The Crisis in Russia | Page 9

to keep its strength for lack
of food, unable to earn a livelihood for lack of materials, and so unable
to make good by imports from abroad the failure of productivity at
home ."
Russia is an emphasized engraving, in which every line of that picture
is bitten in with repeated washes of acid. Several new lines, however,
are added to the drawing, for in Russia the processes at work elsewhere
have gone further than in the rest of Europe, and it is possible to see
dimly, in faint outline, the new stage of decay which is threatened. The
struggle to arrest decay is the real crisis of the revolution, of Russia,
and, not impossibly, of Europe. For each country that develops to the
end in this direction is a country lost to the economic comity of Europe.
And, as one country follows another over the brink, so will the
remaining countries be faced by conditions of increasingly narrow
self-dependence, in fact by the very conditions which in Russia, so far,
have received their clearest, most forcible illustration.

THE SHORTAGE OF MEN

In the preceding chapter I wrote of Russia's many wants, and of the
processes visibly at work, tending to make her condition worse and not
better. But I wrote of things, not of people. I wrote of the shortage of
this and of that, but not of the most serious of all shortages, which,

while itself largely due to those already discussed, daily intensifies
them, and points the way to that further stage of decay which is
threatened in the near future in Russia, and, in the more distant future
in Europe. I did not write of the shortage deterioration of labor.
Shortage of labor is not peculiar to Russia. It is among the postwar
phenomena common to all countries. The war and its accompanying
eases have cost Europe, including Russia, an enormous number of
able-bodied men. Many millions of others have lost the habit of regular
work.German industrialists complain that they cannot get labor, and
that when they get it, it is not productive. I heard complaints on the
same subject in England. But just as the economic crisis, due in the first
instance to the war and the isolation it imposed, has gone further in
Russia than elsewhere, so the shortage of labor, at present a handicap,
an annoyance in more fortunate countries, is in Russia perhaps the
greatest of the national dangers. Shortage of labor cannot be measured
simply by the decreasing numbers of the workmen. If it takes two
workmen as long to do a particular job in 1920 as it took one man to do
it in 1914, then, even if the number of workman has remained the same,
the actual supply of labor has been halved. And in Russia the situation
is worse than that. For example, in the group of State metal-working
factories, those, in fact which may be considered as the weapon with
which Russia is trying to cut her way out of her transport difficulties,
apart from the fact that there were in 19l6 81,600 workmen, whereas in
1920 there are only 42,500, labor has deteriorated in the most appalling
manner. In 1916 in these factories 92 per cent. of the nominal working
hours were actually kept; in 1920 work goes on during only 60 per cent.
of the nominal hours. It is estimated that the labor of a single workman
produces now only one quarter of what it produced in 1916. To take
another example, also from workmen engaged in transport, that is to
say, in the most important of all work at the present time: in the
Moscow junction of the Moscow Kazan Railway, between November
1st and February 29th (1920), 292 workmen and clerks missed 12,048
working days, being absent, on in average, forty days per man in the
four months. In Moscow passenger-station on this line, 22 workmen
missed in November 106 days, in December 273, in January 338, and
in February 380; in an appalling
crescendo further illustrated by the wagon department, where 28

workmen missed in November 104 days and in February 500. In
November workmen absented themselves for single days. In February
the same workmen were absent for the greater part of the month. The
invariable excuse was illness. Many cases of illness there undoubtedly
were, since this period was the worst of the typhus epidemic, but
besides illness, and besides mere obvious idleness which no doubt
accounts for a certain proportion of illegitimate holidays, there is
another explanation which goes nearer the root of the matter. Much of
the time filched from the State was in all probability spent in
expeditions in search of food. In Petrograd, the Council of Public
Economy complain that there is a tendency to turn the