PRESENT PROSPECTS FOR OUR CHILDREN'S COLONIES

By Anna Louise Strong

S. S. Republic

U. S. Lines

May 15, 1925.

Dear folks:-

You will all be glad to know that I raised about $3000 in cash on my lecture trip, and some $2000 in pledges, for the John Reed Children's Colony and others like it in Russia. (This in addition to the regular lecture fees I got, which paid my trip from Moscow and back and thus enabled me to do the money-raising at my own expense.) And many cities have formed committees to give further help.

Besides this, we have all kinds of contributions offered in service,--very valuable ones, but needing a little money to make them available. I am going to tell you about some of them.

First, there is Ada Flomenbaum from Berkeley, an energetic girl of the pioneering type, who speaks Russian even better than English. She is a graduate pharmacist from Columbia, has studied playground work at Berkeley, and is a professional in all varieties of tailoring, cutting and sewing. She is going over in July and is paying her own way and offering to work in the colony for the regular Russian wage of $15 a month! But we can't keep her unless we give her some facilities to work with; I myself would advise her to take a job in Moscow unless I can give her some material help. So I want $1000 for establishing rural playgrounds along the Volga, beginning in John Reed Colony as an example. We will make a demonstration there in the nearby village, and then use the money for material, making the equipment in our own work-shops. This will give the children work and, at the same time, make us useful to the community. Mrs. Sutta, of New York, is already giving us a playground library. And if you could see those children on Saturday nights sitting stupidly around their social hall, not knowing a single game or folk-dance, and if you knew some of the problems in social life we are facing in the long winter months, you would agree that some pioneer playground work of the very simplest type is much needed. . . . And I want another $1000 for a real Domestic Arts workshop under Ada's direction. We can get some of the experts from the Quaker handicraft centers to come up and help start this. Our girls need badly some interesting, useful work in the winter. Someone, surely, can put up $2000 against the whole year of life that Ada is giving.

Anna Graves, the American Quaker, who has had the hard job of being the first pioneer teacher at John Reed Colony, has written me many letters ranging from discouragement over meager resources, to bright hope whenever an extra hundred dollars reaches her. She writes:

"I bought wash-basins for the girls' rooms, and have begun on the boys'. The group of boys that sleeps in the kitchen asked for a basin and takes great pride in it. The group in the cancellaria wants one, but I have just ten roubles left, and I must get pails to carry clean water to the girls' rooms, or what use are the basins? . . .

"Later . . . I am so excited about the $117 that has just arrived. (The gift of a tuberculosis sanitarium in Denver from the patients.) I shall get first wash-basins all round and then leather for shoes. There hasn't been any for the past few days and the shoe-making has stopped. Then I should like to do some things for the club rooms. There isn't a map in the place except one of Russia and an old torn one of Europe as it was before the war.

"I should like to tackle the dining-room and kitchen but I am afraid it needs more money than I have. . . . The children love the cleanness of my room; they come

and look at it and say "Cheesy" (clean) with great delight. But they have no
respect for their own rooms yet and no wonder. The girls below are beginning to
have, and I want to encourage them by a picture or map on the walls. . . .

"Could you bring me a sample mop? And a broom. They should be easy to make here; there is good broom-straw. But these things seem unknown in the entire district." . . .

"One of the children I am almost ashamed to teach. He looks as if he were consumptive and he has no shoes at all. He is very bright and I should like to have him taught drawing, but he is as nervous as possible." . . .

"The children do not seem hungry. But certainly there is no food adequate for those who get colds and want to be strengthened, or for the many still suffering from malnutrition. . . . Two of our children died this winter of tuberculosis."

"I think I shall weep when I leave here in May because I think they need me or someone to take my place."

I think you will all agree that we cannot abandon John Reed Colony at this stage. It is true, we raised the $5000 last year which has planted them firmly on the fine big estate where there is every chance in the world of making a big self-supporting farm school. We have horses enough for our immediate needs. But I wish we could find some good dairy-farmer who would come over with $2000 or more and lay the foundations of a dairy in the splendid barns we have. John Reed Colony has gone as far as it can go under the direction of local rural teachers. We must get someone now with more knowledge, from America or Moscow. And to get this, we must give them facilities to work with.

Besides, I want to organize another Children's Farm School, nearer Moscow, where, starting from the ground up with trained people in charge, we can really work out educational standards for many other colonies, standards which will be effective for all Russia. Dr. Charles Kuntz, Russian by birth, with American experience both as educator and farmer, is going over with me intending to start such a center. We may form a colony together, but he really wants to go south, perhaps to the Ukraine, leaving me to start the central place near Moscow. In any event we shall pool our experience and exchange our experts from America.

