RUSSIA

Hokitika Guardian, 4 August 1931, Page 3

RUSSIA

UNDER NEW DEGREE. United Press Association- By FJectru Telegraph. —Uopj righi. ) MOSCOW, August 2. A decree has been issued for the improving of the living conditions of the engineering and technical workers, who are. to be given equality with industrial workers regarding housing, health insurance, food rations, and the supply oi manufactured articles. The decree also prohibits the reduction of their salaries when they are transferred to managerial or ."higher grade posts, while the progressive income tax on the salaries exceeding five hundred roubles monthly is abolished, and it is replaced by a tax amounting to 3{ per cent, on the total cost of the maintenance of the children ol the intelligentsia. The children of the later are also to be admitted to the schools similarly to the workers’ offspring.

STALIN’S ABILITY

LONDON. August 3

Mr G. B. Shaw, in his interview, said that M. Stalin, the Soviet President, was a man of great ability. Hu was far abler than those who were running capitalism. Mr Shaw said he disagreed decisively with Mr H. G. Wells’s recently-ex-pressed view that the Soviet’s Five Year Plan would fail. The idea that it was going to break down now. after what it had gone through, was simply foolish. In all of the prophecies of Russia’s failure, the wish was father to the thought. Russia was all right. “It is we who are all wrong,” he added.

MR SHAW'S QUALIFICATIONS

LONDON, August 3

“Mr Shaw makes a practice of cultivating the unexpected. He is a good crank. It would be an irreparable loss to England if lie goes to live in Russia, but would it not be an unqualified gain to M. StalinJ”