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How Much Bolshevism Is There in America?

By ARNO DOSCH-FLEUROT

(World European Staff Correspondent)

Who Has Lived for Years Under the Bolsheviki in Russia and Has Just Completed a Tour Over the United States Studying Social Unrest

The Dosch-Fleurot Articles Appeared in The World Jan. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

Also a Series of Articles Entitled:

“Russia From the Inside”

By HECTOR BOON.

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

Published by

New York, January, 1921

The Hector Boon Articles Appeared in The World Jan. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

COPYRIGHT, 1921,

PRESS PUBLISHING CO.

(NEW YORK WORLD)

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Mr. Dosch-Fleurot travelled about the country to see how much Bolshevism he could find. He has been trying to determine how much effect the social revolution in Europe has had upon America. Returning to New York, he has written five articles:

In No. 1 he contrasts the industrial situation in this rich country to the war-impoverished countries of Europe.

In No. 2 he tells how much Bolshevism he found and how much he did not find.

In No. 3 he gives a new picture of what the industrial unrest in America is and explains the efforts to organize labor industrially instead of in trades.

No. 4 goes into the question of industrial peace and how it can be reached by “industrial councils.”

No. 5 shows how the farmers’ organizations are succeeding in doing what the “proletariat” has not been able to do in the way of organizing industrial unions.

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ARNO DOSCH-FLEUROT

Mr. Dosch-Fleurot needs no introduction to the American public. He may be called an expert on Bolshevism, as he was the only American correspondent in Petrograd when the revolution broke out in March, 1917, against the Imperial Government. He remained throughout the Lenine-Trotzky revolution until the dictatorship of the proletariat was firmly established in the fall of 1918. In addition to this remarkable experience, he reported for The World the first vital six months of the German revolution, when the Spartacists attempted repeatedly to upset the Ebert-Noske Government. His careful and faithful studies of social conditions abroad during the period of the war, travelling in Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Greece, the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, France and Great Britain, have been features of The World’s news for the past two years.

Mr. Dosch-Fleurot recently has been appointed The World’s chief correspondent for Germany and Central Europe, with headquarters in Berlin. His despatches will be regular features of The World.

❧

AMERICA’S WAR-BORN WEALTH INSURANCE AGAINST SPREAD OF BOLSHEVIST TAINT HERE

Study of Conditions in Various Sections of the United States, From the Point of View of Europe, Convinces Arno Dosch-Fleurot That Same Problems of Unrest Do Not Affect Our Workmen and Ground Is Not Fertile for Insurrection—Prosperity of Workingmen Cause for Thanksgiving Rather Than Complaint.

The biggest questions in industrial, social, political and economic life in America are:

Is Bolshevism finding root here?

Is America facing a political revolution?

Are we tainted by the vast social unrest now so characteristic of England, of all Europe, as well as Asia?

What impulses common to those countries are to be found in our labor structure?

In an effort to throw light an these vital matters, The World brought Arno Dosch-Fleurot back from Europe, where he has been the last four years, to make an investigation. The results of his extensive inquiry, covering the past three months, during which he has visited those centres of activity from which he could best obtain first hand information, are set forth in five articles.

By Arno Dosch-Fleurot.

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

For the past three years I have been living in the midst of the social revolution in Europe. A great deal of it has been active revolution, with the machine guns in the streets. During this time I have often wondered how much of this unrest was being communicated to America or how much we were developing here on our own account.

Looking at America from the point of view of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, I have wanted to know—

First—How the Bolshevik revolution in Russia affected America.

Second—Whether the class war into which the World War developed had hit America too.

Third—How the United States was readjusting itself to the inevitable social changes.

At the time the Bolsheviki seized the power in Russia, we Americans who were there used to say to one another as we discussed the industrial and social problems that faced the world, “At home we are going to work this thing out another way.”

Are We Working Out the Problems in Another Way?

For several weeks I have been able to search for the answers to my own questions. I have been going about the United States studying the social and industrial unrest. To some of my questions I have answers which are satisfactory, at least to myself. Behind others I must still leave interrogation points. In addition I have seen things I had not thought of, some of them tranquilizing, others disquieting.

In this and the succeeding articles I shall give my impressions of the unrest in America and its significance from my point of view.

In the first place, I am overwhelmed by our wealth. I had been away long enough to forget how rich we were, and we have in the mean while grown much richer. That fact is of prime importance. Being rich, there is not the gruelling struggle for existence that makes the problems of unrest in Europe dangerous. It eases off enormously on whatever strain there might otherwise be.

Everywhere I turn, in every city, every street, every shop, every home, there is so much wealth it is hard to believe. After Europe one would be inclined to say we are disgustingly rich, if the new-wealth, in spite of the war fortunes, were not so widely distributed. I hear people complain that workmen have been making so much money they have been buying themselves $10 silk shirts and their wives are wearing $50 hats.

