Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/46

 police was formed, the Imperial police having all disappeared. The rejoicings lasted about a week. The first Sunday was a holiday of holidays. The whole town was out parading. The garrison joined. All the local societies were out. We took a pride in falling in line too. The Czechs in the factories numbered nearly 3,000. There were 1,700 in our facfory, 600 at the foundery, 400 in the tannery, and a number of others scattered in different establishments. We celebrated the Russian Revolution with our own banners and marched behind the Russians. After about a week an effort was made to get the men to resume steady work. The men asked privileges. They had held meetings to demand new conditions, These were a rise in wages, shorter hours, and the right to choose their own foremen! Men who had been getting 10 roubles a day demanded 30; helps who had 3 roubles wanted 9; those who got only kopeks wanted roubles! I was to get 20 kopeks a day as an apprentice. I, too wanted a rise!

The factory belonged to a company with headquarters at Reval. They sent word that some concessions were to be made, but, naturally not to the extent the men demanded. The men took matters into their own hands, and discharged the director. He resisted, of, course, but eventually the company had to remove him. The foremen were removed by the men without consulting the directors of the company. A foreman who was disliked was simply placed by the men on a wheelbarrow and ignominiously wheeled out of the workshop and dumped in the yard.

Things went from bad to worse. The workmen got into the habit of idling. There was no authority in the shops. The Czechs continued working as before but this did not please the Russians. They said that the Czechs were doing too much work. Some of the ringleaders came round and hinted to us that we ought to do as they did, and not overwork ourselves. We did not like this interference. Our men continued to do their duty. I learned that the same things were happening in other factories and towns. Most of the technical work at that time was done by our engineers, who had volunteered to work instead of remaining in the prison camps. At Tsaritsin, Mariapol, and many factories near Kieff and Rostoff the Czechs had become directors. At Simferopol Kherson, and most of the works in the Crimea our men began to form the majority of the workers. In the Ural region they worked in the iron and coal mines, and tens of thousands were cutting wood in the forests. At Nijni Novgorod they loaded and unloaded the boats. Our engineers also took an important part in the construction of the railway in Murmansk.

Perhaps the factories would have continued to work with a tolerable amount of regularity had the first revolution not been followed by others.