The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-12-06
A Doctor Tells of the Soviet
Union
BY E. REED MITCHELL

DR.. E. Reed Mitchell has just returned from
the Soviet Union where she taught English to
workers and to the Red Army soldiers On
her return, confronted by the articles on the
Soviet Union in the N. Y. Evening Post, she
wrote the following in regard to KnickerbOcker
author of the Post articles. Pointing out the
absurdity of the Pests special description that
KnickerbOcker travelled in "the Ura Noun
tains of CaucaSia," DIR. Mitchell commented
also, in interview with the Labor Research
Association, on the fact that the Post fakes its
by-lines. KnickerbOcker is really in Berlin,
Germany, while the New York capitalist paper
puts him in Moscow one day and in Mini
NOvgOrOd the next-Ed.
What wonderful ad the v. Y Evening Post
is giving the U.S.S.R.! Every reader has chance
to know of the success of the different lines of
the 5Year Plan-that is if the readers get past
the headlines, which often distort what follows
Soviet oil field passes program of Swear
Plan-But read on: 1.-THE unique characteristic
of Soviet petroleum is that they won't play with
the rest of the world" which is trying to restrict
production to keep prices up to a profitable
level" In the United States there used to be
a law against combination in restraint of trade.
but if it is worldwide. no doubt it is moral to
keep prices up.
We can enjoy the Illustrations too even the
one of Nov. 26, of conyicts returning to their
prison. This is considered such an unusual
photograph" that it was not necessary to men
ton that it was given somewhere else with some
other article several years ago
How many readers noted the cheering con-
trast between "Selmashtroy, new. neat crowded
with busy workmen and girls" living in comfort
able new quarters, and the "old -squalid Rostov,"
not yet touched by the new order?
When Americans ask me how managed to
live last year in "famished Moscow" 1 have to
remind them that the ideal of collective life is
a reality IN Russia. Every organization school
Office, factory, has its dining room or buffet for
lts workers and for any who happens in There
might be shortage of meat in the retail CO.
operative, but could at any time sit down with
my pupils TO cold roast goose pork or roast beef
sausage, cheese a vegetable salad-of course tea
at either of the two schools for the study of
English where 1 taught. Russia takes care of
its groups in its own way
I could not buy milk or eggs in>the government
stores where they are sold cheaply for the child
rem only But I bought them from peasant
women, sometimes in return for my superfuous
bread. I could not eat my allowance of bread
Va pOuhu d udy) unless wanted rolls, as they
are more expensive, one gets less in weight One
reads in capitalist papers about time wasted in
queues and in the same connection about high
prices. If this is not deliberate combustion. it
certainly produces a wrong impression There
are queues in the regular stores where one buys
cheaply; then there are high prices in the open"
market where there are no queues. The two
don't go together.
These queues are considered largely due to
bad management The confessions at the trial
now going on in Moscow suggest some of their
reasons
Just what is forced labor?" Would it include
those down-and- outers that are being 'rchabili-
tated' by the New York Bowery YMC.A. which
takes from them promise to accept amy job"
offered them2