WE hitch our chairs around one end of a long reading table on which are spread numerous magazines and papers--Soviet Union in Construction, Our Truth, the plant's daily paper, Mastery of Technique, and the popular humorous sheet, Crocodile. Feodor and Andree continue their stories. Around us, young workers are playing chess and reading. Some come over to listen in. They are curious. What do they know of the old days of want, oppression and terror?
For many centuries enslaved men have listened to stories, and built hopes of freedom. Here, at last, history reverses itself. These youth, free men, class-conscious workers, are hearing of a slavery that for them is forever past.
In the summer of 1913, Andree tells us, there was a big strike at the Singer plant, against the fresh wage-cut that Dixon was trying to put through. The strikers also demanded the eight-hour day, minimum wages of one ruble a day for men and women, and that "the administration and foremen act more civil toward the workers." Those who had been fired for taking part in the First of May strike must he reemployed, and any worker who lost time through the fault of the plant must receive his full pay. It was a hot strike, led by Party workers and lasting a full month. The Moscow governor, from whom Dixon demanded troops, sent a full force to the little town. Spies and povocateurs were active. Finally hunger broke the strike. Seventy-two workers were blacklisted, and many exiled, as earlier Feodor had been.
Sighing, Andree pushes his fur cap towards his long nose. "So Dixon and the foremen treated us almost as hard as ever. But not quite. They didn't dare, seeing our rising spirit." Then came the imperialist war. Andree was drafted and sent to the front. The Singer plant began producing munitions for the tsar--a very profitable business. Likewise, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Singer converted his plant into a munitions factory. Is this how funds for his New York skyscraper accumulated?
As prices rose and food grew scarce, the revolutionary mood of Russia's masses kept rising, rising. After a week's strike in 1915, Dixon was forced to raise wages by 7 per cent. At the end of the next year the factory was again struck. Conditions grew worse each month that the war continued. While Podolsk's workers sweated by their machines, their wives and children had to stand in queues all day, in order to get bread. Demonstrations for bread and against the autocracy grew; strikes increased. The Party carried on its work illegally and also openly, making use of workers' study and dramatic circles. At the front there was ferment. Feodor and Andree knew that soon something must happen.
February 1917. For four days not a newspaper in Podolsk. The police force at the Singer plant was strengthened. Everyone was tense, waiting.....Far into the night the Party comrades were organizing, preparing. Two messengers were sent to Moscow, to learn, developments. They found barricades going up in the proletarian districts of the capital.
The storm had broken! Hurrying back, they reported, going from factory to factory: "Comrades! Stop your work! The revolution has begun! Hurrying back, they reported, going from factory to factory: Comrades! Stop your work! The revolution has begun! Into the streets, in support of the workers of Moscow and Petrograd!" Every machine in the Singer and Zengor plants was stilled. By ten o'clock all were outside. This was February 28. With boxes brought from the factory yards, the first revolutionary meeting was organized. Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, non-Party workers, and even tsarist supporters mounted the improvised platform, presenting their arguments and programs to the masses. There was some confusion, many not being sure of which leadership to follow. But it was the Bolsheviks that showed them what to do, calling upon them to organize their forces, to divide according to departments and elect their deputies to a city-wide council (Soviet) right there in the yard. With their experienced guidance, this was done quickly and easily. Dixon, other administrators, and the police were not to be seen. Every spy that was recognized was driven away.
Since it war, cold, the workers asked to be allowed to go back inside the shops. This their newly-elected committee allowed but cautioned them not to begin work, without first receiving directions from their deputies.
The hundred and fifty deputies from the Singer and Zengor plants immediately held a meeting in a restaurant close by. They decided upon the next steps to be taken, and for stronger connections with Moscow. Again the workers were called out, and a great demonstration of 7,000 marched through the town. The question was how to disarm the tsar's police; and win over to their side the seven hundred soldiers stationed at the local munitions factory.
The soldiers told the committee sent to learn their feeling, "We won't hinder you." So the 7,000 workers set out for the police station, to disarm the force. Many soldiers joined in. "We also are oppressed workers," they said, "if they could send us to the front with guns, to defend the fatherland, with the same guns we can defend the revolution." One member of the local police came toward the marchers. "Gentlemen" he cried, openly weeping, "for thirty-five years I've been a fool, serving the tsar. Now I refuse. Take my arms, and don't bother me." Laughing at his fright, the marchers took over his gun.
At the station there was a fierce but soon-ended battle disarming the police, the workers chose a Revolutionary Staff, and distributed the arms among their ranks. Later, a mass funeral was given those who had fallen during the encounter.
Yesterday's stiff-backed rulers were frightened. They came before the soviet and mass meetings, declaring, "We greet the revolution and join the people!" Among them was Dixon, who called god himself to the aid of the revolution !
The capitalists were not sorry to see the power of the landed nobility and their tsar broken. The problem was, how to make the roused workers stop there. What if they should decide to drive out the capitalists as well?
The Podolsk Regional Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies decided that all employers must pay full wages to their labouring force for time lost during the days of the revolution. The Provisional Government set up in Petrograd, backed by the capitalists, refused all support to the Soviets. The workers decided to tax themselves from their wages, creating a fund to carry on the Soviet's work. The Soviet was rapidly extending its control over production, and forcing employers to listen to the workers' demands. By the third week of March the eight-hour day was enforced, without any decrease in wages. All factories organized their shop committees, unions and militia.
Feodor, who up to this time was still working in Moscow, now helped to return to his home town and job at the Singer foundry. The factory committee insisted that Dixon employ him. Dixon refused. "Dixon and his kind still have the power," Feodor pointed out to his fellows. "Was it far this we made a revolution?"