It does not seem to me a cause for complaint. Rather it would appear to be cause for thanksgiving that such things can be. I have myself seen factory workmen, men who make their living with their hands, men who belong to unions, going to work in their own automobiles. I should like to tell that to some workmen of my acquaintance in Moscow.

Wealth Obscures Depression.

Even though the country is going through an industrial depression there is so much money about that a casual traveller would not know it.

In Detroit, where 150,000 factory workmen have been laid off, it is interesting to see how little difference it has made in the daily life of this city of a million. Half the families in the city are affected, but they have money and go on spending it. I could not believe so many people could be out of work without evident sign of suffering somewhere, but I spent half a day unsuccessfully trying to find a soup kitchen or a bread line in Detroit.

Yes, we are rich, and that has spared us much. But with wealth have come pride and intolerance. I was in a measure prepared for this, but I did not expect to find it generally accepted as right and proper.

George Russell, the Irish writer, said to me just before I came home: “War is an exchange of characteristics. You have been fighting Prussians. You may find America full of Prussianism.”

I should have thought our sense of liberty were proof against contamination, but apparently not. As the first sign of Prussianism we seem to have curtailed free speech. In a dozen cities where I have been a man need only get on a soap-box and he will land in jail. The corner orators who used to act as safety valves for over-heated brains don’t dare show themselves. Men have gone to jail for reading sections from the Declaration of Independence. I admit they did it with mocking or malicious intent, but what of it? Since when, has the democracy of America grown so weak it needs policemen to protect it? In the West a man need only carry an I. W. W. card in his pocket to get arrested. They say in Seattle, “The Red Squad has driven the cards into the shoes.” There are 3,000 “Reds” in jail for various causes. The most important ones are serving long prison sentences.

There seems to be a common impression that the Imprisonment of “Reds” is suppressing Bolshevism in the United States. My observations lead me to the belief the only chance of revolution, and that not immediate, might come from continuing to keep these men in prison. Those who are under prison sentence were convicted under the extraordinary conditions developed by war. These extraordinary conditions no longer exist, but these men are still under sentence. The longer they stay in prison the stronger grows the resentment at their imprisonment. I find an undercurrent of bitterness, not very wide but deep, that can breed trouble. The small minority that is thinking about revolution is thinking about it hard. If these so-called revolutionists were turned loose without further ado, under a general amnesty, it would ease off on that hard thinking and would be helpful to the liberal movement in industry that is trying to “work this thing out another way.”

The same spirit in the country which is backing the red squads of the police seems to be actuating a Nation-wide, open-shop campaign. Men with any liberalism at all—and there are liberals managing great industries—are not in favor of either. They do not want the closed shop, but the ruthless way many employers’ associations and groups of associated industries are trying to use the present reaction as well as the existing depression to “break the back of labor” is regarded by them as the madness of power and wealth.

I find only two groups of rebels against democracy who view with favor this knock-down-and-drag-out fight for the open shop. I might call them roughly Bolshevik employers and Bolshevik employees.

As I travelled about the country I found that the active advocates of the open shop frequently referred to it as “the American plan.” The employers’ association which is pushing it also has a way of ostentatiously flying the Stars and Stripes. This is particularly noticeable in the mining communities where there are large bodies of foreign laborers. At first I could not understand how one group of Americans came to have the temerity to arrogate to themselves the word “American.” Then I discovered it was a survival of the war period. In fighting the Prussian we have adopted some of the Prussian’s disagreeable characteristics. The war is over, but we have licked militarist blood. What surprises me most is how few people recognize the danger of it. The phrase “American plan” has been allowed to stand without protest, though it practically says to union men who are just as good Americans as the members of employers’ associations that they are not Americans if they persist in their union ideas. It is not difficult to imagine how this is misused in the daily contact between workman and boss. It cannot help but do harm.

In Butte I was walking along the street with some labor leaders, bound for their headquarters. Thinking we had reached it, I started to turn into a building over which the Stars and Stripes were flying. “That’s not it,” said one of them. “Don’t you see the flag of the American plan?”

No Serious Bolshevism Here.

And yet there is no serious Bolshevism in the United States, I have been looking for it, and I have not been able to trace a consistent effort at a Bolshevik movement. There are no doubt enough people who believe in Bolshevism who would like to start a Bolshevik movement—but they have not been able to do it. At least they have not succeeded in starting it among wage-paid workmen, and there is no other place to start it.

There is, however, something which is called Bolshevism, and, as it is also rebellious against the existing order of society, it has been labelled Bolshevik, but it is really something different. I refer to the rather crude and unscientific but active, anarcho-syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The two have been confused even by some of the leaders of the I. W. W., so it is not surprising that the general public, not to mention the Red squads of the police, have not always been able to make the distinction; but the difference is there and is of sufficient importance to prevent the growth of Bolshevism.

Bolshevism, by which is ment the idea that lies behind the Bolshevik Government in Moscow, is a long way from the One Big Union—the effective idea behind the I. W. W. Bolshevism has proved to be state Socialism in action. The I. W. W. is anarcho-syndicalism trying to make headway in industry.

But even the I. W. W. is not getting anywhere. It may some day, because it has a broader philosophy than Bolshevism behind it and because it is aiding in the movement toward industrial unionism, which is making some headway. But as an immediate revolutionary movement the I. W. W. is powerless before the powerful forces that oppose it.

Chief of these is the American Federation of Labor. The I. W. W. has never even had a chance to play a serious role in the United States because the A. F. of L. has fought it consistently since its inception fifteen years ago.

Industrial unionism, when revolutionary in purpose, even when developed apart from the I. W. W., has met the same opposition. If there had been no system of craft unionism in this country there might have been industrial unionism in this country long ago. Certainly the I. W. W. would have had a much freer hand. In that case the employers of the United States would, like the employers of Europe, have been faced with labor syndicates instead of labor unions, and that is a very different story.

In Europe labor leaders look upon the American Federation of Labor as almost a part of the capitalist system. Rumors that the big American industrials were trying to break the power of the A. F. of L. had come to Europe before I left and it could hardly be credited. The syndicalist labor leaders could not understand why the American manufacturers were fighting their ally.

Since I have been travelling about the United States I have also found many employers of labor who can also not understand why there is this vicious open-shop campaign. The industrial manager of one of the greatest industries in the world said to me hotly:

“If Judge Gary and Wall Street knew what they were leading to they would stop this anti-union campaign. They are trying to break down the conservative American Federation of Labor. If they succeed in destroying the power of Gompers they will remove the only barrier that stands between us and a real revolutionary labor movement, industrial unionism.”

Just how revolutionary industrial unionism is I shall examine later on, but it is certainly much more revolutionary than the A. F. of L. And as the craft unions of the A. F. of L. find it increasingly harder to breathe under the smothering process that is going on under the “American plan,” the industrial unions find a freer field to work in. The revolutionists of America, such as they are, could ask nothing better than the carrying of the open-shop campaign to its most ruthless finish.

Right now the enemies of union labor of any kind can do about what they please. There are plenty of men looking for work and they can break almost any strike that might be declared. Union men and I. W. W. leaders alike are sitting tight and are trying to save what they can to go on with when the fight is over. They are not afraid of being done in forever. They know this period of depression will pass, and, even if meanwhile the open-shop campaign were carried to the point where every union in the country were killed off, the union movement would spring up again. Next time, however, they believe it might take the more revolutionary form of industrial unionism.

LITTLE OF BOLSHEVISM FOUND IN I. W. W., MOST RADICAL OF AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENTS

By Arno Dosch-Fleurot.

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

The most radical labor movement in the United States, the one that makes the most to-do over its revolutionary programme, is the I. W. W. Whatever there may be of revolutionary tendency in America is in the I. W. W., or closely affiliated. But looking at America from the point of view of Europe, if that is all we have produced in the way of revolutionary material we are certainly in no immediate danger of becoming a “Soviet republic.”

The I. W. W. is popularly considered Bolshevik, and has thus been advertised by the attacks the police have made upon it. There have also been “criminal Syndicalist” laws passed against it which have enhanced its importance. But an examination of what it is does not give cause for serious alarm.

The I. W. W. has never been able to boast of much of a membership, and it has barely enough members now to keep it alive. During the past few weeks I have taken a fairly close look at the I. W. W., or what I could find of it, and I should say it is more of a purpose, more of a labor philosophy, than a movement. It is out for One Big Union, but it has not even one small union that stays put.

Provided Organization of Labor Where No Other Union Could

It has provided a chance for organization when there was no other union to do it. It went into the woods and the harvest fields and organized the migratory workers. It had a free and easy way of organizing, and they were free and easy men. In the woods it acquired some permanency. The loggers of Oregon, Washington and Idaho are about the only active members it has. The important consideration is how much revolution did it instil into them? According to my observations, very little.

The loggers were told about the preamble of the I. W. W., the theme of which lies in its first words: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” With those sentiments the loggers were in hearty accord. They knew better than the I. W. W. organizers how true it was in the woods. They wanted better camp conditions. The I. W. W. gave them a chance for organized protest, so they joined. They are frontiersmen with the virtues of the frontier; they stand by their friends. So they stand by the I. W. W. But to say they become class-conscious revolutionists is absurd.

The leadership at the I. W. W. has syndicalist purpose, but its membership is merely looking for better working conditions. The average man who joins the I. W. W. would as willingly join a union that had less to say about revolution if it were there. The I. W. W., like the Salvation Army, works where more bourgeois organizations fail. At the I. W. W. headquarters in Chicago is turned out a varied supply of I. W. W. reading matter, but you do not see workers pouring over it. They glance at occasional pamphlets, but they do not bother themselves with the anarcho-syndicalist theories. Some few harvest workers have tried sabotage, and that is about the most serious charge against the I. W. W.

No Consistent Idea.

