plan of radiating centers of educational farms throughout the country.

So efficiently and sincerely is Russia protecting her workers in factory and field and mine, that there is little doubt of their confidence and appreciation, no doubt that they are, in great majority, sympathetic and loyal to the new regime,—entirely so, as far as it has been possible to permeate the ignorance of the masses with an understanding of Sovyet aims. And every Communist holds himself at the disposal of the Party to go out and help with the permeating, the "boring from within,” wherever ignorance and discontent threaten to make trouble or resistance; to lecture and to teach, to enter factories, mines and farming communes, forming nuclei for propaganda and 118 organization, among those who must be won by a better comprehension both of ultimate social aims and of immediate productive necessities.

p A visit from Harry was the motif, as our social notes say, for some investigating of the unemployment problem. Harry is American for Aaron, his good dignified Jewish name, but I can no more persuade him to change back to it than I can induce him to abandon his smart American tweeds for a graceful Russian blouse. He has returned to Moscow from some family visits in the Provinces. "I just met Ezra,” he said, "and what do you think?—he’s wearing a linen blouse!" "Ezra would,” I replied. "He has an eye for effect, a sentiment for Russia, and a joy in being an emancipated Jew.” These are the two young fellows who were our fellow-passengers. Ezra thrills to the wonder of accomplishment in this new Russia. Harry, sympathetic but critical, notices the work still to be done, sees shabbiness, confusion, and lack of American efficiency, grumbles that his trunk was not handled as promptly as in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He severely discovers unemployment in Russia. He sees what he did not notice at home, because he kept out of its way,—being comfortably bourgeois. But Russia’s troubles are not hidden. There they are, frankly confronting you.

p But notice. Across the way, a dozen men high up are slapping gallons of paint on the old Hotel Metropole, now a 119 “Sovyet dom,” and descending our own stairway we track crushed plaster down the four flights. This too is an old hotel, now a Sovyet dom housing workers. "See!" I say with happy optimism, "how finely our house is being repaired.” No enthusiastic response there. "It needs it!" is the unsympathetic reply. And in Kharkov, it seems, he has found it worse. Buildings out of repair, sidewalks full of holes and men out of work. Why—is his efficient American wonder—should they not bring the men and the jobs together? But that is a familiar question at home, in whatever country home may be. We’ll ask it here of some one who can tell us.

p We telephoned for an appointment, and ultimately found our way through the mazes of a bureau building to the office of a young member of the Collegium of the Department of Labor. The total of unemployment, it was frankly admitted, reaches at the moment, even to millions throughout Russia. Such a total does not confine itself superficially, as do our figures, to the numbers thrown out of work by the closing down of factories and mines. It includes not only all registered available labor, skilled and unskilled,—and practically all labor is registered—but also the newly demobilized young soldiers, and the newly " demobilized" students, for whom, except for those returning to the land, place must be found in the industries—the still undeveloped industries that cannot absorb them. These are the healthy labor elements. To them must be added the sum of the old and the crippled, and many of the pathetic bourgeoisie who must now work or starve, and who in large proportion are unfitted for efficient work. 120 With all the unemployed the Government must deal fairly through its official labor bureau.

p Eight roubles a month is the insufficient dole due every unemployed worker,—factory, farm or professional, a large total for a poor government just getting on its feet industrially and financially. The sum, however, equals four times that amount in purchasing power, compared with its American equivalent, four dollars. Due them also is work as fast as it can be organized to absorb them. Meanwhile, medical aid is supplied by the Government and housing is practically free, and no one may be evicted from his minimum allotted space. Six roubles is as high as the average worker pays for his rent and he retains his quarters free when out of work. Or rather a nominal rent of ten kopeks —five cents!—is paid by the unemployed. All rents are graduated on a sliding scale according, not to the quality of the room, but to the wage for the month. The disabled too are given a dole and housing, and if they wish under present conditions to engage in trade, are free from taxes, which are rather scandalously high for the voluntary "Nepman,” the trader who has taken advantage of the New Economic Policy. The vendors along the kerb are able to make from forty to sixty roubles a month. One form of trade, unfortunately, is begging, which is overlooked by the Government in the present circumstances, but strongly objected to by the Communists. They would deal with this question socially and not individually, and that will be done in time, when more vital problems have been dealt with. The Communists as a critical group are often as impatient of delayed results as are the less enlightened critics. During the past year, a million and a half roubles 121 have been spent upon work for the unemployed, 200,000 in Moscow alone. A million and a half roubles had just been appropriated for repairing Leningrad before the flood made necessary a special drive for relief. From these centers, where the need is most acute, the work will in time be carried to the Provinces. At present, there is a sharp limit to financial possibilities. The expense—and the problem—of unemployment do not lie alone in wages and in work, —it is largely a matter of materials. These simply are not to be had, and the great need is to throw labor into the production of such materials. The organization of industries is the fundamental problem, and this is progressing as fast as foreign capital can be secured, for the bulk of machinery for production must come from outside, though that industry also is developing. The increasing rapidity with which European governments have been “recognizing” Sovyet Russia, shows how eager foreign capital is to invest itself, even with all the restrictions placed upon it by the Sovyets. Meantime the development of agriculture has more than tripled since 1921, industrial developments -show from four to eight times the 1921 record, and transportation which has been two-thirds supported by the Government, now pays for itself. Neither agricuture nor industry is yet up to pre-war figures, but rapidly production is increasing to meet the needs of reconstruction and unemployment.  [121•* 

