Big Red Buyers

A watch factory and an alarm clock plant all complete and actually working-- that was what Comrade V. V. Kuybyshev wanted to buy and have shipped to Soviet Russia. Shrewd Comrade Kuybyshev is Chairman of the Soviet Supreme Economic Council. He has had experience buying separate tools and machines abroad which somehow have not seemed to fit and work together as a proper factory when set up in Russia by Russians. Therefore not long ago Comrade Kuybyshev sent to the U. S. two stout, sagacious men, his trustiest lieutenants, to find a leading maker of alarm clocks and a successful watch manufacturer who would shut down their whirring, profitable plants and sell them out, lock, stock and gadgets. When the very same factories were set up and started whirring in Russia exactly as they had whirred in the U. S. there ought not to be--reasoned shrewd Comrade Kuybyshev--the slightest possibility that they could fail to turn out alarm clocks and watches at a rate never known before in Russia.

Very quietly the two stout, sagacious agents of Comrade Kuybyshev came among U. S. clock & watch folk two months ago. One of the two is Chairman A. M. Bodrov of the Soviet Precision Machinery Trust which today makes old fashioned pendulum clocks at the rate of one million per year. The other Comrade was Technical Director I. G. Sarkin of the Trust. Together they sleuthed among the clockeries and watcheries of New York and the Midwest, negotiating discreetly. Then they returned to Moscow. Only last week was their secret mission, their success announced.

Factories soon to stop and be dismantled are Canton, Ohio's Dueber-Hampden Watch Co. and the Ansonia Clock Co. of Brooklyn. The Ansonia Co.--as many an early riser knows--are pioneering popularizers of square alarm clocks, a nationally advertised variant that has sold lustily. Dueber-Hampden watches should sell in Russia for about two roubles ($1). Both companies will at once build new plants to replace those sold to the Reds.

Announcing the purchase last week, Comrade officials of the Soviet Amtorg Trading Corp. in Manhattan refused to divulge the price paid, said that the two plants will be set up and functioning in Russia by 1931, hoped that they will produce every year 1,000,000 cheap watches, 200,000 medium-priced watches, 1,000,000 alarm clocks, 500,000 wall and electric clocks.

Reviewing the Soviet-U. S. trade situation last week, big, jovial, loosely clad Comrade Saul G. Bron, Chairman of the Amtorg Trading Corp. observed that his organization alone purchased for the Soviet Government two years ago $2,500,000 worth of U. S. goods, bought $11,000,000 last year, is buying $25,000,000 worth in 1929. Declaring that more than 2,000 U. S. firms are now trading with Soviet Russia and have reaped orders totaling $430.000,000 in the past six years. Chairman Bron estimated that before Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin completes his famed Five Year Program of "industrial-izing Russia" (TIME, Sept. 9) an additional billion dollars' worth of Soviet orders will have been placed in the U. S.

When he first came to Manhattan three years ago cheerful Comrade Bron used to ask business acquaintances why the U. S. did not recognize Soviet Russia. Today he considers that question of academic and rather secondary importance. Commercial recognition of the Soviet Union by U. S. industry is now wholehearted, enthusiastic. In the past six years $110,000,000 of U. S. cash has been spent for Russian goods. Colossal outstanding contracts between the Soviet Union and U. S. firms are:

$50,000,000 to the Austin Co. of Cleveland for constructing in the next 15 months an entire Soviet city of 25,000 tentatively named "Austingrad" (TIME, Sept. 16).

$30,000,000 to the Ford Motor Co. for automobile parts which will be assembled in Russia during the next four years until local plants contracted for get into production.

$25,000,000 to the Longacre Engineering and Construction Co. Inc. of Manhattan, for apartment houses to be built in Moscow.

$15,000,000 to the C. F. Seabrook Co. of Manhattan to perform part of the work of constructing a huge new network of Soviet highways.

$10,000,000 to the Nitrogen Engineering Corp. of Manhattan for a giant ammonia fertilizer plant.

In addition the Soviet Government is expending $100,000,000 on dams and hydroelectric development of the Dnieper River, with Hugh L. Cooper & Co. of Manhattan acting as consulting engineers, the generators to be furnished by International General Electric Co. Also, $115,000,000 has just been appropriated for the development of coal mining in the Soviet Union and three leading U. S. mining and engineering firms have recently contracted to act as consultants: 1) Allen & Garcia Co. of Chicago; 2) Stuart, James & Cooke, Inc., of Manhattan; 3) Roberts & Schaefer Co. of Chicago.

Said Chairman Bron proudly last week: "The objective is to realize an ambitious program which calls for an increase in our coal production of from 35,000,000 tons last year to 75,000,000 in 1933 at the end of the Five Year Program."