I go into this because I think it is only fair to the Russian working class to explain that they have not been allowed to develop the intelligence and skill which the English and American working classes have done. Because of this ignorance the Russians of the working class have in their few months’ debauch of liberty and the control of industry wrecked their country industrially and have brought themselves and their own people to the verge of starvation. They have done to their class approximately what the mutinous soldiers at the front did to the men who wanted to go forward and fight--shot them in the back. I know this, because I have seen it. The next factory I approached the committee let me in. CHAPTER XIX WHY COTTON CLOTH IS SCARCE When I got on the train to leave Russia for the United States the first familiar face I saw was that of Mr. Daniel Cheshire, mill owner and operator of Petrograd. “I’m going home to England to enlist,” he said, as we shook hands. “What have you done with your mills?” I asked. “I have left them to the Tavarishi,” replied Mr. Cheshire, “I thought I might as well.” Daniel Cheshire is not the only large manufacturer who has abandoned his business after a vain struggle to cope with the situation created by the Russian revolution, and the taking over by the working people of the control of industry. Others have given up the struggle, and many more will probably follow their example. But Mr. Cheshire’s story I know at first hand. His abandonment of his mills is full of significance, partly because of the importance of his branch of manufacturing, and partly because his act may hasten the day when, through sheer lack of the necessities of life, the Russian people will cease pursuing their utopian dream and will content themselves with a government which, although still capitalistic, will rescue them from starvation and ruin. Those who think of Russia as a land of snow and ice will be interested to learn that in Turkestan and Transcaucasia as well as in other provinces of the south and east, they raise millions of pounds of very good cotton, the seeds of which originally came from America. Those who think that every Russian peasant does nothing but farm will be surprised to hear that over a million Russians work in textile mills, principally cotton textiles.