revolutionaries had hoped to make unnecessary. It is bad
from the revolutionary point of view if a workman is so
employed, but it is no less bad from the point of view of
people who do not care twopence about the revolution one
way or the other, but do care about getting Russia on her
feet again and out of her economic crisis. It is bad
enough if an unskilled workman is so employed. It is far
worse if a skilled workman finds he can do better for himself
as a "food speculator" than by the exercise of his legitimate
craft. From mines, from every kind of factory come
complaints of the decreasing proportion of skilled to
unskilled workmen. The superior intelligence of the skilled
worker offers him definite advantages should he engage in
these pursuits, and his actual skill gives him other advantages
in the villages. He can leave his factory and go to the
village, there on the spot to ply his trade or variations of it,

when as a handy man, repairing tools, etc., he will make an
easy living and by lessening the dependence of the village on
the town do as much as the "food speculator" in worsening
the conditions of the workman he has left behind.


And with that we come to the general changes in the social
geography of Russia which are threatened if the processes
now at work continue unchecked. The relations between
town and village are the fundamental problem of the
revolution. Town and countryside are in sharp contradiction
daily intensified by the inability of the towns to supply
the country's needs. The town may be considered as a single