CHAPTER XIX
WHY COTTON CLOTH IS SCARCE
When I got on the train to leave Russia for the United States the first familiar face I saw was that of Mr. Daniel Cheshire, mill owner and operator of Petrograd. “I’m going home to England to enlist,” he said, as we shook hands.
“What have you done with your mills?” I asked.
“I have left them to the Tavarishi,” replied Mr. Cheshire, “I thought I might as well.”
Daniel Cheshire is not the only large manufacturer who has abandoned his business after a vain struggle to cope with the situation created by the Russian revolution, and the taking over by the working people of the control of industry. Others have given up the struggle, and many more will probably follow their example. But Mr. Cheshire’s story I know at first hand. His abandonment of his mills is full of significance, partly because of the importance of his branch of manufacturing, and partly because his act may hasten the day when, through sheer lack of the necessities of life, the Russian people will cease pursuing their utopian dream and will content themselves with a government which, although still capitalistic, will rescue them from starvation and ruin.
Those who think of Russia as a land of snow and ice will be interested to learn that in Turkestan and Transcaucasia as well as in other provinces of the south and east, they raise millions of pounds of very good cotton, the seeds of which originally came from America. Those who think that every Russian peasant does nothing but farm will be surprised to hear that over a million Russians work in textile mills, principally cotton textiles.
When cotton spinning and weaving began in Russia the mill owners, in most cases, sent to England for their foremen and managers, and the descendants of some of these Englishmen still live and still manage cotton mills in Russia. The Cheshire family is a case in point. The original Cheshire went out from Manchester in the 1840’s to manage a small cotton spinning factory in Petrograd. He saved money, bought a partnership and enlarged the business. His sons enlarged it still more, and to-day his grandchildren own and operate ten large cotton mills in and around Petrograd. Daniel Cheshire, a keen young man of thirty-something, is head of the family and chief owner of the mills. That is, he was up to February, 1917. After that he wasn’t. The Tavarishi, or “comrades,” whose wages he paid, became the virtual owners then, and on August 30, 1917, they became, temporarily at least, the sole owners.
It was in one of the Cheshire cotton mills that I got the most intimate view of what becomes of industry when the workers own their tools. Perhaps it would be fairer to say, when the workers seize their tools. Some day, perhaps, they will find out how to own them honestly and then they will use them wisely and for the common good.
It was a happy accident that first led me into a Cheshire cotton