I was much laughed at once because I made Vanderlip in the street shoulder a woman’s burden and carry it for her to her house. She was a frail well-dressed woman, obviously exhausted by a long walk over cobblestones, and was utterly incompetent to carry the bundle containing her rations. I would have taken it for her myself if I had been alone, but as Vanderlip was champion-in-chief of the frail and the well-dressed, I thought he might as well do it. Litvinoff was amused when he heard about it, and said that one might really find a good deal of work to do in Moscow on those lines.
Vanderlip has told me with great concern that a weak little bourgeoise friend of his, once rich, but now a stenographer, has received a paper ordering her to enlist her services among those who are to shovel the street clear of snow in front of their doors.
“Terrible,” he said.
“Why, terrible?” I asked.
“Terrible that a woman, well-bred and unused to manual labour, should be called upon to shovel snow.”
“But,” I argued, “she had better food and care when young than the working classes, and ought, therefore, to be physically stronger and more able to do this work than many another.” (I thought of some of my friends in England who made most efficient railway porters during the strike a year ago.)
I said that I should take a pride if I were a Russian bourgeoise in showing people here that I could do as good a day’s work as anyone else, and that I was not just useless and helpless as they imagined.
Vanderlip disagreed. He said (and I wonder if it is the American point of view) that women ought not to work at all, they ought to be worked for.
It was quite useless to talk to him about co-operation or the economic independence of women. Besides, it was not about women, it was about Communism that I wanted to talk.
How long and how rambling this is as the result of no occupation and an enforced stay within doors! It is useless to write letters home, and this is a sort of unburdening. I often wonder about my family—whether they are anxious about me (knowing nothing of the peaceful truth), or whether they are too disapproving to be anxious.