Chapter II: Part 2

But the lumber market went steadily down and the operators appealed again for a lower wage. This time it was admitted by both sides that the price of everything would have to come down this winter to a lower level, and they would find a way to let down wages and living costs at the same time. So they called in the local merchants of Coos Bay, who agreed to the same facts and promised to make a 15 per cent. cut at once. This was sufficient to cover the cut in wages, and the only persons affected were the merchants, who admitted they had to pocket the loss anyhow.

This instance is illuminating, because it shows how far this idea can be carried and how much trouble can be avoided by men getting together with those to whom they pay wages and coming to an understanding.

Works in Unsteady Market.

If the lumber market should be bad all winter it is apparent the strain would be too great for even so elastic an organization as the “Four L’s,” but by what it has already done it has proved what can be done by human contact. If it can work at all in the lumber industry, which is subject to a very unsteady market, it could certainly work in any other industry. Nor is lumbering a kid-glove industry. The average lumber operator is a plunger, and until the “Four L’s” got started it was always a question of whether the operators were going to “break the back” of labor or whether the loggers were going to “break the back” of the operators.

None of the concerns which have seriously adopted the “industrial council” system pretend they have solved everything. They say they are simply restoring the human relationship which was lost through the growth of industry. They pretend to have found no new principle. Some go in for profit-sharing as a stimulus, others say it is not desirable. That is a matter of opinion. The important consideration is the spirit with which the problem is approached. The mere fact that the management of a factory wishes to introduce such a system would indicate it has not a pinchpenny attitude. But those who oppose it, mostly labor leaders, hold that it is a farsighted scheme to get a bunch of faithful slaves who acquiesce in the smooth arrangements prepared in council, so that they become wage-slaves of the most hopeless kind. They also say, and with justice, that the system removes the incentive for joining labor unions, and, even though the management plays perfectly fair with union men, unions wither up and die, as they get no nourishment.

Makes Men Feel Safer.

At the rate at which the “industrial council” idea is catching on it can be safely predicted that it is going to interfere with the growth of industrial unionism which would otherwise begin to show itself. It has a tendency to make men feel surer of their jobs, which induces them to buy homes and unite their destinies with the industries they serve. It makes them feel they have a stake in the industry. If the spirit behind the movement is wrong this could, as Mr. Fitzpatrick said, lead to a sort of chattel-slavery. But I have noticed in the few plants with “industrial councils” which I have been in that there was a spirit of service. I notice that the bigger American plants have become in a sense institutions, they have a code of conduct developed out of the special world which the institutions create. The people who get the dividends are far away, but the management and the plant are in intimate daily contact.

As I wandered through these plants, each with its own life, it occurred to me that within these plants was developing what the modern sociologists call the social conscience. If it has not such a spirit it does not succeed. The calculating employer who is only pretending mutual interest will not get the service in return.

These same modern sociologists hold that the present era is chiefly remarkable for having created the individual conscience, and the next era will produce the social conscience. They point to Russia and maintain that the theories of Lenine develop the social conscience. Any one will go so far as to say that a social conscience is necessary if Lenine’s ideas are to have a fair show. It would be ironic if the social conscience were to develop quicker in the despised American bourgeois republic than in Bolshevik Russia.

FARMERS’ GROUPS PORTEND FAR-REACHING CHANGES IN NATION’S ECONOMICS

_By Arno Dosch-Fleurot._

Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).

American farmers are organizing industrial unions. The wheat men are getting together in one union, cotton in another, wool in another. They may not call their organizations “unions,” but it is a part of the new industrial alignment. They are organizing for mutual backing, and the wheat farmers have gone so far they are carrying on a strike.

Labor has not made much headway in organizing industrially because there are too many difficulties in the way. These are principally the American Federation of Labor, and the associations of manufacturers. The organizers of industrial unionism also stand in their own light, as they try to organize labor industrially and cry revolution at the same time. And there is no revolutionary spirit in America.

Certainly there is no such spirit among the farmers, but what they have in mind means such a decided change in national economy as to be a real revolution, one that may make a decided change in the life of the country and carried on by effective organization, instead of by the silly parade of arms and loud talk about the proletariat, the way it is done in Europe.

The revolution the farmers have in mind is this: They refuse longer to be dominated by the cities; it is their purpose to dictate terms to the cities. As it is, they are held under what they consider a financial tyranny directed by the powerful interests of the country. They purpose organizing so effectively that, jointly, they will not only be as powerful as the financial interests, but having the staff of life in their hands they will be able to force their will.

The wheat farmers are right now in revolutionary foment. They are carrying on industrial strike. They refuse to sell their wheat. They are asking a high price, but that is merely symbolic. What they want is to get the price at which the wheat is finally sold. They are striking for the profits now made by the operators, the elevator owners, the speculators and the shippers. They have not yet carried their strike to the point of refusing to plant more wheat unless they get the full profit they demand, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Kansas and North Dakota Non-Partisan League Centres

The strike is being carried on most effectively in North Dakota, where the Non-Partisan League has been actively organizing the farmers for several years, and in Kansas, where the Wheat Growers’ Association of America is busy. The Non-Partisan League, while active politically, has as its principal purpose the uniting of farmers into a group that can get governmental action. Its chief field of operations is the Northwest, North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but it is also spreading further and was concentrating its attention on Nebraska when I was out there a short time ago. The Wheat Growers’ Association of America is also operating in Nebraska and is spreading its influence over Oklahoma and Texas as well as Kansas. It claims 100,000 membership.

