, dining-rooms, etc., are fully
supplied with supplementary food-cards. But what of supplies? They
are, after all, the main thing. Translated into English money and
weight, the prices last September were as follows: Potatoes, 7-1/2d. a
lb.; fresh cabbage, 7d. a lb.; fish (supply diminishing), pickled
herrings from 1s. 9d. to 3s. 3d. a lb.; smoked herrings, from 2s. 4d.
to 4s. each; meat, 7s. 7d. a lb.; pork, 12s. 8d. a lb.; boiled
sausage, 9s. 3d. a lb.; smoked sausage, 11s. 10d. a lb.; milk, of
which there was little, was 2s. 6d. a bottle; cream butter, 25s. 3d. a
lb.; lump sugar, 25s. 3d. a lb. In Petrograd meat was from 9s. 7d. a
lb.; veal, 11s. a lb.; pork, 12s. 7d. a lb.; mutton, 10s. 1d. a lb.
Fish, supplies of which were limited, were about the same prices as at
Moscow. The figures of municipal bread-baking in Petrograd for last
April, May and June were 328,128, 262,075 and 185,222 puds
respectively. A pud is 36 lbs. This indicates a most serious
reduction. According to rations on the bread-cards, which are 3/8 lb.
per day, with the same amount for supplementary cards for workers'
categories, and 1/8 lb. a day per child, the monthly supply for
Petrograd should be 792,000 puds.

In October reports from Tambov, Viatka, Vladimir, Tula and Saratov
indicate that, though supplies of all kinds of grain were fairly good,
the disorganisation of transport was so great that the larger part of
those supplies remained where they were. A number of delegates were
sent to Saratov to obtain 30,000 puds of breadstuffs for twenty-five
workmen's organisations in Moscow. They only succeeded in obtaining
3,000 puds, and they complained most bitterly of "bureaucracy" at the
hands of the Saratov Provincial Food Committee, who kept them waiting
a very long time and finally passed them on to a local Committee who
declined to do anything. They demanded that pressure should be brought
to bear on the Provincial Committee to make them disgorge part of
their large reserves for the starving centre.

Russian Co-operative Societies.

Recently reports and articles have been appearing in certain of the
Labour and capitalist Press favourable to the Bolsheviks, notably the
"Labour Leader," concerning the co-operative movement in Russia. It is
alleged that the growth of the co-operative movement there is evidence
that the Bolshevist Government is really and seriously building up a
new Socialist society despite the grave difficulties within and th