If we had reason to fear last year for the working of our transport, the complaints of its inefficiency being well grounded, matters have become considerably worse during the period under report. Water transport is by no means in a better position, whilst of haulage transport there is no need to speak.... The consuming needs of the workmen have not been even remotely satisfied, either in the last year or in the current year, by the Commissariat of Food Supply, _the main source of food-supply of the workmen being speculation and free market_. But even the latter source of food-supply of the workmen in manufacturing districts is becoming more and more inaccessible. Besides the fact that prices have soared up to a much greater extent than the controlled rates of wages, we see the almost complete disappearance of food articles from working-center markets. _Of recent times, even pilgrimage to villages is of no avail. The villages will not part with food for money even at high prices._ What they demand is articles of which the workers are no less in need. Hence the workers’ escape from the factories (_220_). Unfortunately, a good many of the concerns enumerated [in the Tula District] do not work or work only with half the output, in spite of the fact that 20 of the shafts working yield considerable quantities of coal, 10 mines supply much raw material (15 milliard poods of minerals are estimated to be lying in this district), whilst there is also a large number of broken lathes and machinery which can, however, be repaired. Bread for the workers could also be found, if all efforts were strained (the district used to export corn in peace-time). All these possibilities are not carried into life, as there are no people who could by their intense will and sincere desire restore the iron discipline of labor. Our institutions are filled with “Sovburs” and “Speks,” who only think of their own welfare and not of the welfare of the state and of making use of the revolutionary possibilities of the “toilers in revolt.” In the light of this terrible evidence we can readily believe what Zinoviev wrote in an article contributed to the _Severnaya Communa_ in January of this year. In that article he said: “King Famine seems to be putting out his tongue at the proletariat of Petrograd and their families.... Of late I have been receiving, one after another, starving delegations from working men and women. They do not protest, nor do they make any demands; they merely point out, with silent reproach, the present intolerable state of affairs.”