Out of the scores of leaflets and pamphlets they can get no consistent revolutionary idea. They are a confusion of syndicalism, anarchy, Socialism, Communism and Bolshevism. That is inevitable, as the writers, not always very thoroughly informed, have tried to adapt their individual conceptions of the various social revolutionary movements in Europe to American conditions. The I. W. W., being the one outstanding revolutionary movement, has drawn to it so many different types of revolutionists they have mutually destroyed each other’s theories.

The Bolshevists in the I. W. W. have recently had a serious jolt. They tried, without success, to induce the loggers to support the Third Internationale, the propaganda body of the Bolshevik Government in Moscow. They told the loggers that, as part of the proletariat, they should give their indorsement to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the organization of the world revolution from Moscow.

The loggers are not very long on political ideas, but they wanted to know about it first. So the editor of the Northwest Industrial Worker, one of the I. W. W.’s most important publications, explained it. He is himself a syndicalist and no Bolshevist. Moreover, he lives in Seattle and knows the loggers are not to be turned into rubber stamp revolutionists by the propaganda of the Lenine-Zinovieff school. So in the Northwest Industrial Worker for Oct. 20 he printed the following editorial:

‘What about the Russian Workers:’

“A vote for the indorsement of the Third Internationale by the members of the Industrial Workers of the World means a vote indorsing the actions of the small political group which now holds Russia under its rule, the Communist Party. There should be no doubt in the minds of members as to that fact. If the vote for indorsement carries, members should realize that we shall have indorsed a political state that is not only upheld by bayonets but which has sent conquering armies to invade other countries.

“It is unfortunate that members of the I. W. W. have never received any accurate information as to the actual condition of the workers of Russia. We have heard many generalizations as to the conditions of the Russian people, singing the praises of the Soviet Government. But have members of the I. W. W. ever heard a report made by industrial unionists or by syndicalists containing reliable information upon the following matter?”

Questions Are Asked.

“Are the workers of Russia permitted by the Government to organize upon their own lines without interference?

“Are the workers of Russia permitted to freely travel through the interior looking for employment?

“What percentage of the workers in the large industrial sections are organized, and upon what basis?

“Are workers permitted to maintain their own press without governmental interference?

“Until the members of the I. W. W. have information upon these and many other matters they are voting in the dark upon something of which they know nothing. They have a right to know whether Soviet Russia is a ‘working-class government.’ Communist Party propaganda will not afford satisfactory answers to these queries.

“We are endeavoring to get enlightenment upon such matters at first hand, and have already secured some information, but we realize that we have no right to influence, or attempt to influence, the vote upon a referendum which is pending. We want the truth about affairs in Russia. We are interested in the Russian workers more than we are interested in anything pertaining to that country.”

Absurdity of Label.

I have reproduced this editorial in full partly to show the absurdity of simply labelling the I. W. W. movement Bolshevik and letting it go at that. Also, I have never seen an abler editorial against Bolshevism. And this, mind you, was published in the most important organ of the I. W. W.

There were people in the I. W. W. movement who did not like it, and they brought pressure to bear to remove the editor, J. C. Kane, from his editorial chair. But the loggers read the editorial and liked it. They would probably never have read it if there had not been a fuss raised; but, at any rate, they did read it, and approved. Then they heard that the editor had been fired and they got a little “mass action” into play and put him back. And they did not indorse the Third Internationale.

That is a long way from Bolshevism. Nothing like that could happen in Russia. As an incident it is symptomatic. It shows the members of the movement insist on running it according to their individual will. In other words it is not a Bolshevik movement directed by a highly centralized labor autocracy. It is rather an anarcho-syndicalist movement bossed from the “job.”

Is “Job-Controlled.”

The Bolshevik-minded within the I. W. W. do not really belong there. The I. W. W. happens to be the most radical band wagon and they have climbed on. Incidents such as I have just quoted show them where they get off. The men who understand better the I. W. W. movement know it must be based on “job control.” Every time it has ever done anything it has been a case of “job control”—in other words, the men on the job decided what they were going to do. Their successful strikes in the woods the summer of 1917 were, for instance, declared in the camps.

In the I. W. W. dogmatic concepts do not get far. Revolutionary phrases take on new meanings and disconcert their originators. The phrase “direct action,” for example, is well understood in the revolutionary patter to mean direct revolutionary action to put a workers’ dictatorship into governmental power. But it does not mean that in the logging camps. It means direct action by the camp crew and not action according to the decision of the I. W. W. headquarters.

Are Fundamental Democrats.

Fundamentally the I. W. W. members are democrats like the rest of us. They have no far political vision, and they wish to ameliorate the condition in life of workingmen, but they could be trusted in the final analysis not to follow any doctrinaire revolutionist who had thought it all out for them and told them to come along. Lenine could do that with the Russian workers. But no one could do it with American workers. And the membership of the I. W. W., particularly in the woods, is largely American.

