as well as from the inadequacy of the transport to bring to
factories the material they need. People remind each other
that during the war the Germans, when similarly hard put to
it for clothes, made paper dresses, table-cloths, etc. In
Russia the nets used in paper-making are worn out. At last,
in April, 1920 (so Lenin told me), there seemed to be a hope
of getting new ones from abroad. But the condition of the
paper industry is typical of all, in a country which, it should
not be forgotten, could be in a position to supply wood-pulp
for other countries besides itself. The factories are able to
produce only sixty per cent. of demands that have
previously, by the strictest scrutiny, been reduced to a
minimum before they are made. The reasons, apart from
the lack of nets and cloths, are summed up in absence of
food, forage and finally labor. Even when wood is brought
by river the trouble is not yet overcome. The horses are
dead and eaten or starved and weak. Factories have to cease
working so that the workmen, themselves underfed, can drag
the wood from the barges to the mills. It may well be
imagined what the effect of hunger, cold, and the
disheartenment consequent on such conditions of work and
the seeming hopelessness of the position have on the
productivity of labor, the fall in which reacts on all the
industries, on transport, on the general situation and so again

on itself.


Mr. J. M. Keynes, writing with Central Europe in his
mind (he is, I think, as ignorant of Russia as I am of