Page:Alice Riggs Hunt - Facts About Communist Hungary (1919).djvu/14

 decision is made by the workers' own representatives, elected and recallable by them, this mistake is more apt to be rectified than under the old system when the factory owner made the rules."

"The Control Council meets twice a week at least, and two of the members devote all their time to its business, receiving the pay of the highest paid skilled workers in lieu of their wage for factory work. This council reports once a week to a government representative on its activities, and once a month to the trade councils."

Antol Pollak, the co-inventor with Vireg of the Pollak-Vireg system of rapid telegraphy, is a workman in this factory. His system increased the efficiency of the old Morse system from forty thousand words an hour to six hundred words a second over the same wire at the same time. Since the second revolution he has been installed in a private office of his own, where I found him closely absorbed, bending over some electrical appliances. His face on one side is badly mutilated by an accident during some of his experiments. "From America!" he said in very good English. "Well now I have a little grudge against America, because a long time ago, I went over there to try to sell a contrivance of mine. They told me it was no good, but after my return to Hungary, it was patented by the firm with which I had consulted and has been used ever since. That is the way they used to treat inventors here also, and workmen were forced to pledge their inventions to the firm, as they do still in America. Now, however, the inventor knows that not only one, but all factories will have the benefit of his discoveries."