The I. W. W. has its ups and downs, and just now it is down. But it will not go out of existence and disappear because it stands for an idea, industrial unionism. There are other labor organizations, such as the Automobile Workers, which also stand for industrial unionism, but the I. W. W. has proclaimed it loudest, though it has perhaps done less effective organizing than some of the others.

Industrial unionism is essentially inimical to the craft unionism upon which the American Federation of Labor is built. The individual unions in the A. F. of L. could unite along industrial lines, and some have, but the results have not been sufficiently striking to remove from the I. W. W. further excuse for existence.

Not Essentially Revolutionary.

There is nothing essentially revolutionary in industrial unionism, though the I. W. W. tries to make it so, concluding its well known preamble with the sentence: “By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” But that is largely rhetoric. In the body of the preamble is written: “We find that the centring of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class.” All industrial unionists are of this point of view. Their position was well described to me by William A. Logan, President of the Automobile Workers, who is not a member of the I. W. W.

“Industrial unionism is no one’s invention,” he said. “It naturally follows the combination of manufacturers in an industry. Manufacturers absorb industries which furnish them, so labor does the same thing. The combinations of industries in large plants has so highly specialized the work that no one workman need be a rounded mechanic. Men can also be shifted easily from one machine to another. Common and semi-skilled labor has almost entirely taken the place of skilled labor in industry. I used to be an auto-fitter. There is now no such job. The manufacture of even such a finished article as an automobile has been specialized to a point where one man need know very little. He may have merely to start a nut. So all the men in the industry are on the same footing. There is no longer point in splitting them into crafts. The logical way to organize them is industrially.”

Merely New to United States.

That is all there is to industrial unionism. It is comparatively new to America, but it is an old story in Europe. To organize industrially is just as democratic as to organize by crafts. It all depends upon what is done with the organization once it is formed. Industrial unionism only becomes revolutionarily syndicalistic when a union of industrial unions announces it is going to take over the Government in the name of its syndicalist workers.

The I. W. W. says, “The army of production must be organized not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown.”

The less revolutionary automobile workers, whose correct title is United Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers of America, say more conservatively: “We know that the workers will never know how to manage the State if they should gain that responsibility through political action, until they learn how to act collectively in getting some of their immediate needs satisfied.”

Nothing to Fear.

The I. W. W. foresees the uniting of all the different industrial unions in one big union. It says, “One union—one label—one enemy.” The automobile workers say more modestly, “One union, one industry.”

So the industrial union may, or may not, be used with revolutionary intent. Of itself it is nothing to be afraid of.

Practically industrial unionism has between it and success what even the comparatively mild automobile workers refer to as the power of “Czar Gompers and his Grand Dukes.”

Theoretically the A. F. of L. is not opposed to industrial unionism. Any of the crafts may join forces. But practically the A. F. of L. machine prevents it.

“PROLETARIAT OF AMERICA” JUST GOES AND GETS JOB, WORLD INVESTIGATOR FINDS

By Arno Dosch-Fleurot.

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

At Akron, O., where the rubber industry swelled to enormous proportions in the last few years, business dropped like a skyrocket recently and there were reports of tens of thousands of men thrown out of work. So I went to Akron to see how great were the sufferings of the “proletariat.”

Here, at least, I thought I should find a mass of unskilled labor and a proletarian class consciousness such as I have been in the habit of associating with big industry in Europe.

I found Akron pretty well shut down, but there was no proletariat about. There were no bread lines, no soup kitchens. Still there was no question but that there were some 50,000 fewer men working in the small city than there had been a short time before. Where were they?

They had gone home. They had acquired no stake in Akron. Most of them were from West Virginia. They were migratory workers, and when they were not wanted conveniently disappeared. They went to other towns, other industries, back to the land. Broadly they were a migratory class, but they had no consciousness of class. To-day they were seeking the highest pay in the factories, to-morrow they will be tilling the soil. To a would-be proletarian leader they must be exasperatingly elusive.

I found the manufacturers of Akron deeply grateful to them. They came when they were wanted and took themselves away when they were no longer wanted. Without them it would have been impossible to build industries so rapidly to meet the demands of a day, and if they did not take themselves off when the slump came they would create a disagreeable responsibility for the manufacturer who got them together. It is a situation that is purely American and would leave bewildered any one who tried to fix European ideas of industrial organization upon American institutions.

No Upheaval When Labor Turnover Makes Jobs Vacant

At the plant of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron I was told that the plant had been reduced from 30,000 men to 6,000 men in less than six months without turning men off wholesale. The labor turnover did the trick. The plant stopped taking on new men several months ago, when it began to look as if the strong demand for tires was not going to hold. Each week thereafter some of the migratory workers left. Normally they would have been replaced by new migratory workers who presented themselves for jobs, but in this way each week the payroll decreased automatically. Week after week the usual number of men called for their time and struck out, some because it was summer and their native mountains called them, some to wander further afield into other industrial towns. This went on all summer and fall and when, in November, it became necessary, the management thought, to curtail production sharply there were only 14,000 instead of 30,000 in the plant. The rest had disappeared in the normal labor turnover. In the other rubber plants in Akron the same process went on, so it was not a case of turning tens of thousands of men into the streets when the real slump came.

