Montana labor news., 1933-04-13

tration of the use of half-truths. The
whole truth is that the Arctic Coal
Trust recently acquired two small
mines in Spitsbergen, closed since
war times, in order to assure Muir
mansk, the Arctic railroad port, a
convenient coal supply. Murmansk's
coal will now come 500 miles by water
from Spitsbergen instead of 1000
miles by rail from central Russia, a
tremendous saving in transportation
costs.
In any event, to foreign workers
here, it seems an odd complaint to
come from America, where coal pro-
duction is at disaster levels, that Rus
sian industrial expansion in the past
few years has outgrown her immed-
late capacity to furnish enough coal.
Unemployed American coal miners
may well envy the "plight" of the
Soviet Union, where new coal mines
can't be opened rapidly enough to
supply industrial needs.
The lurid "red terror" tales also
cause no little amazement here among
foreign workers, who read in the
American papers Of police attacks,
with clubs and gas, on the American
unemployed. At least the so-called
fred terror" is not used against work.
ers and poor peasants. 1t is directed
exclusively against Soviet enemies
against those who attempt to sabo-
tage production in the factories, and
against the richer peasants who are
opposing the specialization Of Soviet
agriculture by every means from pas
sive resistance to sowing weeds in tie
collective farm fields and poisoning
cattle.
For every Russian kulak-enemy of
socialized agriculture-who has been
removed from the scene of his war
fare against the workers and peas
ants state, at least one American
farmer has been evicted from his
home because of the crushing burden
of mortgage Indebtedness. The for
eign worker here wants to know why
the Will Durants don't say something
about this form of terror used by the
American government and its local
agencies against the farmers, hither-
to regarded as firm supporters of
capitalism and its government.
Further, the lot of the uprooted
kulak and the dispossessed American
farmer is different. The American
has the choice of the city breadlines
or tenant slavery on another farm;
the Russian kulak and his family are
sent to places where there is honest
work to do. American newspaper
correspondents who have travelled in
the regions where the enemies of the
Soviet state are now working report
that excellent school and medical
services are provided, that the food
and shelter are adequate. What is
even more important, the children of
the kulaks are being trained to grow
up as useful Soviet citizens rather
than to tread the paths of labor ex-
ploitation and speculation which made
their fathers well-to-do under the old
i~ndividualistic agriculture. Such is
one aspect of the "red terror"
Recent news of the financial panic
in America, the deepening of world
crisis, the war in the Far East, the
terror in Germany and the imminence
of war in western Europe make the
Soviet citizen feel that the years of
sacrifice spent in building a Social
ISL SJdIS were tlClly WOIIu WhiAS' AZ
the international field he sees the
growing prestige of the Soviet I'm
ion, with France desperately seeking
an alliance with Moscow against the
Hitler menace and with the Roosevelt
regime reported ready to grant rec
ognition, in an effort to strengthen
the American position in the Pacific
against Japan.
At home he sees the food situation
improving daily. The Muscovite, liv-
ing in an extraordinarily crowded
city-a boom city-sees the promise
of more living space in the hundreds
of new apartments being rushed to
completion with the spring season.