"soldiers of the army and navy"-apparently intended to apply to all up to a certain official rank. The peasant and we must always mentally translate this into our American equivalent, "farmer"who employed as much as a single hand to help was not permitted to vote. No minister of the gospel was entitled to vote. No professional person, such as a doctor, dentist, architect, or lawyer, who employed as much as a single stenographer, or an office elerk, could vote. The keeper of a public garage; the petty contractor; the small shopkeeper-these and many other occupational groups were altogether excluded. This constitution excluded from the franchise perhaps as many as sixty-five or seventy per cent of the peasants, taking the most moderate estimates. It disfranchised that part of the farming class of that great farming nation which was most vitally important, the most intelligent, prosperous and successful. It enfranchised that part of the farming class that was least important, the unsuccessful ones, the wrecks and failures, the shiftless.

Freedom of speech and assemblage, and the freedom of the press, which the Bolsheviki, like all other Socialists, had invariably championed in the past, were entirely swept away. No party other than the Bolshevist party could legally exist. The only press permitted was the press of the Soviet Government and its departments and the press of the Bolshevist

party. To the latter, be it noted, subscription was not optional, but obligatory. In other words, it was a forced assessment or tax, for non-payment of which sharp punishment was the rule.

In

Under the constitution, there was one representative for every 125 soldiers, one for every 1000 factory workers and two for every Volost, or union of peasants' villages. A Volost rarely had less than 15,000 inhabitants and sometimes as many as 100,000. other words, even the votes of those farmers who were permitted to vote, were subject to a great discount, one farmer's vote being equal to one-eightieth of a soldier's vote and one-tenth of an industrial worker's vote.

Election to the Soviet Government, that is to the supreme body, was not direct, but indirect. Power descended to the voters through a most complicated hierarchy. No modern constitutional government is as far removed from direct election by and responsibility to the people. Whenever it has suited their purpose, this constitution has been abrogated, or suspended, as to its fundamental provisions no less than to minor ones. Taking the period as a whole, by arbitrary action, the actual political system has, under pressure, been broadened beyond the instrument. But at times for considerable periods, rigid enforcement has prevailed.

When we turn from the political life to the economic, we find quite similar contradictions of every principle that the Bolsheviki had ever avowed, contradictions, likewise, between successive phases of the regime, indicating in part a healthy and commendable opportunism, a readiness to subordinate theories to the facts of experience, and in part the complete failure of Bolshevist theories when submitted to the acid test of practical application.

During the agitation against the Kerensky Provisional Government the Bolsheviki had used the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" as a means of rallying the discontented to their side. They had demanded that in the factories, for example, all authority of every kind be given to the Soviets, the Soviets of the individual factories being represented in the central Soviet of the city or town. The central Soviet would determine the regulations for the industrial workers of the city or town, the divisional soviets would regulate the occupational groups within the limitations prescribed as above, and the shop or factory soviet would regulate the individual establishment within the limitations provided as already described.

Already, under the Kerensky regime, by reason of submission to this fantastic plan, production had declined at an alarming pace. Any worker in a factory

who felt like it could give a signal for all hands to stop in order that some subject he was interested in might he discussed. Foremen were generally abolished, their functions assumed by committees of employees. If a man at a lathe had to be given instructions, for example, a committee representing every branch of the employees had to wait upon him for that purpose; to discharge a girl at a loom, a meeting of the factory soviet must be had, and so on through a long list of absurdities.

They made themselves responsible for the policy of "all power to the Soviets," and the corollary policy tersely summed up in the phrase "Down with the Bourgeoisie!"which in practice meant driving out the skilled managers, technical directors and others upon whose specialized functional abilities so much depended. In no country in the world could such a system have produced anything but disaster. In Russia, with its special limitations due to industrial backwardness, the disaster was greater, as well as swifter in coming.

At the outset we see the Soviet regime remorsely persecuting the bourgeois elements that were indispensable to the existence of the national life, driving out the men whose knowledge and experience alone could save the State. The brutal ferocity with which this policy was pursued is almost beyond imagination

or belief. The Terror of the French Revolution was almost a child's play by comparison. Then, menaced by complete starvation, we see the Soviet regime bringing back the survivors of the class it had nearly exterminated. We see the principles of personal authority re-introduced in the industrial system, and even carried to an extreme unknown elsewhere in the world; industrial absolutism unmitigated by any of those forces which play so large a part in countries where progressive legislation, trades unions, and democratic ideals are factors.

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The eight hour workday gave place to a day of ten hours. Overtime, which had been done away with, was made compulsory. Piecework, which had been declared abolished forever, was re-established. The strictest system of "scientific management" was introduced, though applied without any great amount of intelligence. Even conscription, usually confined to military service, was made to apply to industrial service also. In a word, industry under the Soviet State swung from excessive and self-destroying freedom to a form of servitude unparalleled in any nation in modern times. Not ward von 6th 5 And yet production in every department of industry lagged far behind the pre-revolutionary standards and the standards of capitalist industrial enterprise. The demoralization, which the Bolshevist leaders had