"City and country food speculation, which the dictatorship thus far confesses its inability to suppress or even control, is fast developing a new capitalist class right under the Communists' noses. One of the most painful sights in Russia is some pale, thin, tottering old woman paying out more than she earns in a week for a few lumps of sugar bought from a well-fed trader from the country in the Sukfarevka, Moscow's open air market place."
Eighthly, the common people are nearly as cold as they are hungry. In the cable printed in the "World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
"Fuel is slightly less scarce than it was two months ago. The lack of heat, however, is helping the food shortage to increase the mortality rate, which is likely to attain 30 per cent in Moscow before spring."
In the ninth place, disease stalks through the land, hand in hand with cold and famine. The article just cited contains the following by Eyre:
"Disease is rampant, and the typhus epidemic in Siberia, where Kolchak left many tens of thousands of victims behind him in his retreat, is spreading swiftly westward. Owing to the absence of medical supplies, the epidemic can be combated only by quarantine."
In the tenth place, "labor" in Russia, the real "working class," is conscripted, enslaved under military discipline, and "exploited" under an incredible system of military court martial--a degradation of workingmen by the Socialist tyrants of Russia which no form of modern "capitalism" has dreamed of since human slavery was abolished. On this subject Eyre says, in the "World" of February 27, 1920: