The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-06-21
CONTINUED from page ~

NN RAONOno VI oCACSIAOA ID lOl yGb
completed, but much of the lazy lott.
ering of olden times is gone. The sec
ond task was to draw back to the
cities and to the industrial establish
ments those tens of thousands of
skilled workers who, in times of tur-
moil and disorganization, had either
gone to the native villages to feed on
the fruit Of the earth, or had drifted
into some other occupation. This recall
of the brains and skill of the shops
could be accomplished only by increas-
ing the wages of industrial labor and
by making factory life attractive. The
task has now been completed. The
personnel Of the factories has under
gone a remarkable change. Unskilled
and semi-shilled workers who had
manned unbefitting jobs since the
war, when production of war supplies
and munitions made expansion of
factories imperative, have now been
relegated to the work they are best
capable Of doing. The skilled workers
are being given the most responsible
places. Technical schools are being
opened everywhere to increase the eff
ficiency of labor. Better pay, which
often reaches pre-war proportions and
which in present conditions means
much more than it meant ten years
ago, is a good stimulus to production.
Russia is still poor, very poor, it is
only in the process Of the initial ac-
emulation of capital. But the skeleton
of the industrial organization has been
reconstructed, it stands now firmly
on the Russian ground. II has ac-
quired a great number of experienced
managers, and the possibilities in Rus
sian natural resources and in the
energy of a united working class in
possession of state power, are meal
culable.
Present Russia is an optimistic
bends to ground the head of an aver
age German even if he makes a liv-
ing. There is something that straight
ems ne back of the Russian worker
ana makes him look hopefully sturdy
even il out of work. This something"
is the consciousness of conquered
freedom, of independence, of being
ones own master, of better times
coming. In no city East of the Rhine
is there as much vitality, as much
physical vigor and youthfullness as
have found in Moscow. / am told that
the same is true about all other cities
of the vast Union. You walk out into
the suburbs of the city, you enter the
streets which are thickly populated by
factory workers, you visit clubs, cir
cles, theatricals, eating places, and
everywhere you find crowds of vigor-
GUS young people, poorly but not shah
billy dressed, sober, gay, self-assured,
the life of their plant, their branch Of
industry, their union, their club, their
Soviet, their government and also in
the international situation. No work
ers have such an understanding Of
and such an interest in the world sit
uation as have the Russian workers.
But we are not so much interested
here in the mind as in the body of the
Russian proletariat. The revolution
has certainly hardened those millions
of men and women. They have gone
thru years of half pound of bread as
daily rations, years of typhoid fever,
cholera, pneumonia, Volga starv alton;
they have fought on numerous fronts
scantily clad in the bitterest cold;
they have looked death into the face
so many times that they are no more
afraid of anything. The younger set
has grown up under the conditions Of
war and revolution. Hard times are
natural to them. Now life turns to
them its smiling face. There is food.
There is heat. There is a minimum Of
clothing. There is education. There
is work controlled by the workers
themselves. There is no master. There
is a whole country, tremendous rich
and beautiful country to develop and
to own. There is a world to conquer,
not for the individual, but for the col
lective body thru collective effort.
The individual worker may not think