The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-07-14

By vERN SMITH
LUGANSK, U. S. S. R.-"They
make good cars" said the driver,
as he swerved his Ford of the
paved road into a ditch full Of
water from melting snow, then
through mud bank onto trail
across the plains, alongside patch
Of plowed ground and between it
and a stretch of highway under
construction, where a gang Of men
were laying cobhle stone base for
a continuation Of the road.
All over the Don Basin you can
see such construction. The Czarist-
capitalist regime here left and never
had anything but streaks of mud
in winter and bitches of dust in
summer for roads. The new ma
chine style of farming, the new
needs of truck transport from town
to town, demand paved roads. And
they are being built everywhere.
Meanwhile though, you sometimes
have to take to the fields.
The auto waded grimly through
ruts and snow water. I began to
wonder If Henry Ford really did
make good cars, after all. But when
I looked again I saw that it wasn't
a Ford. 1t looked like one, it was
modelled on one. But it was stur-
der, little bigger, the tires were
a little larger. 1t was without the
scrawl that Ford puts on his run
ming boards. 1t was Soviet car
from Cork; produced in Soviet
factory like all the rest OF the
equipment belonging to that partic-
ular machine tractor station at Lu-
gansk.
The driver was from the "Polito-
deI' at the machine tractor station,
his business was TO inspire, to lead
and watch the spring sowing. Just
now he was doing a little practical
inspiring for tractor at one of the
collective farms of this vicinity, by
taking out new magnetic to re-
place one that needed repair. I
was going along to see the farm.
Eyes, drove a real Ford once, F"
said the man from the Politodel.
1T was all right in the beginning,
but it wore out right away. Your
Henry Ford likes to sell new
machine every year"
I evaded responsibility for Henry's
crimes. 1 said had heard the
same thing from farmers in Amer
lea.
WE whisged into a village, we we're
W now on the roads of the collec-
tive farm, pretty good ones, though
not paved, Stretched along both
sides were the white walled cot
tages. All through the south Of
Russia you see these white country
houses. The walls are made of
clay, about two feet thick. 1t is
moulded on square lines inside, and
being painted white there. too, looks
like stone.
Recesses form bookshelves, cup
boards. Yes, bookshelves, IN e
farmer is reading here. His chill
dren all go to school, and they
taught him If he didn't learn some
other way. Some rooms still have
clay floors, but lots of new board
floors are going in. Formerly the
roof was of thatch, straw, but now
lots of new ruberoid and tile roofs
are going on. The shutters and
window castings, of wood, are always
painted some bright color red, blue,
yellow, or green usually. Quite often
there is an ornamental painted
freize around the wall, outside,
above the ground, or below the roof.
They are warm in winter and cool
in summer. They remind me of the
adobe houses used to see as a
boy all over the southwestern part
Of United States. Not a bad house
to live in for the first Is years,
after which, though, they need too
much patching,
The collective farmers with most
income, which means they put in
most labor days for the grain is
divided according to the amount
of work done, are beginning to sub
stitute stone houses, imperishable
structures.
We pulled up before the largest.
I found out later, it used to be the
priests house. But the priest ran
away during the civil war to join
a gang of bandits and never came
back. Now the house is the offices
Of the village Soviet. In it are also
the Offices Of the kolkhoz, the COL
lective farm.
The offices were there, all right,
but there was nobody in them but
a woman scrubbing the floors.
The driver, standing with the
magnetic in his hand, inquired
rapidly for one man after another
the chairman of the Soviet, the
chairman of the collective farm,
etc.
"On the fields, on the fields" said
the woman to each name. Every
body was on the fields, taking part
in the spring sowing, making crop
that means bread not only fey
them but for the more than a
million steel workers and miners of
the Don Basin.
Wen 60 on the fields" said the
driver. ANYWAY. there vou'll see a