If in capitalistic society a shortage of labor power marks the most intensive activity of industry, in our own case this has been caused by conditions which are unique and unprecedented in capitalist economic experience. Only part of our industry is at work, and yet there is a shortage of labor power felt in the cities and industrial centers. We observe an exodus of laborers from industrial centers, caused by poor living conditions. Those hundreds of skilled laborers whom we are at present lacking for the most elementary and minimal requirements of industry have gone partly to the country, to labor communes, Soviet farms, producers’ associations, while another part, a very considerable one, serves in the army. _But the proletariat also leaks away to join the ranks of petty profiteers and barter-traders, we are ashamed and sorry to confess._ This fact is being observed and there is no use concealing or denying it. There is also another cause which hurts the industrial life and hinders a systematic organization of work. This is the migration of the workers from place to place in search of better living conditions. All of this, again, is the result of the one fundamental cause--the very critical food situation in the cities and, in general, the hard conditions of life for the industrial proletariat. Finally, some attention must be given to the speech of Lenin, reported in _Izvestia_, January 29, 1920. Discussing the question whether industry should be administered by a “collegium” or by a single individual clothed with absolute authority, Lenin defended the latter as the only practical method, illustrating his case by reference to the Red Army. The Soviet organization in the army was well enough at first, as a start, but the system of administration has now become “administration by a single individual as the only proper method of work.” He explains this point in the following words: Administration by “colleges” as the basic type of the organization of the Soviet administration presents in itself something fundamental and necessary for the first stage when it is necessary to build anew. But with the establishing of more stable forms, a transition to practical work is bound up with administration by a single individual, a system which, most of all, assures the best use of human powers and a real and not verbal control of work.