p At present the unemployed in this great City of Moscow, to which they naturally flock, number only hundreds, and one understands why when he sees scaffolding around 122 every third building he passes, rubbish and brick-heaps disappearing under the picks and shovels of men and husky women,—for remember that in old Russia, women always had the privilege of working side by side with men at the most exhausting labor, and still retain the habit,—electric rails piled all along the kerbs, paint and plaster filling the hallways of the "Sovyet houses,” that is, the apartment houses controlled by the Government, miles of beautiful parking blooming almost over-night the length of factory districts, and the rapid completion of half-finished buildings begun before the war. One such eight-story structure, long standing without walls or roof, has been finished within the last few weeks, and now is filled with workers’ families. The Revolutionary Museum has just been put in thorough repair; a month ago, I stumbled over heaps of dust and stones in the semi-circular entrance-court, only to be refused admittance,—yesterday I was surprised in the same entrance by a stretch of green lawn, flower-beds and young trees.

p This is one sound way of solving the unemployment problem, as far as materials hold out. Another is the organizing of workers’ "artels.” Shops are opened by a workers’ group for making and marketing wares,—shoes, baskets, clothing, anything they are skilled in making. They share alike in the profits and there is no question of wage. For the unskilled, primitive work is provided, sweeping of the streets, making of boxes and paper-bags, even from cast-off, figured-over, office paper. The great drive at present is for co-operatives, both producers’ and consumers’. These and the artels, which of course are co-operatives on a small scale, are intended to put an end automatically to 123 “Nep” trading. This co-operative drive is advertised by huge flaming posters, showing the massed workers thronging under mottoed banners, the whole framed in by a young giant in worker’s blouse, flaunting his red banner above the masses.

p No one who has gone into the detail of all this employment-making will complain of either inefficiency or indifference in this well-organized government. As against the impatient criticisms of my young friend, I quote an American delegate to the Red International of Labor Unions, "There is not a more efficiently organized government in the world.” My own experience in a limited field, would lead me to endorse this verdict, in spite of some red tape and slowness in the matter of visas and credentials, due perhaps partly to my own ignorance of procedure and of the language. There is such a complexity of official bureaus, that among the many Sovyet, Foreign, Communist and International divisions, you don’t always know where you are "at.” The last, of course, are not technically Government bureaus, but if you have certain affiliations, you must deal with them. Also, it is inevitable that individual employees should be inexperienced and inefficient, drawn as they must be from all possible sources. During the period of Military Communism, when the blockade and destructive invasion reduced the country to famine, and the Government “payok” was insufficient for real sustenance, it took several persons to do the work of one, and now, with increasing efficiency, the reduction of the working-forces everywhere has added to the unemployment figures. In the administrative offices, a large proportion of bourgeois non-Communists are employed because of their training, but the two competent men 124 with whom I talked, members of the Labor Collegium, described themselves as middle Intelligenzia, with a prewar revolutionary record.

With the problem of the unemployed and helpless is allied the child problem. Employment for children is furnished where practicable, as part of their education. That is the idea of education in Russia, the fitting of the individual for useful social service, while giving him at the same time all the cultural advantages enjoyed in Capitalist countries only by the rich and privileged. Children are not allowed in organized industry, in the ordinary sense, under the age of sixteen, but connected with the factories are apprentice classes, for the young people of the factory families, so that they are actually doing assistant work in the industries. The labor question, broadly speaking, begins with the children, and is the life question, but this hollow outline, nevertheless, will give an idea of how the Sovyets are dealing with the immediate situation in this transition period under the N. E. P. Yes, Sovyet Russia too has a labor problem, an unemployment problem, and the Sovyets are solving it sincerely and fundamentally and less slowly and more surely than are the Capitalist countries. Nor is it so serious a question even now, as in these rich class governments.