The working class in Russia has had rather less of a square deal than any other in the modern world, it is true. The factory system being comparatively new in Russia, there has not been time for the workers to organize closely, and under the autocracy there was little or no chance to obtain enlightened factory legislation. There was hardly a chance for the Russian workman to attain a very high degree of skill in many industries. He could not, as a rule, learn the finest processes of his trade, because until the war broke out most of those processes were in the hands and under the control of Germany. When I was in Russia in 1906 one of the most striking things to me was the prevalence of German shopkeepers, German managers, German foremen. You hardly ever saw a Russian in command of any industry. I spoke of this to a Russian friend and told him that I should not like to see in my country all the business controlled by foreigners, for these Germans were not even Russian citizens. He shrugged his shoulders and said “Nitchevo,” which means almost anything and is a general expression of indifference or resignation to the inevitable. “We have no heads for that sort of thing, we Russians,” he apologized.
“But what if you should ever go to war with Germany?” I asked. And he, sobered a little, said: “We should have to learn to be business men and skilled mechanics, in that case, and we should have a devil of a time doing it.”
Eight years later, almost to a day, they did go to war with Germany, and they did have a devil of a time adjusting their industries to meet the crisis caused by the exodus of thousands of highly skilled German managers and department heads in hundreds of factories and shops throughout the empire.
One story told me in Moscow is representative, I believe. A very large factory taken over by the government for the fine toolmaking facilities its machines afforded was found to be managed exclusively by German foremen and managers. Not only had they drawn large salaries for years in that factory, but they had insisted on hiring for the last processes and the most highly skilled jobs workmen from Germany. They didn’t want, or rather the German government didn’t want, the Russian people to know how to do skilled work. They wanted to keep Russia in exactly the right condition for permanent commercial exploitation by the fatherland.
I go into this because I think it is only fair to the Russian working class to explain that they have not been allowed to develop the intelligence and skill which the English and American working classes have done. Because of this ignorance the Russians of the working class have in their few months’ debauch of liberty and the control of industry wrecked their country industrially and have brought themselves and their own people to the verge of starvation. They have done to their class approximately what the mutinous soldiers at the front did to the men who wanted to go forward and fight—shot them in the back. I know this, because I have seen it. The next factory I approached the committee let me in.
CHAPTER XIX WHY COTTON CLOTH IS SCARCE
When I got on the train to leave Russia for the United States the first familiar face I saw was that of Mr. Daniel Cheshire, mill owner and operator of Petrograd. “I’m going home to England to enlist,” he said, as we shook hands.
“What have you done with your mills?” I asked.