The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1933-03-17
Howe About:
A Proud Human Being
Russia's Plight
Something Wrong
BY ED HOWE

THE proudest human being, have
/ ever encountered turned up today
as an elevator operator in a depart
ment store; girl of nineteen and
rather good looking. The floor man
ager told me she received IS a week.
What is the base of her pride? Prob.
ably the talk of love In moving pic
ture plays and in magazine stories;
the exaggerated compliments the man
pays the woman when trying to entrap
her. find no fault with the girl; she
is the product of an age in which ev-
eryone pursues wrong policies: prob
ably her father is as proud because he
is a voter as his daughter is because
she is girl. l am not proud about
anything, but there are SO many nis-
takes am accommodated.
A common and mistaken notion is
that the people, after living many
thousands of years. have failed to find
the easiest and best way, and still
stubbornly and meanly persist in trav-
cling the wrong road. have scarcely
known a man who did not make this
charge or offer a remedy. One DR..
w. J. Robinson, of New York city,
had the idea very strongly, and wrote
to broadcast it. Speaking Of Russia
some months ago, he said: 1T is the
only country which holds aloft bea-
con of light and hope; the only coun-
try which is taking mankind out of its
rut, and putting it on another track
from the one it has been following
blindly and stupidity for these thou
sands Of years since it emerged from
the Jungle"
During the past summer Doctor Rob
inson went to Russia, and on his re
turn tells an entirely different story.
He saw crowds Of workmen in Lenin-
grad returning from their summer va
cations, and wrote of them: "Our
poorest steerage immigrant arriving at
Ellis island looks like a prosperous
man in comparison. The impression
was very depressing, and it was inten-
sified wherever / went" He found the
bread uneatable; the hotels and rail-
road trains like pig pens, because of
the general inefficiency. In the rail
road stations there was always Suf-
locating, overpowering stencil; mobs
of ragged, barefoot people lying on the
floor. He visited the largest and best
hospital in Leningrad and said an
American dog would not eat the food
offered patients.
At Moscow he visited the dining
room where workers in a textile fac
tory ate their meals, and says the
prisoners in Sing Sing have better and
more abundant food. The average
pay of the workers in the factory was
20 rubles a month; the purchasing
power of ruble varies from 2 to 10
cents. Everywhere he saw long lines
of people waiting to purchase sup
plies; one man had been waiting six
hours.
He found Kiev had had 10 changes
of administration in two years, each
vieing with the other in the work of
destruction. He declares the Soviet
government an intolerable tyranny !;
the people in a terrible plight. 81 re-
l1ctantly conclude" he writes, that
the whole system is wrong; 80 per
cent of the people Of Russia are now
in a vast prison, hopeless hell, be-
cause of the iron attempt to make the
entire country conform to the rules of
Marxism, or Communism" He went
everywhere, and wrote at great length
about his visit, but found nothing to
commend.
Before starting on his trip he had
declared that Russia was the one
country in which the relations between
the sexes had been put on healthy,
normal basis; on his return he said
he did not see single happy wOman's
face; scarcely decent, comfortable
looking or contented man.
There Is something wrong with the
story that times are good when farm
ers receive high prices for their pro-
duce. In Russia eggs sell at 10 cents
each; beef at $3.50 pound; butter
at 50 a pound. Yet times are very
hard in Russia; the farm problem
there Is worse than in the United
States, where lately i paid II cents
for piece of boiling beef, and it pro-
vided excellent soup and meat for
lunch three days. Il told the story to
a visitor from 100 miles away, and
he beat it cent with story about
a piece of boiling mutton.) With us
eggs are cents each; butter 25 cents
a pound; wheat and corn so plentiful
and cheap that corn is being burned
for fuel and wheat fed to cattle and
hogs. There is also something wrong
with the story of Nautilus, an ancient
still being admired for great wisdom.
He declared it was inevitable that pop
ulation tended to overtake and outrun
the means of subsistence. In the Unit
ed States there is a surfeit of food; SO
much clothing that manufacturers are
compelled to shut down. The people
having produced too much food, the
big takers now say the remedy is to