He said something in Russian to the workman, who shrugged his shoulders and stood aside, and Mr. Cheshire and I went into the nearest mill room. It was a storeroom, as a matter of fact, the receiving room for the huge bales of coarse yarn spun in another mill. The bales were soft and made excellent beds, a fact that was not overlooked, for two tired Russian mill-workers reposed blissfully on a pile of bales as we passed through, sleeping the sleep of the just. They were not the only sleepers I saw in that mill. Several women were taking naps on piles of cloth near their machines, and a great many of the workers, men and women, might as well have been asleep, for they were doing no work. One woman was displaying a new pair of shoes to a group of other women, who stopped their machines to look. Shoes are so expensive in Russia at present that a new pair is worth looking at, I admit, but they might have postponed the exhibition until closing time. These women stood and discussed the shoes, from every point of view, apparently, nor did they go back to their machines when we stopped and discussed the women. “Do you mean to tell me that you cannot order them back to their work?” I asked. “Oh, I can order them,” was the reply. “But if they choose not to go that would make me look rather foolish, wouldn’t it?” “You could discharge them, couldn’t you?” I countered. “I certainly could not,” declared Mr. Cheshire. “Nobody can discharge an employé until the shop committee has sat on the case and decided that it does not want the man or woman in the mill. All I can do is to make my complaints to the committee and ask it to act.” Mr. Cheshire was born in Russia, and has lived there all his life except for a few years spent in an English school. Yet he speaks the English of his grandfather, the same unmistakable little Lancashire burr. He has the Lancastrian’s sense of humor also and he laughed even when he told me of the demoralization and ruin in which the fantasies of the revolution had plunged his business. The utter absurdity of it was as present in his mind as the disaster. “Look at that man,” he said, pointing to a machine at which a man sat and wound cotton cloth into huge round cylinders. “He and the others at his particular job have had their wages raised to sixteen rubles (about $5.25) a day. Yes, of course. The committee decides on the wage scale. I am not consulted. Even if I were, I should have nothing except a complimentary vote, one against hundreds. That chap gets sixteen rubles a day, and in addition I must hire a girl at four rubles a day to lift the roll of cloth off the machine.” We passed into a print room still discussing the committee. I asked Mr. Cheshire if it was true that these workmen’s committees were highly paid men who performed no service to their employers and still received their regular pay.