Started off in a motor with Mr. Vanderlip and someone from the Foreign
Office. We went to a textile factory, a huge place, and pronounced by
Mr. Vanderlip to have the best and latest machinery, but there were 240
workers where there had been 2,500, and there were acres of machinery
lying idle, the reason being lack of fuel. Mr. Vanderlip, with that
unfailing American “spread-eagle,” said that 50 experienced American
workers could have done the work of those 240. It is true there was a
good deal of idling going on. This may have been due either to lack of
sufficient work, or to the Communist system by which each man or woman
is as good as another, and there is none to oversee the work. But what
had been done was well done.
From there we went to one of the big fur stores which before the
Revolution belonged to a private firm, but to-day is the property of the
Government. There were rooms full of huge hampers packed with sable
skins for export, and of course, as I was the only woman present, they
dangled bunches of sable skins before me. Now sables don’t say much to
me if they are not made up, but silver foxes are different, and they
cruelly put round my neck some silver foxes.