Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/153

 compulsion on them to join the Co-operative Society, and there is no longer the attraction of the dividend; but as theirs is the monopoly of bread, and the only other source of supply is the outlawed "speculator," whose charges are prohibitive—four hundred roubles for a pound of black bread—it is obvious that the freedom is illusory.

Similarly with the Trade Unions. Technically, I suppose, there is no compulsion to join a Trade Union; but as it is impossible to live unless one does, since the more important part of the pay is in the food given to a worker and his family, and since such privileges as tickets for supplies of boots and clothing and other necessaries and free passes for the theatres and the concert-halls are supplied through the Trade Unions, or the Soviets, which are largely Trade Union in character, the wise man does not care to remain outside. These facts may account for the phenomenal increase in Trade Union membership, which is said to have leapt to nearly five million during the last three years. Five millions out of a population made up of eighty-five per cent peasants is a very considerable proportion of the industrial population, and constitutes a miraculous conversion of the multitude on any other supposition than the one I suggest.

And by all these signs we learn what the