Much the same thing happened in Detroit. Last year it had more than 100,000 more people than it could properly house. These people had been drawn into Detroit by the high wages. Handy men with intelligence were getting $15 to $30 and more a day. Then came the slump in the automobile market. Beginning last May, the demand for labor in Detroit began to decrease, factories took on fewer men, but the city did not become crowded with idle men. For a certain number took their time each week and moved on. The overpopulation began to disappear. Detroit as a working man’s bonanza was working out. Coming eastward in November from the Pacific Coast, I encountered everywhere men with a few hundred dollars in their pockets, “easy money,” made in Detroit, looking now for something else. By the time I reached Detroit I found the factories had 150,000 less workmen than they had four months before and there was no idle “proletariat” standing about.

Not Possible in Europe.

It is only in wonderfully rich America such things can happen. Here alone we dare organize industry on this bonanza scale. In Europe the big industrials know that if they build in this rapid fashion they must be prepared for the slump. The soil will not reabsorb the migratory workers as it has done for Akron and Detroit. In Europe the workers belong to a proletariat divorced from the soil, descendants of a long line of workmen. They are also class conscious and they do not conveniently disappear in the labor turnover.

Thanks to the different state of affairs in America the present readjustment in the country is going on with little difficulty from the side of labor. In Europe, where there is a process of social revolution, there can be no thought of a readjustment of any kind without first finding out what effect it is going to have on the working classes. But here there is no proletariat, no hard and fast working classes, hence no class consciousness.

I have found recently in my travels about the country that all kinds of people are agreed that prices, rents, wages, everything must come down to somewhere near what they were. Before talking to labor leaders I find the same reasonableness. This would be impossible if there were any sentiment for class war.

Now is the time to test how much of the social turmoil in Europe has been communicated to us. Flush times are passing and whatever discontent there is is sure to show itself. I may be looking for something too precise, but I do not find it. There is the usual discontent over the struggle for existence, but it is not class conscious, as the phrase is used in revolutionary circles abroad. The situation has not even increased the following of the I. W. W. or of the industrial union movement. It would seem like a propitious moment to make a drive, a campaign of instruction, in the effort to convince workmen that industrial unionism is their way to economic freedom. But I see very small signs of such activity.

In Eastern Europe in its present frame of mind a readjustment could not take place without workmen seizing rifles and machine guns and making armed demands. Such doings are not in the American picture.

Workers Are Not Organized.

One reason may be that the portion of the working classes most hit is not organized. Craft unionism has not kept pace with the growth of industry. The important centres of diversified industry, as well as what the Germans call the heavy industries, are not unionized. In the Pittsburgh district there are approximately 400,000 workmen and whatever organization exists among them is too small to count. No big manufacturing centre in America is now union. Chicago, for instance, is industrially open shop. So is Detroit or any other city where industry has had rapid growth. It amused me in asking about the open-shop movement to see the eagerness with which I always was informed that the open-shop principle had always maintained in whatever community I might be asking about.

The truth is, of course, that the big industries have been able to prevent unionizing by keeping a steady flow of immigrants coming into the country and they were clever enough to take them from the farms in Europe, so they did not bring any class consciousness with them. Ever since the famous Homestead strikes the steel industry has been non-union. It was only when the flow of immigrants was dammed by the war that a chance to unionize it came. It was then that John Fitzpatrick and William Z. Foster began. But they tried out organizing industrially first in the Chicago stockyards, and the steel manufacturers watched them from afar, so, as one steel man said to me in Pittsburgh, “We saw them coming and we were ready for them.”

What struck me as an interesting comment on the unionizing of factory workers was made to me in Detroit by Mr. C. M. Culver, director of the Employers’ Association, an institution which handles the labor problem for its members. He said:

“When employers do not combine to hold down wages, unionism does not grow. When employers are competing for workmen, as they have been doing here in Detroit, when they are too busy turning out machines, when the inventive minds are just boiling and the native American genius is concentrated on getting results, men do not join unions.”

Unionism certainly made very little headway in Detroit. The A. F. of L. played a very small role there and the automobile workers had succeeded in enrolling less than one-twentieth of the men who were eligible to this industrial union. It is significant, however, that the automobile workers, even with their small membership, have their importance in the industry, and the manufacturers consider their growth alone a possible menace. It shows the power that would pass into the hands of the factory worker if industrial unionism ever gets a hold on American industry.

In Detroit the percentage of foreign or foreign-born among the workers is about 70 per cent. In Pittsburgh it is even higher. Manufacturers in both places say they do not fear labor organization as long as this percentage persists. Labor organizations built among the foreign workers do not last. They can be organized quickly, as William Z. Foster found when he organized the steel strike in 1919. They give their money freely and enthusiastically for organization, but they expect quick results and do not stand up under adversity. I have just passed through the steel region in Ohio and Pittsburgh where Foster organized most successfully a year ago and there is hardly a trace of his work to be found. With difficulty I found the emaciated skeletons of the flourishing unions Foster developed in a few months.

