THE SHORTAGE OF MEN



In the preceding chapter I wrote of Russia's many wants, and
of the processes visibly at work, tending to make her
condition worse and not better. But I wrote of things, not
of people. I wrote of the shortage of this and of that, but
not of the most serious of all shortages, which, while itself
largely due to those already discussed, daily intensifies them,
and points the way to that further stage of decay which is
threatened in the near future in Russia, and, in the more
distant future in Europe. I did not write of the shortage
deterioration of labor.


Shortage of labor is not peculiar to Russia. It is among the
postwar phenomena common to all countries. The war and
its accompanying eases have cost Europe, including Russia,
an enormous number of able-bodied men. Many millions of
others have lost the habit of regular work.German
industrialists complain that they cannot get labor, and that
when they get it, it is not productive. I heard complaints on
the same subject in England. But just as the economic crisis,
due in the first instance to the war and the isolation it
imposed, has gone further in Russia than elsewhere, so the
shortage of labor, at present a handicap, an annoyance in
more fortunate countries, is in Russia perhaps the greatest of