Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-07-03

of the Red guards, exposed to the in
suits and gibes of the soldiers. Finally,
as a favor, they were employed in load
ing trucks with stones and sand, hard
manual labor which the Soviet rulers
cannot get their followers to perform.
You must speculate or perish, there
is no other choice" explained one of
the refugees, matchmaker from Geneva.
From morning till night all the in
habitants of the great cities are engaged
in buying and selling old shoes, clothes,
gloves and household goods of every
description. You buy, wait few weeks,
and sell your purchase again at an i'm
mense profit. for prices are naturally
continually rising as the relics of a
former civilization grow rarer. This
takes place under n government which
pretends it has abolished bourgeois
trade as being immoral!
when / left Moscow the current
price for an old suit of clothes was 30, =
600 rubles. A new suit costs 0.000
rubles. Samovars, the Russian tea
pots, were an object of frantic specula-
II.
hand sewing machines were in demand
at 40, 600 rubles. AS for food, it cost
| me $4,000 rubles month this spring
to keep from starving. Last year it was
still possible to obtain at the national
stores a daily ration of $50 grams OF
bread for two rubles, but since January.
1920, all distribution of food by the
government has ceased.
You can imagine what q worker
life is like under these conditions, even
when his wages amount to 5000 rubles
month. These are starvation wages,
considering the cost of living, and there
is no exaggeration in saying that the
Russian worker under Bolshevist rule
is the worst paid wage slave in all, the
world. So he. too, has become spec
ulator, a profiteer, infinitely more un-
scrupulous and rapacious than The
bourgeois tradesman whom the Red
maniacs have ruined. Instead of work
ing in the factories the workmen un
dertake long expeditions into the coun
try to distant villages, where they buy
a pood Of -four (about thirty tive
pounds) from the peasants for 600 ru
bles, which they can sell on their re-
turn to Moscow for 10000 rubles.
once Travelled 500 kilometers to purchase
-four in this way, for most of the peas.
ants refuse to part with their pro-
duce."
Transport Conditions
First hand information regardinI
transport conditions were furnished m,
by George Diserens, of Savigny, a vii.
lage near Geneva, who worked until {
few weeks ago as an engine driver or
the Moscow Briansk railroad This il
one of the few lines on which traint
are still running more or less regu'
larly.
~ knew virtually nothing about en-
gine driving" he said, but l was ac,
cepted at once when / volunteered. Ny
fireman had never been on locomotiv,
before in his life. However. they DON
mind that much in soviet Russia, anC
accidents are so frequent that peopl,
are used to them. We worked hard
Theoretically, we were entitled to
twenty four hour rest after sixteei
hours of work. But we generally seem
ed to miss the rest. There are still
rails, but the seepers are rotten whei
they have not been stolen to be useC
as tirewood. So yeu have to go SLOW
and cant break any records. If yor
cover 200 kilometers in twenty tw,
hours, which means keeping up a spec,
of about nine kilometers an hour, yor
| VeIlt IHe sONleJ . pIdlscs. L ne sigma
/ system is long past repair, and ther
are no lights.
"What little oil is placed at the men
disposal is used by them for domesti
purposes or sold to wealthy people
Sometimes an engineer will burn a pin
torch on his locomotive at night-if h
is very nervous. Nevertheless, col
; lisions are of rare occurrence, for ther
I are scarcely any trains to run into
Green wood is used for firing, and yo
have to be an expert IA get it lighted
Y Hundreds. of disabled, rusty locomotive
e are side tracked at all the principal sta
, tions, popularity termed engine GENE
teries.
y Repairs are executed by breaking y