After visiting the steel towns and the modern factory cities I agree with the I. W. W. that American industry is not organized. Labor, as distinguished from industry, is organized, but the factories, with their hundreds of thousands—added together, their millions—of unskilled and semi-skilled labor, are quite unorganized. The A. F. of L. has not interested itself in them, and the I. W. W. has tried to do it on so pretentiously revolutionary a scale that it has not succeeded. The field is open. The American field of industry is practically unhampered by the prejudices or the hard conditions of Europe. The European-trained agitators have sown the American industrial field time and again with their European-born ideas, but they have not yielded a crop.

There are, broadly, two kinds of employers in American industry. There is the “catch ’em young, treat ’em rough and learn ’em nothing” kind which is loud in support of “property rights” and is backing the ruthless open-shop “American plan.” The steel, coal and copper industries, the heavy industries, are dominated by this spirit even at this late date. To them labor has no rights. It is enough to make a Bolshevik out of any workman who comes in contact with them. Take Butte, where the Anaconda Copper Company rules. If a miner comes to Butte he must go through the copper company’s passport bureau before he can even apply for a job. If he succeeds in getting a “rustling card,” a sort of passport bearing a description of him, he can seek work at the mines. If he is a member of a union that is not in favor, he has to lie about it and say he is not or he does not get a “rustling card.” This is industrial feudalism, and there is no calling it by another name. I was in the office of the Bulletin, the labor paper published in Butte, and I noticed half a dozen rifles in the corner of the plant. “Have you got a Red Guard?” I asked. “No, but the company has a White Guard,” was the answer; “we have to protect ourselves, especially around election.”

Efforts to Solve Problem.

Combating this spirit there is a type of American employer who realizes he has a responsibility toward the men he gathers together in his factories. He comes nearer representing the modern spirit in American industry. He usually begins with some patronizing welfare work, but ends up with whole-hearted co-operation. Men of this type see the gulf between capital and labor, and instead of trying to widen it and perpetuate industrial strife like the leaders in the heavy industries they are throwing out flying bridges across the gulf. They are trying to establish a decent human relationship between employer and employee and give the lie to the I. W. W. preamble that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”

The men who are making these attempts are fairly sane and do not think they are “solving the labor problem.” They are trying to re-establish in modern industry the touch that was lost between the master mechanic and the journeyman mechanic when they stopped working over the same bench. Some are having a real success. Others cannot make it go. It depends upon the amount of sincerity in the undertaking. But there are some 700 plants in America being run on this voluntary “industrial conference” system. They do not pretend to be throwing more than a flying bridge across the gulf, but they may have some permanency. At any rate, it is the most interesting experiment in American industry. If it succeeds it will establish new standards in industry and we shall be able to say that America has succeeded in working out another way the industrial problem that has led to the social revolution in Europe.

INDUSTRIAL COUNCILS SHOW EMPLOYER AND WORKER WAY TO REAL PEACE AT HOME

By Arno Dosch-Fleurot.

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

There is a way to peace, at least comparative peace, in industry. The warfare that is forever being carried on through the open shop, the closed shop, the strike and the lockout, is coming to be considered just as uncivilized as any other form of warfare. All that is considered necessary is the give-and-take of “industrial councils.”

The idea is being worked out in one way in England and in another way here. The English have had to come to it, forced by the fact that their factory workers are organized in industrial unions. Here it is voluntary, for the industrial workers are not organized in America. The British factory workers are organized because they are all, or nearly all, British. The American factory workers are largely foreign. In England it is a question of Englishmen dealing with Englishmen. Here it is Americans dealing with foreigners.

The British have tried to get down to a uniform system or “industrial conference,” known as the Whitley system. There it is an even game, with organization and intelligent leadership on both sides. Here the homogeneous leadership is all on one side. The industrial workers are at such a disadvantage, in the fact of their not being all Americans, that they cannot get together and hold together, like the workers of England, France, Belgium or Germany, where industrial unionism is already traditional.

American Employee Has Powers Which Boss Thinks Best for Him

The American situation is peculiar to itself. It can only be approached from one point of view, that of the employer. The employee has only so much power as the employer may consider wise to yield him. This might not seem like a very successful starting point for an idea that is supposed to be leading to industrial peace, but at that it appears to be so doing. At any rate it is a very important move in the history of American industry, and, whatever it may be leading to, it is going to have a far-reaching effect.

It may, for one thing, put an end to unionism, or render it much less important. It is pretty sure to interfere with the organization of industrial unionism, which might prove to be the road to revolution. While union leaders in England favor the idea because they can approach it on an equality with the employers, in America, union leaders fear it. Instead of stabilizing unionism as it is doing in England, here it is choking unionism out.

