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THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

that the new plows and rakes were being produced at higher cost than the same articles could be imported from abroad. They then set to work to change the machinery and speed it up. Machines and ships were brought in for repairs. When a contract was not completed at the end of the eight-hour day, the foreman would state the condition of the work and the extra hours required. The men, taking new pride in fast work, often voted to stick by the job, even if it took all night. With this went a vote of increase of pay to the foreman.

Under the old administration most of the workers lived from one to three hours' journey from the factory. The Committee started the building of new workers' quarters. Numerous devices were introduced to save time and energy. The long line of employes, waiting in turn to receive their pay envelopes, was abolished by appointing one man to receive the pay for every two hundred.

Unfortunately among the men elected was one who could resist everything but temptation. Having received the two hundred pay envelopes, he started out to distribute them. Then he thought better of it. No one knows how it happened. Some of the men said that some bourgeois devil must have whispered into the ears of this weak comrade, and driven from his mind all thought of his family, his shop, and the Revolution. At any rate he was found later beside some empty vodka bottles with his pockets empty,