Between the two they control the wheat producing States, and if there were not a big idea behind the revolt it might prove to be a serious kind of industrial strike.

The story of the revolt was best told to me by Senator Edwin F. Ladd of North Dakota. He is the original champion of the wheat growers in North Dakota, and as head of the chemistry department of the North Dakota Agricultural College, went out years ago and told the farmers they were not getting their share. He is a born agitator, it was his work that made the Non-Partisan League possible, and he has just been elected on the Non-Partisan League to the Senate of the United States. He is going to Congress to represent wheat. I saw him recently in Fargo, N. D., where he was laying his plans for his revolutionary coup in favor of the farmers.

I went to him to talk about the Non-Partisan League, but, though he had just acquired his seat in the Senate on the Non-Partisan ticket, he talked perhaps ten minutes on the league, and an hour or so on the revolt of the wheat growers and the other farmers.

_Farmers Realize Situation_

“The farmers who grow wheat,” he said, “are in revolt because they have come to understand their position in the economic life of the country. They know they do the work of growing the wheat and the profit is largely taken by others. Here in North Dakota the situation is so simple it is easy to grasp, and once seen, cannot be forgotten. The rich city of Minneapolis is exceedingly prosperous on the money it made out of the wheat grown in North Dakota. There stands Minneapolis and here are the North Dakota farmers who realize they are not richer on account of the wheat operators.

“The method of handling the wheat crop is also simple enough for any farmer to understand. During the spring and summer the banks lend money to the farmers to grow and harvest the crop. Their notes fall due early in the fall, when they are supposed to sell their crops. The small banks, which did the lending, backed by bigger banks in the bigger cities, reassemble this money, ship it back to the big city banks, which lend it over again to the operators and speculators who handle the wheat through its second period. They are in turn supposed to make the turnover in a few months, to sell and repay the banks, which lend the same money for a third time to the shippers who finally dispose of the wheat.

“The farmer now asks why he should be forced to liquidate his crop so quickly. Is it only so other men can clean up fortunes yearly on the manipulation of the crop he has raised? He wants to know why. He sees no reason why he should let this process continue. So he is making the only protest possible. He is sitting on his wheat and refuses to play the game as it has always been played. He will not hasten to liquidate his crop right away in order to finance the wheat speculator.”

_North Dakota Banks Close_

“Here in North Dakota the refusal of the farmers to sell has closed thirty or more banks. These banks are not insolvent, but they have no money. It is all in the wheat upon which the farmers are sitting and refusing to budge. When they decide to sell they will pay their notes and the banks will again be able to resume business.

“It is a strike, if you want to call it so. It is a protest against the economic system and shows the spirit that is moving. The Non-Partisan League has been voicing this protest and organizing it. That is why it has grown and is growing now faster than ever in spite of the political fight that has been put up against it. It may look for a harder fight as the organized bankers and wheat manipulators see their profits threatened by the preparations the farmers are making to voice their protest even more effectively through the American Farm Bureau.

“This is what is really happening among farmers. One way or another they are beginning to understand they have been the victims of disorganization. They have marketed all together and have bred speculation. Now they intend to change. They do not mean to hold up the country, but to force a change, so they are organizing, the wheat men in one group, the corn in another, the cotton and wool in still further groups, &c. There are dozens of different organizations all working to the same end, and their strength is being united in the Farm Bureau. They wish to sell through their own organizations and make the full profit.

“So far in the United States only the raisin growers of California and the prune growers have organized effectively. They sell their crops co-operatively.”

_Canada’s Wheat Financing_

“The wheat growers and the others mean to do the same thing. The method is simple. It is only necessary to get the different groups organized and the banks will have to finance us. I have just been making a study of how it is being done, and how it has been done for the past six years, in the three wheat provinces of Canada. There it was operated through the Canadian Government during the war, but it is now being operated by the banks. There are some 700 co-operative elevators where the farmers can store their wheat, and from which it is finally disposed of.

“The method there, which we shall adopt, is to pay the farmer a price on delivering the wheat and giving him a receipt which entitles him to a share in the future operations. Last year when the wheat was placed in the elevators the farmer was paid per bushel $2.15 in cash. When the price was more definitely fixed he was paid another 30 cents, and when the transaction for the year was ended another 18 cents. So he got all that was coming to him. According to the system in vogue here he would have got the $2.15 perhaps, and that is all he ever would have got. The other 48 cents per bushel, which totals up on the year’s crop to millions of dollars, would have gone to enrich the speculators and wheat manipulators, ‘Minneapolis,’ as we say here.”

“What we need to do is to organize ourselves as they have done in Canada, store our wheat in our own co-operative elevators and make the banks finance us through the different periods in the handling of the crop. There are three periods now, the farming, the holding and the handling of the wheat. It only needs co-operation for the farmer to share in all three periods.

