Already in treating of the agricultural question we have seen from examples quoted that, through the policy applied by the Communist Party and the situation resulting therefrom, the area of cultivated land has diminished. At the VIII. All-Russian Soviet Congress interesting proofs of this were added. In industry it is not much better. Of the 1,191 metal works in Russia only 300 are running. Only 20% of the pig iron of peace production is being worked. The food stuffs industry has also gone down considerably. In a steam mill in Samara there were before the war 18,000 pud of flour milled per day, but now only 5,000-6,000 pud. In the whole Samara gouvernement there were 60 million pud grain produced before the war, but now only 20 million pud. These figures show an extra-ordinary decrease of production, to which we may seek the causes where we will.
The Home Workers and Their Co-operative Societies or
Artels
Besides the nationalized establishments which are managed by the Supreme Council of National Economy, the structure and functions of which we have already considered, there is a second kind of socialized production. These are the joint labor societies of Russian peasants and independent home workers, whicn are called artels. The ku&tar is an industrial home worker, a poor peasant or a small artisan. These small people band together in a joint labor society, buy their products in common and deliver their finished products to their societies. This society or artel takes over the selling of the products and supplies the artisan at the same time with raw material and working tools.
As this society in no way can be considered a capitalist company but purely as a banding together of voluntarily working individuals, the bolshevik government has been unable to destroy these joint labor groups. Peter Kropotkin takes a friendly position towards these labor societies and wrote for their paper, at the time I was in Russia, several articles and letters for their congress. These joint labor societies are no exploiting organizations, but during the czarist period they had to suffer from oppression by the big capitalists just as the factory workers did. Now they are also hit by the compulsory policy of the Soviet government* Thus, in Moscow, the central of all the artels was dissolved, and when I visited it, it was just in the stage of liquidation.
But a number of artels still have their joint organizations. [n the Moscow society 98 shops were enrolled. Affiliation to the irtel is done by the family. A total of about 9,000 families are enrolled in the artels. They make a total of 24,000 productive workers. Among these are 700-800 larger shops. All sorts of aandicrafts are represented in these artels. The product consists pf leather goods, saddles, boots, furniture, combs, brushes, toys, jewelry, textile goods, metal goods, papier-mache goods, wagons, leds, valises, school material, books and similar goods. For the present the Soviet government is delivering raw materials to the artels, at least to a limited extent. The society supplies, for intance, lumber to the cabinet makers and distributes it to the ifferent shops. Payment to the different shops differs in nature, ome have their finished articles sold by the society for their acount, others arrange to have wages paid them and turn the sellng over to the society without reservations. This latter is the ase in some of the larger shops. The members of the same get wage of from 100 to 1,000 rubles daily. But in paying the wages t is taken into consideration whether the member has property r is poor. Thus, to cite examples, the owners of a little farm are aid >a little less than those who have nothing. By this means it s sought to bridge over the inequalities of wealth. In the gouvrnement of Moscow there are many peasants who are members f this artel society.