WHEN THE WORKERS OWN THEIR TOOLS
John Stevens, head of the railroad commission sent to Russia from the
United States, has shown the Russian government how to increase its
transportation facilities sixty per cent. In a report made public in
mid-August Mr. Stevens said that the chief cause of the railroad crisis
was bad management. Locomotives traveled 2,800 versts a month when they
could be made to travel 5,000 versts. A verst is about three-quarters
of a mile. Twice as much freight as was being hauled could be carried,
said Mr. Stevens. Freight cars were constantly being sent out only
half loaded. Mr. Stevens recommended government dictatorship of all
railroads, both publicly and privately owned. That was rather naïve,
considering that the government was powerless to control, much less to
dictate to, any department of activity in the empire. A little earlier
Mr. Nekrassoff, then Minister of Ways and Communications, issued a
circular in which he outlined his plan for coping with the railroad
crisis. He advised turning the entire railroad system over to the
workmen, the engineers, firemen, conductors and machinists. A shriek of
protest went up from the engineering profession and a howl of laughter
arose from the press of Russia. But the fact of the matter is that the
railroads were and are still, for all practical purposes, in the hands
of the working people, and so is every other industry in Russia.
One of the great dreams of the socialists and philosophical anarchists
is of the day when the worker shall own his tools, as they put it, when
all industry shall be owned by the people who operate the machines, and
all profits shall be shared by them. It really is a great dream, and
will probably be realized in some measure some day. But not now. The
human race is not yet educated to such a Utopia. The strongest proof
that the capitalistic system is not yet ready to pass is the well-known
fact that the secret ambition of almost every human being in every walk
of life is to become a capitalist, large or small. This has just been
proved on an enormous scale in Russia. The workers have seized the
factories, shops, department stores and offices, and in no instance of
which I could learn, and I searched diligently, have they used their
great opportunity wisely or unselfishly for the common good. They have
used it to get all the money possible out of the employers and to
render back the minimum of service.
This is what is the matter with the transportation system in Russia.
It is the reason why the people of Petrograd, Moscow and other cities
will go cold and hungry this winter, one reason why the death rate of
children and old people, already appallingly large, will grow more
appalling within the next few months; one reason, and a very strong
one, why order has not been restored in Russia. High as are the prices
of all food and manufactured articles, the working people, as a class,
have money enough to pay for them, and not until the merchants’ stocks
are completely gone and the weather gets too cold to stand in line
long hours in order to buy will the purblind workers realize their
situation. Not until then will they realize what their selfishness and
cruel folly have done to themselves and the entire working class of the
country.
So struck was I by the scarceness of goods in the shops and the soaring
prices of almost every article that I went to the Minister of Labor and
asked him to tell me something of industrial conditions of the country.
I was not entirely ignorant of those conditions. I knew, for example,
that Russia is not exclusively an agricultural country, that, on the
contrary, her development as a manufacturing country has been going
on by leaps and bounds, especially in the last dozen years. Russia
has a proletariat and a factory system, although not quite as large
proportionately as those of the United States. Her iron industry, her
cotton mills, her machine shops are enormous and in normal times they
are wonderfully productive. After the suppressed revolution of 1905-06
important reforms in the land laws were enacted, and for the first time
the peasants were given their lands in fee simple. That is, they were
given an opportunity in certain circumstances to take title to their
share in communal lands. This gave them an opportunity to sell if they
chose, and a large number of peasant artisans did sell their lands,
moved into the cities and became factory workers. Before this time the
factory workers had more or less alternated between town and rural
life.
The leaders of the Social Democratic party encouraged by every means
in their power the selling of lands by peasant owners, because they
wanted the workers to move to town, organize in labor unions and become
a political power. In their own words, they wanted to create a landless
working class, one which, having no stake in property, would the more
easily revolt against the government and more heartily support the
movement to create a coöperative commonwealth. It was good reasoning
up to a certain point. A man with a piece of land thinks twice before
he puts that land in danger of being absorbed by his neighbors. He
hesitates before he takes a course of action which might turn even a
bad government out at least. The bad government protects his title. But
the leaders of the Social Democrats left an important human element
out of their reasoning. A landless man makes a good revolutionist, it
is true, but he does not necessarily make a good coöperator. Nine and
three-quarters times in ten he is just as strong for number one as the
real estate owner. When he gets a chance to grab power and money he
does it, and he divides up just as little as the others let him.
A story is told in Russia which illustrates this trait of character.
Some one asked a peasant of Little Russia what he would do if he
were made czar. “I’d steal a hundred rubles and run away,” was the
prompt reply. In a word, that is virtually what the working people of
Russia did as soon as the revolution of February, 1917, made them into
individual czars of Russia.
When I called on the Minister of Labor and asked him what was the
matter with industry, his face assumed an expression of mingled
amusement and despair. “If you really want to know,” he said, in
effect, “go and look at some of our factories.”