“In this period of unrest following the war is beginning a new era in agriculture. Following the Civil War came the growth of manufacturing. After this war comes the reorganization of agriculture. For years now two-thirds of the population has been dependent on one-third. The cities have dominated. Now the country is going to share equally with the cities.”

Senator Ladd has vision. There are others too, but there is danger in vision. The farmers, being in revolt, want to do everything at once. They want to develop the Farm Bureau into an economic machine that would rival the power of the Federal Government. They want to centre the selling of the whole agricultural crop in a single body. It would be much more successful for each type of farmer to organize apart and go forward slowly as the raisin and prune growers they emulate have done.

_League Voices Protest_

I wish to say just a word about the Non-Partisan League. It is a farmers’ organization, but it has been developed largely by the energy of a single man, A. G. Townley. It has, in consequence, made many mistakes, mostly political. But its enemies, fighting by fair means and foul, have not been able to kill it off. As a league it is chiefly important because it expresses the protest. That is also why nothing can kill it. The one convincing thing about it, to any one, is the way the farmers will unhesitatingly pay the $18 dues it demands. Farmers are not so notably open-handed they would cheerfully hand over $18 if they were not after something the league was working for. It is economic independence.

The League’s purpose, and its only excuse for existence, is the establishing of a new and fairer method of marketing wheat, but where it is at work politically it is always fought on other issues—because it is “socialistic,” because “Townley is radical”—anything but the real issue. It was defeated in Minnesota this fall because it was declared to be a movement in favor of free love. It appears some books of Ellen Key, bearing on sex problems, were found in the North Dakota public school reference library. Promptly its enemies cried down these books and virtuously declared against the “free love movement.” In Minnesota its enemies quickly seized upon the party cry. The wheat manipulators of Minneapolis, who, being rich, dominated socially, sent their wives out to tell the women of Minnesota to vote against this “free love” party. These ladies, being rich and powerful socially, went with the virtuous plea into every town in Minnesota and, being known as rich and prominent socially, swept the woman vote of Minnesota with them. The Non-Partisan League, that organization of free-loving North Dakota Scandinavian farmers, was not allowed to pollute the virtuous State of Minnesota.

It is ironic, but it cannot stop the farmers’ protest. If Senator Ladd is right, the protest will be organized so effectively that the farmers will all be in industrial unions long before the industrial workers.

]

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* * * * *

“RUSSIA FROM THE INSIDE”

_By Hector Boon._

A New York Business Man, Recently Returned From a Long Stay and
Extensive Travel in Russia

_Reprinted from_

_January 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1921_

* * * * *

“AN AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN ON THE SITUATION IN RUSSIA”

To The New York World justly belongs the credit for giving the American people the best description of the present situation in Russia that has ever appeared in the American press. Beginning with Sunday, Jan. 9th, and ending on Friday, Jan. 14th, The New York World has published daily articles by Hector Boon, who has just returned from Soviet Russia, which he entered on April 6th and left on Oct. 12th, 1920, after spending more than half a year in Lenin’s kingdom.

Altogether, Mr. Boon spent ten months in Russia, of which four months were spent in the so-called “buffer state,” the Far Eastern Republic, which extends from Verkni-Udinsk to Vladivostok, and more than six months in Soviet Russia proper, mostly in Moscow. * * * To this is added that Mr. Boon was in Russia in 1917, before the Bolsheviki came into power, and thus he was able during his last visit to compare the conditions in Bolshevist Russia with the situation in Russia during the first months after the March Revolution.

_From an article by A. J. Sack, Director of the Russian Information
Bureau in the United States._

INSIDE FACTS OF RUSSIA TOLD BY NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN

Hector Boon, Trading Expert, Describes in Series of Articles Prepared
for The World Conditions Under Regime of Soviet Which He Believes
Will Not Last More Than Two Years Longer—First Instalment Relates
Experiences in Eastern Siberia After Defeat of Kolchak—He Sought
to Recover 5,000 Furs Stolen by Bandit Chief Semionov.

_Here is Russia from the inside as seen at close hand for ten months
by an unusual observer—not an author, not an artist, not a
propagandist, not a sympathizer, not an enemy, not a Socialist, not a
reformer, not a reactionary, but a hard-headed, clear-seeing,
unimaginative, fair-minded, give-the-other-fellow-a-chance kind of
American business man._

_Hector Boon saw things as they are—not as some one else says they
are—not what Russia promises but what Russia is performing. And in a
series of articles which he prepared exclusively for The World he
tells plainly and with exactness what he has observed, what he has
heard, what he has thought._

_Mr. Boon, although of English nativity, is a thorough New Yorker—a
keen, wideawake, practical man of affairs, whose business as a
financial expert and trading expert, particularly for fur importers,
has taken him to many parts of the world. He has just returned from
Russia, into whose condition he had opportunities for thorough
insight. It was not new territory to him; he knew the country before
the Red regime and is able to draw contrasts between that period and
the present. He believes the Soviet rule will not last more than two
years longer._

_The World offers his narrative to its readers for exactly what it is
on the face of it—the actual and recent experiences of a plain
business man in the land which has been so clouded in mystery despite
the reports of writers of various types. Mr. Boon stands sponsor
personally for all the statements and opinions contained in his
articles._

_By Hector Boon._

Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).

