There is a significant angle to the smashing and burning that has gone on in Russia--an angle which the American working man should bear in mind when he is told that Russian Bolshevists are on the right track for turning a _moujik_ into a magnate over night. Russia is a great producer of raw material. Smashed machinery there means that whatever raw material escapes destruction must seek a foreign market. Naturally, if such material cannot be sold to a Russian factory, the factory abroad buys it much cheaper than if there were a home demand for it. Also, smashed machinery in Russia means no production in Russia of manufactured goods; and no manufactured goods in Russia means that the very working men who smashed the machinery must buy goods manufactured abroad. Further, if there are no goods manufactured in Russia, the foreign manufacturer makes his own prices, both for what he buys from Russia and what he sells to her. In other words, he gets raw materials from her at low prices, and sells manufactured goods to her at high prices. This forces all Russian labor, skilled as well as unskilled, into working at low wages on the production of raw materials, and the cost of the raw materials is constantly being pulled down because, with no Russian demand for factory-skilled labor, there is a surplus of labor. So the Russian manufacturing capitalist is wiped out, sure enough, along with all machinery. Also, in time, Russian skilled labor will be wiped out! And for this condition of affairs, Russians can thank themselves! Germany realized how crude were her methods when she sent to Belgium and France a force that, operating behind her fighting men, wrecked or burned factories, and seized raw material. That was a job she did herself, and she had to take the blame of the whole world for it. She had to devise a scheme by which she could get the same results elsewhere without having to bear any blame. That scheme was Bolshevism. The craftiest criminals always use fools as their tools. And in Bolshevism Germany found the _Ersatz_, or substitute, for an army of thieving and destroying Germans. It has been estimated that more than a million Germans are prisoners of war in Russia. These men whispered anti-capitalistic propaganda into the ear of the poor _moujik_, who wants education so badly that he is willing to burn school books, and who thinks he can attain freedom by ripping off wall-paper. And the _moujik_, under skillful leadership, did Germany’s work, and did it for nothing. That same Ivan who had died by millions to beat the Germans ran home from the trenches and wrecked his own country to the Kaiser’s taste, at the Kaiser’s word--wrecked it more thoroughly than the German armies would have been able to wreck it. For he smashed everything but the ikons and the rubber-plants. Why he did not destroy the rubber-plants we cannot understand. Is it because Germany does not wish to sell rubber-plants to Russia?