Page:Alice Riggs Hunt - Facts About Communist Hungary (1919).djvu/20

 movement was fairly well developed in most villages before the revolution, and was generally modelled upon the English system.

Matyas Rakosi, the People's Commissary for Commerce and Foreign trade, states that there are at present in Budapest, English, French, Austrian and American commissioners with a view to making import and export agreements with the Communist Republic. He is organizing both the import and export trade such as it is at present, and expects to export wine, cereals, fruit and hides to Austria within a short time, in return for articles which Hungary needs. He has organized councils of workmen in the wholesale trade, and has limited the small shop keeper in his power to buy supplies, and his ability to pay for them through the socialised bank account. In his plan for the control of the distribution of future imports, he has classified all persons into one of six groups.

"My greatest problem is the devising of a plan of distribution, so that the most needful gets the imports first. For this purpose I distribute different coloured cards. Women with babies are in the first class, the sick are second, older children third, the families of red soldiers come fourth, the physical workers come fifth, and the bourgeoisie who must establish their need for the article come last. By the word bourgeois I mean those who do not work. In the same manner I am planning to regulate the distribution of goods in the order of greatest need. Therefore clothes are the first commodity to be distributed, then shoes, then kitchen utensils, etc. My object of course being to supply the neediest with their most pressing needs."