Sitting here comfortably in New York, with peace and plenty on all sides, I find it hard to realize that it is only a little more than ten months ago since I said goodby in Harbin to one of the principals of the New York firm I represent, and then set forth on my long and interesting journey into Soviet Russia.

During the summer of 1919 we had purchased large quantities of raw furs in Eastern Siberia, and with the defeat of Kolchak these had fallen into the hands of the Bolshevists; so my object in going into Russia was to induce the Soviet authorities to release these furs.

Brands Wells’s Articles as Skilful Bolshevik Propaganda

I entered Soviet Russia on April 6, and left it on Oct. 12, when I crossed the Russian-Latvian line at Sebesh. I arrived in London on Oct. 19, spent some time there recuperating from the effects of months of semistarvation in Moscow, and reached New York Dec. 23.

During my stay in London I read the diary of Mrs. Clare Sheridan, the sculptress; Mr. H. G. Wells’s articles on Russia which were published in the London Sunday Express, and Mr. Winston Churchill’s reply to that modest gentleman who permitted the newspaper in which his articles appeared to describe him as “the world’s greatest living author.”

As these articles have doubtless also appeared in American journals, I venture to believe that the American public will be interested to read the experiences of a New York business man in Russia (notwithstanding that he is an Englishman) and compare them with those of Mrs. Sheridan and Mr. Wells.

I have no aptitude for “sculping”; I lay no claim to literary ability; I am not endowed with the sweet womanly nature which would render me sad at the thought that I should never see again that foul, blood-drenched scoundrel Dzherjinsky; I am simply a business man, and at that have had no experience of life behind a draper’s counter. Had I had, I should probably, like Mr. Wells, be able to tell England and the world how to trade with Russia.

Mrs. Sheridan’s diary, piled with sympathy for the butchers and precious little for their victims, can be dismissed as a breach of good taste on the part of a notoriety seeking female, but we cannot thus lightly dismiss the articles of Mr. Wells. Whereas Mr. Wells’s experience of the Bolsheviks, according to his own admission, was gained as the result of a two weeks’ stay in Russia, mine dates from the time of Lenine’s first attempt, in July, 1917, to overthrow the Kerensky Government.

I regard Mr. Wells’s articles as the most skilful piece of propaganda which the Bolsheviks have so far put forth. Mr. Wells makes no attempt to cloak the appalling conditions of life which to-day obtain in Petrograd and Moscow. In fact he has drawn a very faithful picture of them. Having done so he proceeds to tell the world that these conditions were brought about not by Bolshevism but by the imperialism and capitalism of the Czar’s regime. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I propose, in the course of this series, to show that the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks alone, are responsible for the deplorable condition in which Russia finds herself to-day. In order to do this I shall take the reader with me on my journey through Russia.

In June, 1917, I travelled from Vladivostok to Petrograd over the Trans-Siberian Railroad. On that occasion the journey took ten and a half days, all stops included; this year our actual running time (all stops excluded) was twenty-eight days.

In 1917 I remained in Russia until September, when I went to New York, returning to Petrograd in December, where I remained until April, 1918, when, with my assistants, I was forced to escape on sledges through Karelia into Finland. In October, 1918, I arrived in Vladivostok and remained in Siberia, a close observer of the Kolchak regime, until I crossed the Urals in June this year on my way to Moscow.

In June, 1919, the Ataman Chief Semionov stole from my firm some 5,000 white fox skins at the Station Manchuria, and in July I proceeded to his headquarters at Chita to negotiate for the return of them. I was unsuccessful and went to Omsk, where I spent two-and-a-half fruitless months endeavoring to secure compensation from the Kolchak Government.

_Dictator in Name Only._

During my stay in Omsk, where I came into contact with the leading members of the Government, I had an opportunity of studying the methods of Kolchak and his Cabinet. Kolchak, admittedly a man of great personal courage, was a dictator in name only; he possessed none of the qualities fitting him for such an onerous position; his Cabinet consisted principally of unscrupulous adventurers who neglected no opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the cause, which they ultimately, by their corruption and treachery, destroyed.

In October, realizing that the fall of Omsk was imminent, I left and went to Chita and reopened negotiations with the bandit of the Trans-Baikal. My stay in Chita was somewhat unpleasantly disturbed by a ten days’ sojourn in the Ataman’s jail which was brought about by my calling him a thief to his face. On my release from prison, which was secured by the British Military Mission, I remained in Chita until the first week in December when, having secured a promise from the Ataman that he would pay for the stolen foxes upon presentation of certain certified statements, I went to Vladivostok to get them.

I left Vladivostok on the return journey toward the end of January. On my arrival in Harbin, however, I was called to Tientsin for a conference with my principals. At this conference they requested me to make an effort to get to Irkutsk from Chita and endeavor to secure the return of a large quantity of furs which we then had in Irkutsk and the surrounding district.