“Chattel-slavery,” said John Fitzpatrick, President of the Chicago Federation of Labor, when I mentioned the industrial conference. “A way to get men into such a position of humble obedience that they belong body and soul to their employer.”

What the I. W. W. has to say against it is worse. It is, whatever may be the means, easing off on the social unrest, and the I. W. W. thrives on discontent.

Big Industries Independent.

On the other side the heavy industries, coal, steel and copper, refuse to have anything to do with it. The United States Steel Corporation has not even an industrial manager. Similar great industries in Europe cannot take so independent an attitude, but here it is obvious that neither now nor in the immediate future can the great masses of factory workers get together and force recognition. They will eventually, of course, if the situation demands, but they are, on account of their lack of organization, for the time being helpless.

This makes the American experiments in “industrial councils” the more interesting. While they have been motived often by an expensive strike that set employers to thinking, the actual development of the system comes from a sense of the practical. It is also growing rapidly enough to make it appear American industry may be soon dominated by the idea. A year and a half ago there were perhaps fifty concerns working with shop committees. Now there are at least 700, and there may be many more.

Impersonal Capital.

To give a list of the important concerns is like reading the Stock Exchange list, General Electric, Westinghouse, du Pont, General Motors, International Harvester. These are concerns of a similar type. Most of the money invested is from the outside, mere impersonal capital. The managements have grown up from within the plants. The labor is in much closer human relationship to the management than the capital. If capital earns big dividends it is satisfied, but the other two elements, management and labor, live and work together every day. Once an industrial council is established reuniting the management and the workshops, it is rarely let drop. It eases up the day to day difficulties. No matter what system is used the daily contact is certain to avoid some strikes. There are three systems, generally speaking, in vogue:

To organize the industrial councils on the same plan as the Federal Government, with Senate, House and President the employees elect the House, the Senate is made up of superintendents and the President and his managers are the Cabinet. This plan is popular in the textile trades. It keeps firm control in the hands of the management.

A second plan, which also keeps the control firmly in hand is arrived at by the management asking the employees in a factory to form a “shop committee,” which will recommend, but has no vote.

Third Plan Outlined.

The third plan, the one that best expresses the spirit of the movement, provides for a joint council with definite voting powers. This council usually handles everything relating to what goes on within the factories up to and including wages. It has nothing to do with the outside business, buying or selling, and, in the final analysis, does not settle the general scale of wages. But, within the factories, under these limitations, it comes to agreement about every detail, or there is an appeal to the manager or President of the company. Arbitration boards are even provided for, but that is hardly necessary, as the whole affair is only a domestic arrangement.

All these plans are mere devices for smoothing out the daily industrial life, and have nothing to do with large economic questions. But it is extraordinary how much trouble they avoid. When it comes to a showdown they can prevent neither strikes nor the lowering of wages. That is not their importance. They prevent the misunderstandings which grow out of the lack of human contact, and experience is beginning to show that most industrial trouble comes from minor considerations.

In one case an effort is being made to utilize the idea to a far greater extent. It has been brought into use to control a whole industry, lumber, in the Pacific Northwest. The movement has a peculiar history which needs to be explained.

Handling of Migratory Worker.

The lumber workers and loggers are mostly migratory. They had no unions to speak of until the I. W. W. began working among them during the war. It met with quick response and by the summer of 1917 was able to carry on a serious strike, which the Government had to settle, as fir and spruce were badly needed in the manufacture of ships and aeroplanes. With war on, it was impossible to use extraordinary repression and make unusual appeals. Gen. Brice P. Disque, who was in command, induced an agreement by which both the employers and the employees were to leave the settlement of all labor questions, including wages, to the Government. The men agreed not to strike.

The movement got a certain momentum while the war was on, and when the armistice came, it continued to function by agreement. Its very name, Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, indicates the circumstances behind it, but, nevertheless, it was found to be a workable arrangement. It controlled, and still controls, 75 per cent. of the lumber production in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. These three States, which produce half the lumber of the country, are divided into twelve districts, each with representatives from both the lumbermen and the loggers on an equal basis, and they settle all questions under the Chairmanship of Norman F. Coleman, President of the “Four L’s,” as the organization is called for short.

Such a body could hardly have been created without the unusual conditions of war, but its progress since is interesting. It has had to keep the good will of the loggers on a falling market.

First Crisis Is Avoided.

When I was in Oregon a few weeks ago, it had just weathered its first crisis. It was one of the principles of the organization that, regardless of the minimum wage, $4.40 per day, the “going wage” was to be determined “on the job.” In the Coos Bay District in Oregon, wages last May, June and July went to $5.30. On Aug. 1 the lumbermen asked to go back to $4.80. A district council of the “Four L’s” was held, the operators producing figures to show why wages must come down and the loggers showing the cost of living was too high to permit it. An agreement was reached by which the loggers agreed to increase production sufficiently to earn the extra 50 cents a day, and did it.

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.

“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.