In connection with the passage of these labor laws, it must be borne in mind that the working people in Soviet Russia enjoy much more control at the present time than do the same class of people in possibly any other country. One must take into consideration the fact that these laws were initiated by the unions themselves or their representatives, who shared jointly with the political side of the Government the responsibility for maintaining the new order. Many of the former so-called bourgeoisie of the old regime, I was informed, have spent the past two years doing nothing but live by speculation and they stir up trouble on the slightest pretext against the new Government. It was primarily to reach recalcitrants of this character that the compulsory provisions were inserted in the code. The result of the passage of these laws did not, so far as I could judge, diminish the enthusiasm of the Russian workers for the new order, but on the other hand their energy seems to have been stimulated, no doubt because they were beginning to feel that through their various organizations this step had been taken for the express purpose of forcing into production every man and woman in the country capable of producing and helping to reconstruct Russia. Article I of the code deals with compulsory labor. It provides that all citizens of the Soviet Republic, with the following exceptions, are subject to compulsory labor: First, persons under sixteen years of age; second, all persons over fifty years of age; third, persons who have become incapacitated by injury or illness; fourth, women for a period of eight weeks before and eight weeks after confinement. All students are subject to compulsory labor at the schools. Labor conditions in all establishments, Soviet, nationalized, public and private, are regulated by tariff rules drafted by the trade unions in agreement with the directors or owners of establishments and enterprises and approved by the people’s commissariat of labor. Article II, entitled “The Right to Work,” provides that all citizens able to work have the right to employment at their vocations and remuneration fixed for such class of work. The district exchange bureaus of the Department of Labor Distribution, in agreement with respective unions, assign individual wage earners or groups of them to work at other trades if there is no demand for labor at the vocation of the persons in question. All persons of the female sex and those of the male sex under eighteen years of age have no right to work at night or in those industries in which the conditions of labor are especially hard or dangerous.