On my return from Tientsin to Harbin I found my friend, Capt. H. S. Walker, the British Military Mission’s representative in China, who had recently left there under the impression that Semionov’s days were numbered. My chances of getting through to Chita looked decidedly small, and when Consul Gen. Harris with the consular staff, and Col. McMorrow with the 27th United States Infantry from Verkni-Udinsk blew into the town with much the same story as Walker’s, they looked even smaller.

However, I decided to try and break through and left on the post train on the 22d of February for the Station Manchuria, although I was assured in Harbin that it was impossible to get past that point as the Baikal Railroad was blocked on both lines with the Czech evacuation. At Manchuria, by great good fortune, I found Lieut. Lee of the American Railroad Corps, with a train of flour destined for the coal miners west of Chita who were supplying coal for the Czechs, and he very kindly agreed to take me through in his private car. We made the journey in 32 hours, a remarkable performance considering that it had taken evacuating Americans ten days.

_Saw Remnants of Army._

We got to Chita just in time to witness the arrival of Gen. Voitzikofsky with the remnants of the Kolchak Army, which had retreated from west of Omsk, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, partly on sledges and partly on foot, in the depth of winter, through a semi-hostile country—a magnificent feat of courage and endurance.

Those of us who were anti-Semionov had great hopes of Voitzikofsky. We looked to him to oust the bandit and his pillaging, murdering associates, and set up a democratic form of government in the Trans-Baikal. When E. B. Thomas, the American Vice Consul and myself interviewed Voitzikofsky, a few days after his arrival, he indirectly led us to believe that he intended to depose the Ataman.

However, he delayed action and his army diminished daily as the result of wholesale desertions. He was credited with having 27,000 officers and men when he arrived. Three weeks later this force had dwindled to 7,000 and Semionov, who had been quaking in his shoes, gradually began to assert himself. When the Japanese finally decided not to evacuate the Trans-Baikal, which had been their intention as soon as the Czechs had passed through, Semionov was once more in the saddle and Voitzikofsky dropped into comparative obscurity.

My negotiations with Semionov came to nothing. It is true he signed an order on the Finance Department to pay the claim in gold (of which he had plenty, having stolen it from a Kolchak echelon some months previously), but when the order was presented the Finance Department declined to honor it and referred us back to Semionov. The Ataman, who obviously had no intention of paying, then impudently referred us to the Czechs for payment, stating that as they had been entrusted with the safe conveyance of the Russian gold reserve to Vladivostok, they were the people to apply to. This, of course, had reference to the action of the Czechs at Irkutsk when, in order to insure the unhampered evacuation of their forces, they traded Kolchak and the gold in return for noninterference with their movement eastward.

I applied to the Japanese Military Mission for assistance, but although the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokio had pledged us, through the American Embassy, the active assistance of their mission in Chita, the Military Mission not only declined to intervene but disclosed to the Ataman private and confidential documents belonging to me, which caused me great embarrassment and undoubtedly endangered my position in the town.

_Troops Permitted Thefts._

The Japanese, throughout their occupancy of the Trans-Baikal, acted in a manner prejudicial to the real interests of the White cause. Their troops were engaged in guarding the railway, but they never on any occasion intervened to prevent Semionov from levying on supplies en route to the front or stealing goods belonging to Russian and Allied merchants.

The seizure of goods by Semionov reached such proportions during the summer of 1919 that merchants in Eastern Siberia refused to forward goods through the Trans-Baikal, and in consequence Western Siberia was deprived of the supplies which, if they had been forthcoming, would have done much to win the support of the peasantry and townspeople for the White cause.

Capt. Walker and his assistant, Capt. R. C. Carthew, returned to Chita after I had been there a few days, and at once commenced, with the assistance of the American Railroad Corps, who had a direct wire to Verkni-Udinsk, to make inquiries in respect to the officers and men of the British Railway Mission who had been captured by the Bolsheviks at Krasnoyarsk.

When Capt. Carthew induced the Bolsheviks, through Krassnochokoff, the Commissar at Verkni, to have these prisoners brought to Irkutsk, he obtained a safe conduct to proceed there with food, clothing and medical supplies and kindly offered me a place on his car provided I was able to procure a similar safe conduct.

I then telegraphed Krassnochokoff intimating that I wished to go to Irkutsk for the purpose of discussing trading possibilities with the authorities there, and requested a safe conduct. He telegraphed me back the Russian Socialistic Federated Soviet Republic’s full safe conduct to travel to Irkutsk, guaranteeing my liberty of movement while there, and the right to leave the territory of his Government at my will.

Armed with these documents we said goodby to “Johnny” Walker and Thomas on a bitterly cold afternoon in April and proceeded with a special train consisting of our private car and a goods wagon for our interpreters and servants. We flew a large Union Jack from our observation platform which created a great deal of attention at the stations at which we stopped. We met the last Czech echelon east of Moxon and felt that we had then said goodby to civilization, Carthew for a couple of weeks and I—indefinitely.

PROSPEROUS IRKUTSK REDUCED BY RULE OF REDS

_By Hector Boon._

Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).

