The system was that of piece work, the employees receiving twenty-five cigarettes daily above their pay with permission to sell or exchange them. I spoke to some of the women. They did not complain except about being compelled to live far away from the factory. In most cases it required more than two hours to go to and from work. They had asked to be quartered near the Laferm and they received a promise to that effect, but nothing more was heard of it.
Life certainly has a way of playing peculiar pranks.
But in Social' Russia the sight of pregnant women working in suffocating tobacco air and saturating themselves and their unborn with the poison Impressed me as a fundamental evil. I spoke to Lisa Zorin to see whether something could not be done to ameliorate the evil. As to rest rooms, the women themselves had already made a fight for them, but so far nothing could be done because no space could be spared in the factory. Lisa Zorin had remained very much the proletarian, but she reasoned like a nun dedicated to the service of the Church. At any rate, nothing came of my attempt at social welfare work.