stock of materials
that runs out from one day to the next, in factories where the machinery
may come at any moment to a standstill from lack of fuel. There would
thus be a shortage of labor in Russia, even if the numbers of workmen
were the same today as they were before the war. Unfortunately that is
not so. Turning from the question of low productivity per man to that
of absolute shortage of men: the example given at the beginning of
this chapter, showing that in the most important group of factories the
number of workmen has fallen 50 per cent. is by no means exceptional.
Walking through the passages of what used to be the Club of the Nobles,
and is now the house of the Trades Unions during the recent Trades Union
Congress in Moscow, I observed among a number of pictorial diagrams
on the walls, one in particular illustrating the rise and fall of the
working population of Moscow during a number of years. Each year was
represented by the picture of a factory with a chimney which rose and
fell with the population. From that diagram I took the figures for 1913,
1918 and 1919. These figures should be constantly borne in mind by any
one who wishes to realize how catastrophic the shortage of labor in
Russia actually is, and to judge how sweeping may be the changes in the
social configuration of the country if that shortage continues to
increase. Here are the figures:

Workmen in Moscow in 1913............159,344
Workmen in Moscow in 1918...........157,282
Workmen in Moscow in 1919............105,210

That is to say, that one-third of the workmen of Moscow ceased to
live there, or ceased to be workmen, in the course of a single year.
A similar phenomenon is observable in each one of the big industrial
districts.

What has become of those workmen?

A partial explanation is obvious. The main impulse of the revolution
came from the town workers. Of these, the metal workers were the most
decided, and those who most freely joined the Red Guard in the early and
the Red Army in the later days of the revolution. Many, in those early
days, when there was more enthusiasm than discipline, when there were
hardly any experienced officers, and those without much authority, were
slaughtered during the German advance of 1918. The first mobilizations,
when conscription was introduced, were among the workers in the great
industrial districts. The troops from Petrograd and Moscow, exclusively
workmen's regiments, h