At Irkutsk we found a small Japanese outpost under the command of a junior officer who, although we presented our papers signed by the Japanese Chief of Staff in Chita, declined to allow us to proceed until he had first communicated with the staff. Eventually we were permitted to go on, and reached the advanced Red position at 1 P. M. We called upon the military commandant, who was careful to impress upon us that we were not in Soviet territory but in that of the Far Eastern Republic, at that time called the Buffer State. We were quite willing to take his word for it, but we noticed with amusement that the entire population was sporting hastily improvised red stars and rosettes. In the course of the afternoon our wagons were attached to the post train which was already running daily between Hilok and Irkutsk.

We arrived at Verkni-Udinsk at 11 A. M. the next day and the Commissar Krassnochokoff’s aide-de-camp met me at the station with a motor car and conducted me to the Commissar’s house. I found Krassnochokoff, who had spent many years in America as the head of a Jewish orphanage in Chicago, living in a small room modestly furnished with a deal table, a few chairs and a truckle bed. He made a very pleasant impression upon me.

When, however, he asked questions concerning the conditions in Chita and the intentions of the Japanese, I had to decline to answer them. He was at some pains to impress upon me that the Bolsheviki I had known in 1917 and 1918 had changed decidedly for the better since that time. He went on to say that he realized, however, there was still a strong disinclination on the part of the Entente and America to have trade relations with the Far Eastern republic, and he therefore felt that the establishment of the Far Eastern Republic, extending from Verkni-Udinsk to Vladivostok, would provide a medium for trading with the Soviet. He assured me that there would be no confiscation or requisitioning of private property and that the communistic system would not be indulged in.

Buffer State Only a Fiction; Is Part of Soviet Russia

Krassnochokoff, who is certainly a man of some ability, spoke of his plans in a sincere and convincing manner, and I really think that at that time he believed the scheme would be carried through just as he outlined it to me. However, I must admit I was sceptical.

I had seen, drawn up in the station, the Bolshevik propaganda train, in charge of Dvornik, who had been employed as an interpreter by the American Railroad Corps until he was imprisoned by the Kolchak Government for propagating Bolshevism. It did not augur well for a truly democratic state. Subsequent events have shown that my estimate of the situation was correct. The buffer state exists only in name. It is part of Soviet Russia, administered by Moscow on the communist system. The population is embittered, being half starved. All industry has died and so have men and women at the hands of firing squads, because they unwisely expressed their disapproval of commissar rule.

Krassnochokoff was in Moscow this summer. His efforts to persuade Lenine and company to moderate their policy in the Far Eastern Republic met with fierce disapproval, and for some weeks he walked on thin ice. The butcher Dzherjinsky, of the extraordinary commission, was thirsting for his blood, but he weathered the storm and eventually returned to his job at Verkni-Udinsk.

We left that night for Irkutsk. I was most anxious to get there. I wanted to see our prisoners and get into touch with uncamouflaged Bolsheviks. I hoped to find the latter as Krassnochokoff had described them. The atrocities committed by the whites in Siberia had alienated all my sympathies for them. I was above all else anxious to see whether the wild beasts I had known in 1917 and 1918 had become tame.

I was at this time predisposed in favor of opening up trade relations with the Soviet power, feeling that this would do much toward solving the Russian problem. These were my feelings and my hopes on the eve of my entry into “Lenine’s Paradise” in April. I left that “Paradise” in October determined to do everything in my power to dissuade the outside world from having any dealings whatsoever with the Bolsheviki. They were scoundrels in 1917—they are even greater scoundrels to-day.

We received a great welcome from Major Vining and his six officers and seven men when we arrived in Irkutsk at 3 o’clock the following afternoon. We found that they had with them a party of British civilians who had been captured in Krasnoyarsk. These were evacuated by Carthew. We found that the whole party had been through trying times. Some of them had been dangerously ill with typhus, and all of them looked worn and undernourished. They told us that the sight of the Union Jack flying from our car as we rolled into the station was one which made them thrill with pride. Months later, when in Moscow, I was suffering severely from want of food and my position seemed desperate. I realized just what the sight of that flag must have meant to them.

The day of our arrival in Irkutsk was a “prasnik” or church holiday, and it was therefore impossible to call on the President of the Revolutionary Committee until the morrow.

The town, even making allowance for the fact that it was a holiday, looked dead. All the shops had been closed and their contents removed. Many of the windows on the main street had been perforated by bullets, and over everything there hung that air of gloom so indissolubly associated in my mind with Bolshevism.

I had visited Irkutsk, several times during the Kolchak regime, when it was a thriving trading centre, and now I found it hard to realize that this red-beflagged, poster-besmirched conglomeration of buildings could constitute the same town. The prosperous, well dressed, happy looking townspeople of the past had been replaced by drab and dirty workpeople, peasants and soldiers, all liberally bedecked with red stars. I discovered later that all those who wore red stars were by no means Bolsheviks; in fact, the great majority of them were “radishes,” or red outside and white within, as the Russian phrase goes. With the Reds in power it is advisable to present at least a red exterior.

Wherever one went on the main or side streets, one met lavish displays of gaudy posters; some of an educational character, others blatantly lewd. The majority had for their object the stirring up of class hatred.

