The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1935-05-23
BY II. r. KNICKERBOCKER
Copyright. 1885. by International
News SerVice)

WARSAW, Poland, May %.
There are some very poor people
in this part of the capitalist
world. There are beggarS in
Moscow too. It would be giving
a false picture to turn ones face
from the poverty that exists in
Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithu-
ania and Poland.
It would be just as false to fail
to balance it. This investigation
aims at giving a true picture and
whole one of the way people
live under capitalism on the Dor.
derS of Communist Russia.
Two months of intensive visit
ing with workers and peasants
leave many highlights and many
shadows in ones memory. Here Is
Anna Mlodzinski, of Gorizewska
is, Warsaw. She and her Swear.
old son met us at the door,
showed us into their parlor-bed-
room, and before we had asked
the second question she wrung her
hands.
400 ZlOty q Month
She has reason to. Her young
husband, employed as a cake
baker, has 100 zloty a month to
support his wife, child and mother
in-law. One-fourth goes for rent,
and that leaves IS zloty month
for four people, and that means
about IL American cents a day
apiece for everything, and that
means tea and bread, potatoes
and cabbage soup, every day, 365
times year, and nothing else.
But there are Amelia and Alexi
Sosnowski, who live with their
three bouncing children in the
magnificent complex of workers
flats built on the other side OF
Warsaw by the Socialist party. He
is a silverSmith; she works in a
tobacco factory, and they earn be-
tween them $50 zloty a month,
and their two-room apartment
with its modern kitchenette beams
with happiness, and their table is
laden with appetizing food.
Living in One Room
Back in HelsingforS was that
wretched family of seven, all liv-
ing in one Squalid room, dirty and
untidy, the children peaked and
sickly, the father incompetent, the
mother too worn out to care.
But there in Kymmene and
Kaukas, center Of the Finnish
paper and wood industry, were
those rows of model workers
homes, spruce as pine trees, with
copper pots shining in their kitch-
ems, and radio sets and laughing
children, and plenty of space and
plenty of food and fresh air and
a good life.
In Reval was that poor old
couple who were too feeble to
keep their flat clean, and pitifully
tried to hide it. But in Reval was
that series of workers homes en-
tered at random. They were i'm
preSsive for their cleanliness, their
comfort, and the easy dignity Of
their housewives.
One woman wept in Riga, but
it was our fault. She. showed us
over her slum dwelling and it was
clean as any human being could
keep it, but the smell of slumS was
upon it, and the old lady apollo
gized, said the rain came through
and the rats were a bother. We
went through her tiny budget; I
missed sum, and asked what she
did with it.
Her face twitched. She ex-
planned the money went to keep
her son in an insane asylum,
where he had to go because a
heavy piece of metal struck his
forehead in the factory where he
worked. To turn the subject. I
pointed to a guitar on the wall
and asked:
"Who plays that?"
She answered:
"He did"
And then she cried.
But across the River Duna was
the carpenter, Chris Anderson, and
his wife with their good-looking
young son. whose competent oil
paintings adorn the walls Of their
snug little home. The boy showed
us four pair Of skis he had made