Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/71



O far I have indicated the main factors in the economic exhaustion of Russia caused by the war. But for a thorough understanding of the situation which led up to the Revolution it is necessary also to consider the lesser factors.

One of these lesser factors was the growth of speculation and profiteering immediately the war broke out. I have already referred to the crowd of speculators who flocked to Scandinavia and Roumania directly after the outbreak of war to obtain substitutes for goods previously imported from or through Germany. In spite of a certain rapaciousness in their methods and their real "war appetite," these speculators performed on the whole a useful economic function. They helped to increase the imports of goods at a time when those imports were a most vital need to the State, and no doubt the energy and enterprise of these men to a large extent helped to mitigate the crisis. Indeed, as I indicated in the third chapter, the restriction and the so-called "regulation" of the imports by the Government even worked to the detriment of the national economy.

But there were others, whose speculations had no conceivable positive economic value, since they did not increase the quantity of necessary goods in the country. Their number was enormous and their activity ruinous. Speculation became a matter of everyday life in Russia. Everybody speculated. The manufacturer, the banker, the merchant, the shop-keeper—all of them speculated. But so also did every clerk in the manufacturer's office, every clerk at the bank, the shop-assistants, the railway officials and the staff of transport companies. The stockbrokers speculated professionally, the middlemen