“The Commissary of Commissaries gets only five hundred rubles a month,” one committee told some workmen who were demanding an increase. “Surely you do not want to take more from your government than Lenin takes.” This argument won. The salary decree provided that an additional hundred rubles a month should be paid to each commissary for each dependent member of his family. Under these terms, Lenin received only five hundred rubles, while Trotzky, who had a dependent wife and two children, received eight hundred. Five hundred rubles was equivalent in January to about fifty dollars gold, but its purchasing power was even less. The workers in government-owned industries, such as posts, telegraphs, and railroads, were given the same right of control as the workers in privately owned industries. Organs of the press “appealing to open resistance to the government, or sowing disturbance by means of slander or distortion of facts,” or inciting to criminal action, were decreed subject to suspension. This prohibitive legislation was so contrary to revolutionary ideas that the Soviet, in passing the decree, apologized in the following terms: “The Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government asks the population to turn its attention upon the fact that in our modern society the wealthy classes, hiding behind liberal screens, have the possibility of seizing in their hands the lion’s share of the public press, and by means of it freely poison the brains and consciences of the masses. To leave it in enemy hands at such a time, when it is not less dangerous than bombs and machine-guns, is out of the question. That is the reason those temporary but necessary measures of stopping the stream of dirt and slander were taken. The yellow and green press would drown with pleasure our young victory in this stream. As the new order will become consolidated, every administrative oppression of the press will be suspended.” The press became more and more vituperative against the Soviet government, and published, in addition to the accounts of existing chaos, countless rumors of outrages that never happened. In retaliation, the government decreed advertising to be a public monopoly, and permitted publication of advertisements in government organs only. In America such a provision would mean the annihilation of the press; but in Russia, where circulation rather than advertisement is the source of revenue, its effect was less drastic, and opposition papers continued to be published. Suppressed one day, they came out the next under a new name. A paper called the _Day_ was published as the _Night_, the _Midnight_, the _Two A. M._, and took various other liberties with the clock.