Every railroad train you get on is about as crowded as that, and one of the most difficult things to buy at present is a railroad ticket. To buy one you usually have to bribe the ticket agent or the hotel manager. You go to the office of the International Wagons-Lits and tell them that you want to go to Moscow or Kazan. You want to go to-morrow or in three days, some near date. The clerk shakes his head. “I might be able to get you a ticket and a berth in three days,” he will say. “Of course, you will have to pay a supplement; say, sixty rubles.” Pressed for particulars he will explain that some one will have to be paid to stand in line for the ticket. I paid forty rubles extra to Bennet’s, which is the Cook’s of Petrograd, for a ticket to Moscow, and that was considered a bargain. When I wanted to return I asked the hotel management in Moscow how much they would charge to send to the station and get me a ticket, and they said one hundred rubles. The ruble was then about thirty cents, so I would have had to pay, in addition to the cost of the ticket, which had just been raised about 50 per cent., thirty dollars. I got the ticket in almost the only other way possible. I acted as a courier carrying confidential papers from a foreign consulate in Moscow to an embassy in Petrograd, and the consul used his official influence to get me a ticket for the regular price only.
On the 21st of July the Minister of Ways and Communications ordered a reduction of 50 per cent. in the number of travelers passing between Petrograd and Moscow, in view, he explained, of the shortage of fuel and rolling stock. Soon it will be next to impossible to buy, for love or money, a ticket or a sleeping berth between the two points in Russia.
This is nearly true now on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Every Tuesday evening at 8 o’clock the weekly express on that famous line leaves the Nikolai station, Petrograd, and every berth is filled every week. What those passengers paid extra for their tickets forms one of the principal topics of conversation during the long trip over Siberia. The passengers beguile the weary journey swapping experiences of how they came to be there at all. I have known people who waited weeks for a chance to pay the extortionate supplement. The Trans-Siberian post train which leaves every night and makes stops along the way is a sight to behold before it leaves. The people crowd the train platform and fight for a place near the edge. As the train backs slowly into the station shed, the travelers run to meet it, climb in the windows, drag their women and children in, rush the platforms and fight like tigers to get in the doors. The number of carriages to each train has been reduced gradually until now the train is too short to hold the travelers.
But didn’t we send a railroad commission to Russia, and didn’t the papers say something about some 5,000 locomotives and 23,000 freight cars sent to Vladivostock? We did send a railroad commission, headed by John Stevens, of Panama canal fame, one of the greatest organizers and executives in the United States. This commission has done good work. It has shown the Russians how they could immediately increase the efficiency of their railroads 60 per cent. We have sent many locomotives and freight cars to Russia. Nevertheless the transportation problem remains unsolved.
CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE WORKERS OWN THEIR TOOLS
John Stevens, head of the railroad commission sent to Russia from the United States, has shown the Russian government how to increase its transportation facilities sixty per cent. In a report made public in mid-August Mr. Stevens said that the chief cause of the railroad crisis was bad management. Locomotives traveled 2,800 versts a month when they could be made to travel 5,000 versts. A verst is about three-quarters of a mile. Twice as much freight as was being hauled could be carried, said Mr. Stevens. Freight cars were constantly being sent out only half loaded. Mr. Stevens recommended government dictatorship of all railroads, both publicly and privately owned. That was rather naïve, considering that the government was powerless to control, much less to dictate to, any department of activity in the empire. A little earlier Mr. Nekrassoff, then Minister of Ways and Communications, issued a circular in which he outlined his plan for coping with the railroad crisis. He advised turning the entire railroad system over to the workmen, the engineers, firemen, conductors and machinists. A shriek of protest went up from the engineering profession and a howl of laughter arose from the press of Russia. But the fact of the matter is that the railroads were and are still, for all practical purposes, in the hands of the working people, and so is every other industry in Russia.
One of the great dreams of the socialists and philosophical anarchists is of the day when the worker shall own his tools, as they put it, when all industry shall be owned by the people who operate the machines, and all profits shall be shared by them. It really is a great dream, and will probably be realized in some measure some day. But not now. The human race is not yet educated to such a Utopia. The strongest proof that the capitalistic system is not yet ready to pass is the well-known fact that the secret ambition of almost every human being in every walk of life is to become a capitalist, large or small. This has just been proved on an enormous scale in Russia. The workers have seized the factories, shops, department stores and offices, and in no instance of which I could learn, and I searched diligently, have they used their great opportunity wisely or unselfishly for the common good. They have used it to get all the money possible out of the employers and to render back the minimum of service.