enough cows to supply milk to the whole child population of Moscow,
although what I had come to see was children's sanatoria, not farms.
All kinds of food can be bought in the market at high prices. I
travelled over a considerable extent of Russian railways, and saw a
fair number of goods trains. For all these reasons, I feel convinced
that the share of the transport problem in the food difficulties has
been exaggerated. Of course transport plays a larger part in the
shortage in Petrograd than in Moscow, because food comes mainly from
south of Moscow. In Petrograd, most of the people one sees in the
streets show obvious signs of under-feeding. In Moscow, the visible
signs are much less frequent, but there is no doubt that
under-feeding, though not actual starvation, is nearly universal.

The Government supplies rations to every one who works in the towns at
a very low fixed price. The official theory is that the Government has
a monopoly of the food and that the rations are sufficient to sustain
life. The fact is that the rations are not sufficient, and that they
are only a portion of the food supply of Moscow. Moreover, people
complain, I do not know how truly, that the rations are delivered
irregularly; some say, about every other day. Under these
circumstances, almost everybody, rich or poor, buys food in the
market, where it costs about fifty times the fixed Government price.
A pound of butter costs about a month's wages. In order to be able to
afford extra food, people adopt various expedients. Some do additional
work, at extra rates, after their official day's work is over. For,
though there is supposed to be by law an eight-hours day, extended to
ten in certain vital industries, the wage paid for it is not a living
wage, and there is nothing to prevent a man from undertaking other
work in his spare time. But the usual resource is what is called
"speculation," i.e., buying and selling. Some person formerly rich