Evening star., 1924-08-23
RUSSIA SINCE LENIN
The about that today OF uncensored
articles spent studying conduons
BY SEYMOUR B. CONCER.

ISOLATION of a good scrap with his
hosts. and go back to the United
| States. On the wall of his room
| hangs a big tapestry which he ac-
| quired speculatively with the idea of
selling it to Rockefeller for a fortune
when he returns, and there are a lot
| of rolled-up rugs bought with the
same capitalistic schemes in mind.
Very Broken Old Man.
But he no longer Quizzes visitors on
prices Of such treasures in the United
States. Instead, he is apt to sound
| them out tentatively on rumors that
| he would not be welcomed with ban
ners and brass bands by his former
| associates in America, but would en-
| counter marked hostility from the
| Reds if he adjusted his difficulties
! with the courts. All the pep and
| fight seems to have evaporated from
| his soft, bulky body. He looks and
| talks like thoroughly broken old
| man.
Aside from the political refugees.
per Sc, there are also a number of
| foreign colonies composed of groups
| who have believed the tale of Ar
| cadian conditions under a bolShevist
system to an extent that they have
determined to try them on them
| selves. Such groups are still coming
in, despite all discouraging reports on
| the actual working out of the boil
shevist theories in practice. One of
the best known of these is the Amer
lean kuzbaS colony, composed of syn
dicaliSt coal miners, who started their
autonomous existence in April, 1928,
after series of discouraging expert
enceS.
The operation of the mine intrusted
70 ha FOIL
feelings among the bolshevists. some
hoping the promise of revolutioniZ-
ing the coal mining industry in Rus
sia, by providing an object lesson of
scientific methods of operation en-
ployed abroad, may be realized, while
others would derive much malicious
joy from a failure of the upstart
American innovatorS.
KuZbaS, after getting off to a bad
start, has now certain amount of
success to report, the production of
coal per miner has been sped up well
above that in the Russian mines q
am not sure that such competitive
pacemaking efforts would be looked
upon with such satisfaction in syndi-
calist labor circles in the United
States, but here it is source of
much congratulation), and the colony
now has in operation a battery of
modern coking ovens, a chemical fac
tory turning out benZol and other by
products of coke and is rapidly elec-
trifying the equipment of the mine,
using waste gases from the coking
ovens to run the motors.
Undercut Price of Coal.
The Siberian Railways last October
hit Kuzbas a heavy blow by ceasing to
buy the Americans coal, but Kuzbas
has regained it's market by underwriting
the price of coal from s9.7S to $3.50
per ton, which it is able to do by econ
omies of operation not yet introduced
in the regular Russian coal industry,
and promises still further reductions
as the effects of its new scientific inno-
vations work out in practice. The
Americans also are underSelling the
government-operat mines on coke.
i, having cut the price by more than a
third, and are competing successfully
with the Donetz Coal Syndicate on it's
own ground. All of which is arousing
some bitterness in the regular bolshe-
visit coal industry.
The present-day vogue In foreign
colonization, however, is for agricul-
ture. 1t is figured that the rich ''black
| earth" zone, where crop failures and
famines repeat chronically under pre-
vailing Russian peasant methods of ag-
| riculture, Is ready to repay bountifuny
the labors Of the progressive foreign
farmer who plows deep enough to avoid
having his crops burned out by the first
protracted hot spell and who uses mod
ern methods Of crop rotation and fer
tilizipg.
Groups Of German and ;axtzs Com,