NO BREAD FOR WEEKS IN LODZ
“For two weeks Lodz had no bread at all. For months it has had no meat at all—so far as the poorer classes are concerned. During those two weeks the mass of the population lived on potatoes.
“Conditions were slightly worse in Czenstochow, the second city in Russian Poland. Here 90,000 people live. It has no street-lights. It has no attempt at street-paving. It has no sewers. It has no city water. It has no publicly maintained fire department, though a few of the merchants have a department of their own. It is pre-middle-ages in everything—morals, discomfort, filth, darkness, disease, death-rate. Cholera is there all the time. Most of its people exist in reeking hovels, smoke-filled when they can afford fires, wet and cold at other times.
“As the towns grow smaller, conditions grow worse.”