Here is E. K. Balls, who finishes in June his job as head of the Quaker Mission in Russia. He speaks Russian and his wife is a Russian trained nurse. He will stay in Russia, offering his services for the barest kind of living, if he can be put in a place where he has a chance to achieve something useful. I want to start, with him, a demonstration colony, where we can have a chance to use some of the splendid people who offer free services. We can get estates from Russia, - there is no trouble there, - buildings, lands, even partial support for the children and teachers. But we can't get equipment without money.

Here is Vivian Wilkinson, who knows Russian, and has run schools in the Philippines and Honolulu. And a Russian farmer and mechanic from twenty-two years' experience in homesteading North Dakota. And a girl who is working her way through Antioch College, a professional tailoress now specializing in science. And a woman pioneer farmer from Canada who knows five languages, including Russian. All of these offer

services, and some can raise their own transportation, but none have the equipment without which their work would be useless.

Here is Leo Lipp, from Seattle, Russian by birth, experienced as foreman in shoe-repairing shops, who will pay his own way and give his services if some one will put up the $1500 needed for machinery for a model shoe-repairing shop. Such a shop in a children's colony near a big city like Moscow, would make money towards the support of the school with much less labor than farming. . . . And I know an expert watchmaker in Switzerland, who has saved $3000 in tools and needs $2000 more to start a clock-making school and factory for twenty-five pupils. If I can put up the $2000, he will start it in my school. Russia has nothing of the kind and needs it.

That is why I am putting it up to you. I want $20,000; $5000 to put John Reed Colony in such condition that we need not be ashamed of it, with good Russian management and one or two persons with American training. And $15,000 to start a demonstration colony near Moscow, with chiefly Americans in charge, where we can use the many offers of service that come to us.

I want some kind of answer right away, either for or against. I have $2500 in hand now besides the $500 I have sent to John Reed Colony lately. I want also to hear quickly from the various committees to know how they are doing. And to get as much more as possible in money, and if you can't send money now, write whether you are likely to later. You can send checks directly to me, Hotel Continental, Moscow, if you prefer; but if they are small checks it will save a lot of red tape and exchange charges for you to mail them to my father Dr. Sydney Strong, 508 Garfield St., Seattle. Send all general letters and pledges to him.

About the middle of June he will telegraph me what the prospects are, and I shall then have to decide whether simply to turn over all the money I have to John Reed Colony and give up the other dream; or whether I can tell Mr. Balls and some of the other Americans offering services to come on over, and put in about $4 worth of free expert services for every $1 you are giving in money for equipment. And remember, for every $1 you give, the Russian government will be putting up about $5 worth of buildings, land, food supplies and teachers. So every one of your dollars really counts like ten.

ANNA LOUISE STRONG,
Hotel Continental, Moscow, Russia.

American address

508 GARFIELD ST.,
SEATTLE, WASH.

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Back from our Childrens Colony, Oct 15

by Anna Louise Strong

I am just back from the colony, where I spent two weeks. I feel
as if I want to write a whole book on it. But there isn't time.
This goes to father, Miss Hayes, Miss Potter, Mrs Smith, Mrs.
Lewis, Mr. Orth, Mr. Hopkins, Mrs. Conard, Mrs. Luhan, and so on.
Spencer as a brief report.

When I got back, a wire from father says that $3700 has been
raised to date. My first feeling, I admit, frankly, was of wonder
how we could ever spend so much money. For I had been in a place
where we count in kopeks instead of dollars.

A few examples. In the sewing-room the girls are sitting in line,
waiting their turns to sew on the machines, and make the strong,
warm dresses for which I have brought down the material. We ran into
a lucky bargain of a firm kind of goods made for the army, with a few
spoiled spots in it, which we got for 20 cents a meter instead of
$1.00, the original price. So our dresses and boys suits are
costing us about 60 cents each, and the girls are in a hurry to get
them done, for the weather is already cold.... The sewing-
teacher was telling me the things she wanted, when a girl spoke up:
"Can't we have a lamp in the sewing room, so that we can sew nights".

"How much would a lamp cost?" I asked. I learned that a
hanging one would be perhaps $2.00, while the smaller style, of which
the colony now has a half dozen, would cost 40 cents. Recklessly
I suggested that there should be lamps for the bedroom also, if
they were so cheap, so that the three or four girls in each
room might read or play games or see their way to bed in the long
winter evenings. But they vetoed the bed-room lamps; that was too
extravagant. One lamp, they thought, would do for the household of
twenty-five girls.

Out in the kitchen they were getting ready for a celebration,
the first year's anniversary of their existence. They had invited all
the town officials, and must give them a full meal. Potatoes to be
peeled for nearly two hundred people! And there were just two
knives in the kitchen. This counts them all,--dining-room as well.
The children themselves do not eat with knives, but with the large
wooden peasant spoons. They do not have anything to eat that needs
knives....Due to the lack of knives, they were peeling potatoes all
night in relays. Our new domestic science teacher also sat up all
night, for all her utensils were so few that they had to be used often.
When she told the girls to go to bed, they said that if she could sit up,
they could.

