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 locality and industrial councils assemble to review and organize the work of the whole mechanism.

An important factor in the organization of Russian industry is the national Department of Workers' and Peasants' Control. This is a sort of national audit committee and, like many other institutions in present-day Russia, it has no parallel anywhere else in the world. In capitalist countries the checking-up of the financial and efficiency sides of industry and society in general is done by a multitude of auditors and experts attached to the various institutions and working more or less independently of each other. In Russia all this checking-up force is organized and combined in one body, the Workers' and Peasants' Control. It is a very large organization with ramifications everywhere. It is constructed according to the usual Soviet pattern through a series of ever-higher-rising delegate bodies, beginning with the rank and file in the shops and fields and running up to the top of the national department. The general function of the Workers' and Peasants' Control is to look after all social institutions—political, industrial, educational, etc.—and to see to it that they are operated efficiently and honestly. The hand of the Workers' and Peasants' Control is everywhere in all shops and factories. Although the recommendations of its agents lack actual legislative force, they are given much consideration and form a powerful directive force in the management of Russian industry.

Theoretically at least, the industries are still run upon a monetary basis. Their financing is attended to by the Department of Finance. This body also conducts the national treasury and issues the currency.

On the human side of industry, that is the part dealing with the rights and relationships of the workers therein, several departments and independent organizations come into play. At this place the most important for us are the Department of Labor, the trade unions and the Communist Party—the co-operatives playing but a minor part in the nationalized type of industry which we are considering.

The Russian Department of Labor is what its name signifies: an institution to function in the interests of the toilers. Unlike the fake labor departments of other countries, it is a vigorous organization striving