“I have left them to the Tavarishi,” replied Mr. Cheshire, “I thought I might as well.”
Daniel Cheshire is not the only large manufacturer who has abandoned his business after a vain struggle to cope with the situation created by the Russian revolution, and the taking over by the working people of the control of industry. Others have given up the struggle, and many more will probably follow their example. But Mr. Cheshire’s story I know at first hand. His abandonment of his mills is full of significance, partly because of the importance of his branch of manufacturing, and partly because his act may hasten the day when, through sheer lack of the necessities of life, the Russian people will cease pursuing their utopian dream and will content themselves with a government which, although still capitalistic, will rescue them from starvation and ruin.
Those who think of Russia as a land of snow and ice will be interested to learn that in Turkestan and Transcaucasia as well as in other provinces of the south and east, they raise millions of pounds of very good cotton, the seeds of which originally came from America. Those who think that every Russian peasant does nothing but farm will be surprised to hear that over a million Russians work in textile mills, principally cotton textiles.
When cotton spinning and weaving began in Russia the mill owners, in most cases, sent to England for their foremen and managers, and the descendants of some of these Englishmen still live and still manage cotton mills in Russia. The Cheshire family is a case in point. The original Cheshire went out from Manchester in the 1840’s to manage a small cotton spinning factory in Petrograd. He saved money, bought a partnership and enlarged the business. His sons enlarged it still more, and to-day his grandchildren own and operate ten large cotton mills in and around Petrograd. Daniel Cheshire, a keen young man of thirty-something, is head of the family and chief owner of the mills. That is, he was up to February, 1917. After that he wasn’t. The Tavarishi, or “comrades,” whose wages he paid, became the virtual owners then, and on August 30, 1917, they became, temporarily at least, the sole owners.
It was in one of the Cheshire cotton mills that I got the most intimate view of what becomes of industry when the workers own their tools. Perhaps it would be fairer to say, when the workers seize their tools. Some day, perhaps, they will find out how to own them honestly and then they will use them wisely and for the common good.
It was a happy accident that first led me into a Cheshire cotton mill. After being refused permission to inspect the big munition works to which I applied—refused by the workers’ committee, not by the proprietors—I wandered through the Viborg district of Petrograd until I found another large factory. This time the permit given me by the Minister of Labor worked better, and I was shown into the general office of the plant. It was a big, modern, up-to-date office, furnished with the usual desks, files, safes and the like, but to remind me that I was in revolutionary Russia, the walls were decorated with many red flags, and banners inscribed with white-lettered mottoes and declarations. The head of the workmen’s committee, who came forward to meet me, looked a little doubtful about letting me go through the mill, but just then the door opened and a strapping young Englishman came in. “See the works?” said he. “Of course you may. I’d like nothing better than to show my mills just now to newspaper people. I call them my mills yet, but only for a joke.”
He said something in Russian to the workman, who shrugged his shoulders and stood aside, and Mr. Cheshire and I went into the nearest mill room. It was a storeroom, as a matter of fact, the receiving room for the huge bales of coarse yarn spun in another mill. The bales were soft and made excellent beds, a fact that was not overlooked, for two tired Russian mill-workers reposed blissfully on a pile of bales as we passed through, sleeping the sleep of the just. They were not the only sleepers I saw in that mill. Several women were taking naps on piles of cloth near their machines, and a great many of the workers, men and women, might as well have been asleep, for they were doing no work. One woman was displaying a new pair of shoes to a group of other women, who stopped their machines to look. Shoes are so expensive in Russia at present that a new pair is worth looking at, I admit, but they might have postponed the exhibition until closing time. These women stood and discussed the shoes, from every point of view, apparently, nor did they go back to their machines when we stopped and discussed the women.
“Do you mean to tell me that you cannot order them back to their work?” I asked.
“Oh, I can order them,” was the reply. “But if they choose not to go that would make me look rather foolish, wouldn’t it?”