The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-11-28
GVTcE
By L. TALMY

ABOUT two hundred kilometers
n west of Baku, on the main line
leading to Tiflis and on to Batoum,
lies the city Of Ganja in valley
surrounded by snow-capped noun
tains which on a clear sunny day
can be seen far in the distance.
According to assurances of local
inhabitants, it is an ancient city.
although, to tell the truth, there is
hardly anything in CANA that
would betray its antiquity to the
INITIATED, except perhaps the shall
low river which flows through it's
center. There is an old bridge
across the river, and in the annals
of the town it was known as the
bridge of mortal danger, that danger
issuing not from the bridge itself
or from the river below it but from
the traditional feud between the
Tyurks living on one side of the
bridge and the Armenians living on
the other side of the bridge.
These annals, however, have also
no bearing on the antiquity of the
town, as the events told in them
occurred even as recently as the
years of grace 1918 and 1919. In
those years CANA, which for nearly
a century and half of Czarist
Russian domination had borne the
strange and foreign name of Elisa
bethpol became CANA again and it
housed within it's walls the short
lived government of the Tyurk bour-
geois-nationalist Mussavat Party.
That government took over the old
policy of the CZarist government
which had found it expedient for
its purposes to keep the fires of ma
tional animosity burning; it carried
it further and famed the national
animosity into consuming flames.
One reason why no traces of an
tiquity can be found in CANA may
be the fact that while Elisabethpol
of the Czarist period was a town
of about thirty-f1ve thousand popu-
lation, modern Soviet CANA is a
city of over hundred thousand
population and large industrial
center. Comrade Fakhradov, the
editor of the local Tyurk daily "Yeni
CANA" c'New Ganja"O, who initi-
ated me into the past of the city
and its present status, insisted on
taking me through some of the
newly-built industrial plants which
have contributed materially toward
the Transformation of CANA.
One of the plants visited was a
cotton ginning and cotton-seed oil
factory. 1t is large plant housed
in group of modern well-hghted
and ventilated buildings and
equipped with shining new modern
machinery. In addition to oil, soap
is produced here as a by product
The assistant director who showed
us through the various departments
explained the working of the ma
chinery and the highly mechanical
processes of production. The plant
employs about TOO workers, most OF
them Tyurks and Armenians. The
assistant director apologized for the
fact that the workers dining room
is still located in a wooden build
ing, and for the inadequate club
rooms. He assured us that the
new quarters for the dining room
which are now under construction
will be completed shortly.
/ COULD not help thinking of the
seed-oil plant in Middle West
state in the USA., in which I hao
worked about twenty years ago. That
had been a dark, stuffy, overheatec
place, the dirty floor, the walls ano
the ceiling fairly reeking with hot
oil. The men working there hac
to, go around stark naked dur
ing the hours of work, and there
had been twelve of these work hours
every day. The pay had been thir-
teen dollars week. had worked
in that place for only one week
since after the first three days Of
work my fingers had all been GOV.
cred with blisters. AS a matter o.