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 engineers with German methods; the French plants with French management, etc., and nearly all of them imported their machinery from their own countries. There was no standardization anywhere. When the revolution came nearly all these foreign experts went home. For the inexperienced Russian workers, who are only a degree removed from peasantry, the deserted plants, destitute of skilled management, complicated by widely-differing operating systems, and with machinery coming from all over the world, were but little better than so much junk for along time. Many Russian engineers and industrial experts followed the example of their foreigner associates and emigrated. And the majority of those who stayed behind might as well have gone also, because they either went on permanent strike or developed into inveterate sabotagers.

This general defection of the experts and technicans was a grave calamity for industry, and the situation was much worsened by the fact that the revolution literally devoured the skilled mechanics, the only elements who could possibly take the place of the runaway engineers. These skilled workers, because of their intelligence and superior militancy, had to bear the burden of the early revolutionary struggles. Thousands of them perished in the various civil wars, and other thousands were taken from industry altogether and placed in the new Government, political, industrial, and military administration, which was shrieking for help. Other multitudes of them were lost by their wandering off to settle in the country during the periods of extreme economic dislocation.

Consequent upon the loss of so many experts and skilled workers, Russian industry has been decapitated, so to speak. To a very large extent its fate now rests in the hands of the least experienced elements of a particularly inexperienced working class, although desperate efforts are being made to produce, in the trade union and other technical schools, a new crop of skilled workers and industrial experts. This factor alone—the loss of so much industrial skill—would have prevented any real efficiency in the mills, mines, and factories.

Added to the foregoing factors tending to check industrial production was another of prime importance. This was the profound change wrought in labor dis-