Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/287

Rh too. When he recovered from his happiness he was brought before the Shop Committee and charged with breach of revolutionary honor and treason to the Military Port.

The Grand Session of the Revolutionary Tribunal was held in the main shop, with 1 50 men on the jury. The verdict was "Guilty!" The jury was asked to vote on one of the three following sentences: (1) Summary dismissal. (2) Dismissal, with wages to his wife and children continued. (3) Pardon and reinstatement.

Proposition number two was carried, thus attaching a definite stigma to the culprit's dereliction, but at the same time saving his family from hardship. This did not bring back the money to the unfortunate two hundred, so the fifteen hundred voted to divide among themselves the loss of the two hundred.

In their new experiments the workingmen made many costly blunders. But their verdict upon the Soviet as a whole was that it had made good. Toward the mistakes of the Soviet they took the same attitude a man takes toward his own mistakes—a very lenient one.

Out of their experience the workers gained confidence. They found that they could organize industry; they found they could increase production, and with the Soviet daily entrenching itself in the economic field they began to fell a sense of elation. They would have been still more elated had it not