Page:Alice Riggs Hunt - Facts About Communist Hungary (1919).djvu/11



Budapest, Hungary, May 27th.—"Ten thousand couples have married in Budapest within the hist two weeks and come to mo for furniture and rooms," said the People's Commissary for Housing, Somlo, in answer to my first question as to the greatest problem for his department. "The business of my department was originally intended only as a clearing house to bring empty rooms and roomless proletarians together, but now that the working man and woman get a living wage with a surplus, they seem to get married very fast. As soon as the knot is tied, they come to this office, not only for rooms, but they must have kitchen utensils and other practical appliances to make the new home habitable. Therefore, I have to open a clearing house for household furniture, socialising the unused furniture of the bourgeois, and making sure that the proletarian brides and bridegrooms get what they need and need what they get." "Does this look as though Communism would abolish the home and encourage free love?" he asked.

"Of the two hundred thousand proletarians in Budapest about one half were living in misery before the revolution," said Commissary Somlo. "The Housing department originally intended to apportion one room to each person, but four rooms are about the maximum we can allow to each family, as eight hundred thousand persons came to Budapest during the war, principally for the purpose of trading in contraband food. These were mostly Galician Jews. The socialising of houses and rooms was therefore further complicated, but the intention of course is to build new houses for the proletarians as soon as materials are available. This office has already awarded twenty-one thousand rooms, and has tried to accommodate all