I was given an official document, elaborately stamped and signed,
authorizing me to enter and inspect any factory in Petrograd, and I
began, bright and early the next morning, with one of the largest
munitions factories in the Viborg district of the city. I showed my
pass to the man at the gate, who read it doubtfully, and said he didn’t
think it was good. “What right has the Minister of Labor to give you
permission to visit this plant?” he inquired. “If anybody had a right
to give you such permission, I should think it would be the Minister
of War, for only war materials are manufactured here. Anyhow, I don’t
think you can get in.”
I asked him mildly if he was sure that he had the power to keep me out,
and I suggested that he put the case up to a higher authority, the
manager, for instance. He turned to a wall telephone in his little gate
house and conversed with some one at the other end of the line. Then he
said: “The committee is in session and will see you.”
A long walk through the enormous yard and past many shops brought me to
the office building of the plant, and there, in a small room, I found
the committee, that is, the group of workmen elected by the entire
working force of the factory to manage the industry and to fix all
conditions of labor. Every industry in Russia is thus managed. I had a
long talk with this committee, but I did not get into the factory. The
man would not permit me to get in. They wouldn’t even allow me to see
any one connected with the office force. Kindly but firmly they gave
me to understand that they were all the power there was in that plant
and they could give me all the information I could possibly need. So I
sat there for an hour or so, and, through my interpreter, learned how
manufacturing is carried on when the workers own their tools.
Because I could carry but few notes out of the country, I am not
certain how many delegates per thousand workers make up a committee of
management in a Russian factory, but I think each unit of one hundred
men elects a representative. Perhaps there are two hundred men to the
unit. My memory for numbers is not always reliable. At all events, the
committee members, who are usually the intelligent and highly paid
workers, do no work except committee work. But they draw their full
pay. The employer has no voice in the conduct of his own business. The
committee tells him how much he pays his employees, what their hours
of work are, when they arrive and when they depart and how much they
produce. And the employer pays the committee for its kind words and
deeds. I asked the particular committee which thus informed me if this
seemed fair to the employer. Mostly the men said they thought it did.
One man asked me who in my opinion ought to pay the committee members.
I told him I thought the workers might pay at least a part of their
salaries, and perhaps also give the employers a casting vote in case of
a tie, or something like that. They seemed to find the idea humorous,
all except one fine, thoughtful young fellow, who said: “There may be
an element of unfairness in some of the present conditions, but time
will adjust them. There is no question but that the workers should own
the industries, and they will. The working class has never had a square
deal and now that they have seized the powers of government, nothing
less than confiscation of industries will satisfy them.”
The working class in Russia has had rather less of a square deal than
any other in the modern world, it is true. The factory system being
comparatively new in Russia, there has not been time for the workers to
organize closely, and under the autocracy there was little or no chance
to obtain enlightened factory legislation. There was hardly a chance
for the Russian workman to attain a very high degree of skill in many
industries. He could not, as a rule, learn the finest processes of his
trade, because until the war broke out most of those processes were
in the hands and under the control of Germany. When I was in Russia
in 1906 one of the most striking things to me was the prevalence of
German shopkeepers, German managers, German foremen. You hardly ever
saw a Russian in command of any industry. I spoke of this to a Russian
friend and told him that I should not like to see in my country all
the business controlled by foreigners, for these Germans were not even
Russian citizens. He shrugged his shoulders and said “Nitchevo,” which
means almost anything and is a general expression of indifference or
resignation to the inevitable. “We have no heads for that sort of
thing, we Russians,” he apologized.
“But what if you should ever go to war with Germany?” I asked. And he,
sobered a little, said: “We should have to learn to be business men and
skilled mechanics, in that case, and we should have a devil of a time
doing it.”
Eight years later, almost to a day, they did go to war with Germany,
and they did have a devil of a time adjusting their industries to
meet the crisis caused by the exodus of thousands of highly skilled
German managers and department heads in hundreds of factories and shops
throughout the empire.
One story told me in Moscow is representative, I believe. A very large
factory taken over by the government for the fine toolmaking facilities
its machines afforded was found to be managed exclusively by German
foremen and managers. Not only had they drawn large salaries for years
in that factory, but they had insisted on hiring for the last processes
and the most highly skilled jobs workmen from Germany. They didn’t
want, or rather the German government didn’t want, the Russian people
to know how to do skilled work. They wanted to keep Russia in exactly
the right condition for permanent commercial exploitation by the
fatherland.
I go into this because I think it is only fair to the Russian working
class to explain that they have not been allowed to develop the
intelligence and skill which the English and American working classes
have done. Because of this ignorance the Russians of the working
class have in their few months’ debauch of liberty and the control of
industry wrecked their country industrially and have brought themselves
and their own people to the verge of starvation. They have done to
their class approximately what the mutinous soldiers at the front did
to the men who wanted to go forward and fight--shot them in the back.
I know this, because I have seen it. The next factory I approached the
committee let me in.