_Hotels Taken by Bolsheviki._

We found that all the hotels had been taken over by the Bolsheviki for the housing of Soviet officials and their families. The restaurants had either been closed or converted into Soviet dining rooms for Soviet employees, where meals of exceedingly poor quality and consisting mainly of cabbage soup, without meat, and “kasha” (millet). These meals were served at nominal prices on production of the inevitable card.

On the following day I called on Jansen, the President of the Revolutionary Committee. He gave me a very cordial welcome and expressed himself as most anxious to enter into trading relations with American firms. He arranged a meeting with the heads of the various Government departments. This meeting, which took place on the following day, was the forerunner of a great many conferences which extended over a period of nearly two months, and which brought me into close touch with the leaders of the Soviet Government in the town, and afforded me an excellent opportunity of studying their characters and their methods.

I found Jansen, at all times a reasonable, moderate and above all humane man. He had a pretty good grasp of his duties and executed them with efficiency and despatch. He was always ready to render me assistance, and in all my personal relations with him I found him straightforward and reliable.

Of the other leaders, Saxs, a nervous, highly strung little Jew, who had spent many years in prison during the Czar’s regime for political offenses, I found to be a very decent fellow. Despite the fact that his mind has become politically unbalanced, he had remained human and there is more than a little of the milk of human kindness in his make-up.

Waxhoff, who, despite his youth (he was about twenty-three), occupied a position of importance as the head of a Government department, was the source of unfailing interest to me. He was the son of a rich manufacturer in South Russia and had commenced his career by organizing strikes in his father’s factories. He was a youngster of natural ability, but his head unfortunately was crammed full of half-digested revolutionary theories. I found him even a lovable companion, warm-hearted, honest to a degree and incapable of harming a fly. He travelled to Moscow with me.

_Reduces the Town to Penury._

Taking then all in all, the men who held the reins in Irkutsk were moderate men, but none the less in carrying out the orders of Moscow they reduced that once prosperous and well-fed town to penury and semistarvation within a few months.

The market was officially decreed closed, but the peasants still continued to bring in foodstuffs until the “Chika” (the Extraordinary Commission) commenced raiding it and arresting sellers and buyers, confiscating their goods and imprisoning them. When I left Irkutsk only a small number of peasants were bringing food into the town.

Siberia, even allowing for the land which has been allowed to go out of cultivation in recent years, still produces, or did during the Kolchak regime, enough to feed the whole of its population and still permit her to export a considerable surplus to European Russia. Notwithstanding this fact, which is incontrovertible, there is not a town of any size in Soviet Siberia which is not suffering from a shortage of food. The Entente blockade is certainly not responsible for this state of affairs: it is the Communist system which is at fault.

I found in those Government departments which I visited a superabundance of staff, occupied mostly in doing nothing. The people in these departments had been forced to work for the Soviet, but they took good care to do as little work as possible and that as badly as they dared. Outside the spy service there is little or no real organization in Bolshevik institutions.

FOOD IS SCARCE IN OMSK, AND MOSCOW IS NO BETTER OFF

_By Hector Boon._

Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).

Thanks to Jansen, I was able to live in an apartment of six rooms, quite an extraordinary privilege, bearing in mind that people were being crowded four and five in a room. When I took possession of it my drawing room was occupied by an engineer and his family and four other people, making in all nine persons. This engineer, a well-known member of Irkutsk society, had been turned out of his house to make room for a Commissar. His presence in my house led to an unpleasant incident which gave me a glimpse of the methods of the “Chika.”

I was awakened one morning at 2 A. M. by my servant with the news that the house was being searched. On going out to investigate I found half a dozen soldiers and a Commissar busily engaged in searching the effects of the engineer and his family. I formally protested to the Commissar, but as he most politely informed me that my personal rooms would not be disturbed, I was left with no alternative but to go back to bed. I took the precaution, however, of leaving my servant on guard, and he reported to me at breakfast that the search party had left at 6 A. M. with the engineer under arrest.

I inquired into the charges against this man and found that he had been arrested primarily because he was supposed to be rich and also because he had been associated with an organization for sending comforts to the troops during Kolchak’s regime. He was still in prison when I left Irkutsk.

Lack of Food in Omsk Due Solely to Soviet’s System

After two months’ negotiation with the Revolutionary Committee it was found impossible to arrive at any definite arrangement in respect to trading, and I received a telegraphic invitation from the Siberian Revolutionary Committee to go to Omsk and discuss the matter with them, which I accepted. Jansen placed a compartment at my disposal in a private car which was attached to the post train, and I left for Omsk with my two assistants and my servant on the 22d of May.

The journey to Omsk was quite uneventful. We found the town a replica of Irkutsk, a superabundance of red flags, posters, soldiers and a scarcity of food. The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers, and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures in order to coerce them.

The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will have none of it. I am confident that the Bolsheviki will never succeed in forcing the peasants to accept their theory of government and that if they resort to military measures the peasants will come out on top.

