(4 of 7)
Besides these, there are four technical aid associations:
Hugh L. Cooper & Co.—building a vast power system (to be larger than the Muscle Shoals scheme) in Dniep-rostroy, Ukraine.
Stuart, James and Cook, mining engineers—preparing projects in the Danetz Basin coal mines.
Allen & Garcia, engineers—mining in the Moscow district.
Freyn Engineering Co.—erecting steel mills.
There are also the American Aluminum Co. which has a general prospecting concession, and the Beloukha Co., which is prospecting in the Altai region.
Industry. Although a vast amount of capital has been expended on Russian industry by the government, it remains the most serious problem that the Soviet is facing. The basic reason for this is that, with its bureaucratic control, its restricted markets, and its general inefficiency, Russian industry is not able to turn out goods cheap enough to appeal to the peasantry, its logical customer.
Nevertheless, according to the most recent report of the Russian Information Bureau in Washington, the industrial output has increased fivefold in the last five years, while the individual output and the number of workers employed have doubled. The report reads in part:
"During the current fiscal year, begun Oct. 1, $609,754,840 will be expended for capital improvements in industry, over one-fourth of this for new plants.
"Industrial production increased 18% during the past fiscal year.
"The Soviet Union this fall gathered its third successive good harvest. About 35,000 tractors took part in this year's harvest, as compared with 500 in 1913.
"The foreign trade turnover increased from $199,000,000 in 1922-23 to about $800,000,000 during the past fiscal year, with a favorable balance of $30,000,000. Before the War the trade turnover of the Tsarist empire was $1,490,500,000.
"About 20% of the imports last year came from the United States, compared with less than 6% in 1913. American-Soviet trade during the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 was about $90,000,000 as compared with $48,000,000 in 1913.
"Under the census completed last spring the population of the Soviet Union is 146,304,931, a gain of 15,000,000 in the past six years. The trend to the cities has been marked."
OPINIONS. Conditions in Russia, veiled as they are by propaganda, and obscured by partisanship, may well be compared to the next world: one side has it that Soviet Russia is an earthly paradise; the other, that it is quite the reverse. Here are opinions pro & con:
Pro. The New Masses: ". . . the last ten years in Russia appear almost miraculous. . . . Millions of workers and farmers the world over look upon the Soviet Union as the advance guard in the emancipation of the mass of mankind from the exploitation of capitalism."