POVERTY IN RUSSIA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 831, 27 November 1929, Page 13

POVERTY IN RUSSIA

VISITING MINERS ILL AFTER FOOD

Poverty, filth, low wages, food scarcity, bad housing and inefficiency are the impressions brought back from Russia by Mr. R. Southan, g schoolmaster, who accompanied a delegation of two Kent miners on a tour of the Soviet mining areas. Mr. Southan described his experience to an audience of miners of the Tilinanstone Collieries, Kent, at a meeting near Dover. He saw in Moscow, he said, “such terrible sights of poverty as are almost indescribable.” Streets were lined with thousands of beggars, who came into restaurants to gather scraps, and even to pick bones left on plates. Everyone was rationed for bread and sugar. Even in the officers’ mess in which he dined as a guest the food was so bad tha.t both he and one of his companions were ill for some days. Mr. W. Roome, who is a working miner and one of the delegation, said: “W r hen we asked a Russian family to sing one of their national songs they said they 1 had nothing to sing about. One person told us that if they could come to England they would be satisfied to live in the workhouse.” The housing accommodation was very bad, and in some cases families lived and slept in one room. There were many thousands of unemployed in Moscow. Sanitation was dreadful and there were flies by the million. Describing a visit to a mine, Mr. Roome remarked; “On our way through the village we were shown shacks which used to house the miners in the old days. The officials who were conducting us through the village told us that they were kept thus standing as a reminder of the people of bygone times, but on going a little farther we saw exactly the same shacks occupied by miners, thereby leading me to believe that they took us to be green.” Mr. Roome said he formed the opinion that a good deal of what he saw had been staged for the benefit of the delegation. For instance, when he visited a regiment of the Red Army, he found officers playing dominoes with their men. He was taken round one of the rest houses where miners take their annual holiday. He asked if the peasants vrere also allowed a holiday. He was told that they were if they paid their union contribution. “We asked how many peasants there were in the home and were told none, so we thought a good deal.