_Method Embitters Peasants._

In the early summer of this year the Bolsheviki ordered the peasants in Western Siberia to deliver a certain stipulated quantity of grain to the railway stations nearest their farms. Only 25 per cent. of the quantity demanded was delivered, which represented the quota of those whose farms were in close proximity to the towns. The balance, despite blood-curdling threats, was not forthcoming. This method of requisitioning farm produce embittered the entire peasantry of Siberia, and the net result was nil. Owing to the lack of transport the grain obtained by the above method has not been sent to Moscow, for which it was intended.

We spent ten days in Omsk. We slept on the train and took our meals in a peasant’s house in which I had lived during the previous summer. At that time my full board and lodging cost me a dollar a day; this summer, however, dinner alone cost us $2 a head, and I doubt whether the landlady made any profit. At this house I met a great many peasants and small townspeople. All were without exception bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviki. The majority of them had already suffered from requisitions and they were terrified of the “Chika.”

I had a long talk with Smirnoff, the President of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. I found him very moderate in his views and a man of heart and vision. He is regarded with suspicion by the ardent Communists on account of his humane and kindly qualities, and but for the fact that he enjoys the personal friendship of Lenine the “Chika” would make short work of him.

I found it impossible to do anything in Omsk for the simple reason that no one there had any authority to enter into trading agreements, and when Smirnoff invited me to go to Moscow I accepted.

Our wagon was attached to a service train conveying supplies for the Polisa front, and there travelled with us several Commissars and their wives and families. The journey, which the post train makes regularly in six days, took us twelve, as we broke down constantly owing to running hot boxes, and when we did not break down we laid up for hours at a stretch in order to arrive at search stations in the small hours of the morning when the militia would be too lazy to bother about us. These precautions were rendered necessary because our good Commissar’s friends had with them a good wagon full of contraband, chiefly foodstuffs, which they were taking to Moscow for their own use and also as a speculation.

On one occasion, when, owing to some miscalculation on the part of our master speculator, the train commandant, we arrived at a search station in the early afternoon a most amusing incident took place. The search party consisted of an officer and six men. The officer informed our commandant that he intended to search the train, whereupon our man called out his guard of two N. C. O.’s and fourteen men, gave the order to load, and then with a twinkle in his eye invited the officer to commence his search. Thanks to our superior numbers no search took place, but the militia got some white flour and sugar to help them keep their mouths shut.

The heat throughout the journey had been intense, so that when we arrived in Moscow we heaved a sigh of relief and were indeed glad to have got there. We arrived on the afternoon of the 22d of June. As we pulled into the goods station I noticed with mixed feelings a number of British general service wagons and other British stores which had been captured by the Bolsheviki in Archangel.

_Only Commissars Dine Well._

Waxoff offered to take me to the Moscow Soviet to inquire for rooms. We took a cab outside the Jaroslavski Station. The driver at first demanded 10,000 roubles—i. e., $5, but after some bargaining agreed to take us to the house of the Soviet, which was formerly the residence of the Military Governor of Moscow, for half that sum. The pre-war fare was 15 cents. At the Soviet we saw a Commissar, who gave me a letter to the Foreign Office, which, it appeared, arranged all accommodation for foreigners. As this man interviewed us he partook of his dinner, which I was interested to notice consisted of very good cabbage soup with a large piece of meat in it, followed by a large plate of meat and vegetables, good black bread and tea with sugar. This certainly did not look like starvation. I later discovered to my cost that only Commissars were fed thus well.

At the Foreign Office we met a Jew named Contorovitch, who spoke English fluently. He furnished me with rooms at the Foreign Office Guest House at No. 10 Mala Haritonofskaya, which formerly was the home of a wealthy German merchant. At this house the first person I met was Mrs. Harrison, the correspondent of the Associated Press.

The other people living in the house were Bobroff, a naturalized American Jew (former Russian subject), who was soliciting orders from the Bolsheviki; an Esthonian representative, two tame Bolsheviki from Siberia, two red, or seemingly red, delegates from Corea, and Axionoff.

This man, formerly Colonel of the Imperial Guard, scion of a noble Russian family, was ostensibly working in the Foreign Office, but was in fact a spy for the Extraordinary Commission. He was specially planted in the house to watch the movements of foreigners and report their conversations to Mogilevski, the Chief Commissar of the Foreign Department of the Vetchika (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission).

During my stay in Moscow I saw a great deal of this mustache-twirling, beard-combing, smirking, Iscariotic apology for a man, and the more I saw of the cowardly renegade the more repulsive I found him. Axionoff, however, was not the only member of the aristocracy I met who had sold his honor and purchased a modicum of comfort and a degree of safety by spying on and betraying his friends. By far the most dangerous spies in Moscow were those recruited from the upper classes.

_Potatoes a Delicacy._

The meals at No. 10, which is one of the best guest houses in the city, consisted of tea and black bread and butter or cheese for breakfast; water soup, decorated with particles of vegetables and kasha, or occasionally rice, for dinner, and black bread and again kasha for supper. On rare occasions we were given as a special delicacy boiled potatoes sprinkled with minute portions of meat. As the meat had invariably been a long time dead we found it advisable to remove it before eating the potatoes.