You notice I have mentioned a few teachers. The state government
at Saratov has at last taken us in hand, and supplied us with a
school. For a year we have led a most irregular existence, begging
this and that department for our wages, but now we are at last upon
somebody's budget, with regular teachers. They are needed. It
sounded beautiful when I was first told, (and passed on the news) that
the girls had fired the cook because they could now do the cooking.
But when I saw the situation at close quarters, it wasn't so lovely.
The cook had been fired because there wasn't any money, and the girl
were doing their best. They work in committees, and when the older
girls were on the job, there wasn't much trouble. But when the younger
girls had the kitchen for a week, there was suppressed war in camp,
for the boys who were ploughing in the distant fields didn't like
their bread. When you are camping in a stable, or under an
improvised hut of straw, and ploughing from four in the morning six
 till ten before you ask for breakfast, and when you get bread and
 "sweet tea" for breakfast, you want that bread to be eatable. It
 wasn't always.

It will be now. We have acquired for domestic science teacher
a woman of energy, who graduated from the gymnasium and taught
before the war in one of the few special domestic science schools in
Russia. Since then she has raised three children, and learned the ways
of the peasant even, and been "control" for the Hansen kitchen during
the famine. She is also a book-keeper and a typist, but since
there is only one typewriter in the whole county of Kvalinsk, she

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of a peasant oven, and been "control" for the Nansen kitchen during
the famine. She is also a book-keeper and typist, but since there is
only one type writer in the county of Kvalinsk, we won't need that
ability for some time.

Our children are really rather unusual. I remember when I
wanted a bath, and went down to the girls bath-house for it.
Everyone else had finished, and the water was gone and the
fire nearly out. But one of the girls said quickly she would get
it ready for me. She took a small pail and began running back and
forth to the pond for water,--perhaps fifty yards away. The pail
was so leaky that half the water squirted out on her thin cotton
dress and bare feet, while a cold October wind was blowing down from
the hills and I was huddled in woolen dress and sweater. I She
was shivering a little, but she said she was used to it! I asked
if she hadn't a better pail, and she said there was one, but they
took it for the pigs! At my suggestion she went to get it; she
herself had grown so accustomed to the leaky pail that she hadn't
thought to mention it when I asked the children what they needed....
When I came back a little later from the house I found both the large
caldrons in the stove full of kozzez, boiling water,--enough for a
dozen baths.... "You shouldn't have drawn so much," I told her....
"Why not?" she asked, with a touch of anxiety.... "Because it was too
much work" I answered... She laughed at that and dismissed the work with
a wave of her hand, and then picked up my kozzez, soiled underwear and
began to wash it out in the low "pig-trough" that they use for a
tub.

I remember also the evening when I bought fifty cents
worth of candy,--the cheapest kind available, but each piece done
up in thin paper to be eaten with tea. I handed it to the kitchen
committee for supper. But two boys spoke up. "Keep it till
the holiday" they said. "Tonight there are lots of boys still in the
fields.... Holiday arrived and there was another problem. We had
many invited guests coming, and there were just 100 pieces of
candy. The children were for handing it around to the guests first, but
I insisted. We gave that candy out at breakfast, when the last
child was in from the fields, and before the guests arrived.
If anyone is afraid that these youngsters will die young from
too much unselfishness, he might have been reassured later in the
day when the honey appeared. I admit that there was some disorder,
and a mad scramble to get to it first... These things are just as they
happen. If one of the older boys or girls is on hand, a member of
the Young Communists who takes his responsibility seriously, he
will see to it that there is order and equal division; but if some
of the recent arrivals get started first, it is another story.

You will see now why I wondered how we could ever spend $3700,
when I had been counting in terms of a fifty cent treat for one
hundred children, and a $2.00 lamp for twenty-five girls, and a
couple of knives for a whole kitchen. But this wonder was temporary,
for I have had my experiences shopping on a large scale also. It is
great fun shopping for a children's colony.

The Childrens Commission of Saratov has agreed to repair
the houses at Alexeivka, the big estate into which we are gradually
penetrating. They have also agreed to make good the deficiency in
food, for though our children have a right to consider themselves
already self-supporting, there were 45 who planted grain and 105 who
eat it. And they have been feeding lots of grain to the horses in
order to plough more land, consequently our supply of bread and
sugar and meat is very short. This Saratov now agrees to make
good, and in addition they are to send another hundred children
as soon as Alexeivka is repaired.

But Saratov can't, in justice to its vast numbers of
homeless children, give anything but food, repairs and teachers
wages. The live-stock, the implements, the work-shops, the extra