Every day the issue grew dearer. The soldiers and toiling masses demand, "End the War! Give us Peace! Liberty! Land! Bread!" The Provisional Government refused to heed them. In the ranks of the workers were confused, even traitorous elements. Only in the Party, which in Podolsk had grown from thirty-seven members in February to six hundred by October, did the masses find a clear lead. Feodor, who had gotten work in a small Podolsk foundry, agitated with his comrades, "All Power to the Soviets! Away with the Provisional Government and capitalist rule!" Many who a few months earlier disagreed with the Bolsheviks, now were ready to listen, to join in preparations for the second insurrection. Andree, still at the front, told his hungry, desperate fellow soldiers, "Support the soviets and Bolsheviks. That is the one way to stop this bloody war."
When word came, in October, that the Petrograd and Moscow workers had taken power, the Podolsk masses were quick to follow.
According to plan, all public buildings and factories were seized by the workers' militia. The soviet set to work establishing the new order and selecting its commissars to fill all responsible posts. Heavy tasks, they knew, were ahead.
At the same time the other factories were taken over; the armed workers occupied the foundry, workshops and offices of the sewing machine workers. The former Singer plant was declared the First Soviet State Sewing Machine Factory, to be owned and operated by the workers' power. Andree along with Feodor tossed his old cap, whooping, high in the air.
As for Dixon, he packed his bags and left on the next boat for America. There were few who regretted his hasty departure.
The next evening, Moscow wired that armed counter-revolutionary groups were threatening the city, and to send reinforcements. A canvass was made of Podolsk factories that same night, for volunteers. At first, not enough signed. Six hundred were needed. At the news of danger threatening Moscow, ten thousand massed the next day. Men, women, and children. Peasants from nearby villages flocked in. They said, "Damn the Mensheviks! Only the Bolsheviks will see that we get the land." That night seven hundred volunteers from field and factory, armed, left for Moscow, many of them barely twenty years of age.
After they left, things grew even more difficult. Big groups of backward toilers came to the soviet, demanding food, others work. Local soldiers, worn out, demanded furloughs. People expected everything to be set right overnight. At first, there was little raw material for the factories. Many of the old engineers and foremen refused to co-operate with the new order. "At first," Feodor tells us, "every worker tried to be his own boss. We began at once to organize our own labour self-discipline. We showed that now that we were the ruling class, this did not mean anarchy, each for himself: but all together, under direction of out leaders whom we ourselves chose." Throughout the years of civil war and famine, step by step, the new order advanced.
Andree continues, "It is only since '24 that we've had a chance to put our full energies into building things up. But go about and see for yourselves what changes we've made. Now you young fellows," he nods toward his listeners, "you don't even imagine the difference. You think there is a lot to improve yet. So there is. But don't be forgetting the distance we've come."
Feodor's voice drops. "Of nine hundred men at the old Singer foundry, only ten of us left. The rest? Died off long ago from some disease they got in that hell-hole of a shop, or killed in the war.
Sighing, unconsciously Andree slides a big paw up his lame side. He and Feodor sure broke their backs for old Dixon. To the devil with all that. The present and future--that's what counts. "How do I live now, compared to the old days?" Andree's mood immediately brightens. As to wages, he earns between 250 and 300 rubles a month, about nine times what he earned in 1913. He and his family Live not so badly. The can afford much better food and clothes than before. Some time ago, he built a little house of stucco, outside of Podolsk, plastered inside, with two medium-sized rooms, a kitchen and small garden. He lives here with his wife and her aunt. His son, the only one of seven children who did not die of hunger while he was in the tsar's trenches, has received training as an electrician. Andree's eyes glitter softly, "My boy writes me some ne letters of what's going on at Magnitogorsk."
Andree likes to drop in at the club, to read, or pass an hour among his cronies. Once a month, or perhaps oftener, he and his wife go up to Moscow to the theatre or circus.
"And in the old days, do you think we had clubs and evening schools like today?" he quizzes us. "In our off-hours, there was only one amusement that Podolsk' offered--saloons." The streets of an evening were full of drunkards, poor fools trying to drown their sorrows. Trying to forget the slavery and futility of their existence. "And I as well as Feodor will have to admit to being often among them. Only he revolutionary movement changed us."
"Since October, 1917," Feodor puts in, "I swore off."
Andree agrees. "Sure. We've got other interests. Here in the plant and in town I'm forever busy. Now we're rid of the bosses, we have to decide and do everything for ourselves."
To Feodor, life since the revolution has brought even more changes. With his wife, son and three daughters he lives in a small apartment in the centre of town. It is crowded, and not very light. Later on, he expects to move out to the new town the plant is building. Since all his children are grown and working, the family's monthly income totals 755 rubles! Several years ago, his health not permitting him to do heavy work in the foundry, he received an old-age pension from the government. Then a few months ago, he went through the new foundry, with its airy, spacious rooms, its sky-lights and latest equipment of overhead, underground and level conveyors, with cranes, giant mixtures, and a modern ventilating system that has no equal in America. Feodor felt fresh strength. "In my old age, to see such a foundry!" The American engineer, Mr. Strouck, who supervised its construction told him that there are only five such foundries in the world today.
Feodor declared, "I can't stand it. I gotta work here. Most of my life I've slaved in darkness, for the profit of others. Now I will give my free labour in this model foundry." After consultation with the doctors, it was agreed that he come as instructor in the foundry's training school, transferring his knowledge of hand moulding to the on-coming generation of workers.
"If old age takes away my strength," he ends his story, "I Shall still be content. The new, hopeful shift I am training into real bolshevik constructors of socialism will be working in, out new foundry--a real Palace of Labour."