Knickerbocker Reviewed

The 10,000-mi. travel diary of Hubert R. Knickerbocker, first correspondent to explore Red Russia thoroughly, came last week to the end of its 24 daily instalments in Manhattan's Evening Post, Philadelphia's Public Ledger.

Both Wall Street and Walnut Street were arrested by the series' title The Red Trade Menace, and startled by certain headlines: Famished Moscow Short All Food Except Bread; Red Railroads Collapse; Reds Use Forced Labor In Forests; Russia Ships Coal Here and Sells Below Cost.

There was another side to Correspondent Knickerbocker's report:

Yes, Moscow is on "iron rations" of food, clothing, shoes; but in remote, unheard-of-cities, in "strategic centres of production" such as Azbest, Magneto-gorsk and Dnieprostroy (see map), the diarist found abundant food, clothing and shoes for the new pampered aristocracy of toil.

Yes, the Red railways have "collapsed." There were 30,000 accidents during the Soviet fiscal year just ended, 1,000 deaths, 2,000 people maimed for life. During August alone 384 engines and 1,638 cars were wrecked beyond repair. But the railways, driven by the fierce will of Dictator Stalin to fulfill the Five-Year Plan, hauled 3,500,000 more carloads this year than last.

Yes, some Soviet timber is cut by "forced labor," but of a peculiar kind. Diarist Knickerbocker reported that these cutters appear to receive the same wages as other Soviet woodsmen. They are forced not to chop wood but to live in certain forest regions where such labor is the only sort in demand.

In a word, the "forced laborers" are former kulaks (rich farmers) dispossessed of their land by the Soviet program of "collectivizing farms." With grim humor, Mr. Knickerbocker was told that in Russia rich farmers had never worked before, would not work except under some compulsion, are now being "taught to work."

Yes, the Soviet Union is unquestionably selling grain, coal and oil abroad for less than production cost in rubles at 50-c- per ruble.

But only in Moscow is the ruble quoted at 50-c-. On foreign exchange, foreign bankers quote it at but 6-c- or 7-c-. On that basis the cost of grain, coal and oil produced in Russia is definitely less than the sales price abroad.

Thus the value which a man sets upon the ruble determines for him whether the Soviet State is guilty or not guilty of "dumping." If one believes the ruble is worth 50-c-, one finds Russia guilty; if one believes the ruble is worth 10-c- or less, one finds her not guilty.

In the mind of Diarist Knickerbocker lurks no doubt. "With the ruble at its actual value," he wrote, "the Soviet Union is exporting, in all cases, at a large profit." The Red State, therefore, is not guilty of "dumping abroad," is guilty of inflating its own currency.

Things Seen. Staggering were some of the things Diarist Knickerbocker noted on his 10,000-mi. swing around Reds.

. . . Peasants selling farm-made boots for "the standard price" of $75 per pair in shoe-short Moscow. . . . Twenty-one U. S. engineers & wives in "Austingrad" where foundations 2,000 ft. long are now in for the $20,000,000 Soviet Ford factory.

. . . One U. S. engineer and 13,000 Russians mining 10,000 tons of asbestos rock daily in Azbest. . . . "The largest construction camp in the world" going full blast at Magnetogorsk on the Capitalist "piece work" system, building what is to be "the greatest steel centre on Earth. ..." A dam three quarters of a mile long across the Ural River completed in four months. . . .

. . . Engineers (who have excavated 600,000 cubic yards of dirt and poured 12,000 cubic metres of concrete at Cheliabinsk since last July) waiting angrily for steel to erect the world's largest tractor factory. . . . Three hundred and eighty U. S. machinists making tractors in Stalingrad at a wage of $10 daily with cognac, wine and beer abundant. . . .

. . . Gigant, the largest farm on earth, so badly run that Correspondent Knickerbocker estimates a loss in "real dollars, not paper rubles" to the Soviet Government of $750,000 last year. . . . Verbhid or "Camel" where it costs only 67-c- to produce a bushel of grain as against 87-c- at Gigant. . . .

. . . Gleaming new electric interurban cars at Baku (in Asia) entering an enormous new railway station in Eurasian style (see map sketch). . . . Prosperity in the place where Red oil comes from. . . . Stalin's mother at Tiflis (TIME, Dec. 8). . . . Chiaturi, which produces the manganese used in one U. S. auto out of every two. . . .

. . . Smiling faces (the only ones Mr. Knickerbocker saw in Rucsia) all along the Red Riviera (on the Black Sea), the only place where Bolsheviks relax. . . . Silk stockings. . . . Silk dresses. . . . Nude mixed bathing. . . . The only jazz heard in Russia. . . .

. . . Engineers busy installing the water passages in Colonel Hugh Lincoln Cooper's hydroelectric dam at Dnieprostroy. . . . Col. & Mrs. Cooper & friends living on caviar and canned luxuries from the U. S., cooked by a chef who served the Romanovs. . . . Everyone quoting Lenin's axiom: "Electrification plus the Soviet power equals Socialism. . . ."

. . . Stalina and the maddest coal mines imaginable. . . . Working conditions so arduous that the labor turnover exceeds 100% per year. . . . Miners on all fours, crawling down (sometimes sideways like crabs) to reach their work a mile and a half underground. . . . Red taskmasters sure that to cut passages high enough for the miners to stand erect would cost too much. . . .

. . . Pressure. . . . The feverish, nationwide struggle to complete the Five-Year Plan. . . . 46,651,000 tons of Soviet coal mined this year, an increase of 7,000,000 tons over last year. . . . Marvelous, but somewhat short of the Plan. . . .

Conclusions: "The Plan is a method for Russia to 'starve itself great,' " concluded Correspondent Knickerbocker. "When one draws the balance sheet of the Five-Year Plan [today] at the end of its second year, the credits appear to overbalance the debits. ... No branch of [Russian] industry [has] failed to increase its output. . . . The representative of one of the great central banks of Europe . . . told me he considered the Soviet Union a perfectly sound risk for trade credits up to three or four years."

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