lly kept store of gold shows
that the Bolshevist dictators are not insane but criminal. They
understand their game, which is that of bunco-steering to "exploit"
labor on the largest scale the world has ever seen. Honest paper money
is a promise to pay, for value received, in gold, silver or good
merchandise. If this form is used by these frauds, it is with the
deliberate intention of repudiation, the possibility of payment being
also destroyed by the floods of the stuff turned out. If the paper given
is not a promise to pay, it is circulated simply through the tyranny of
men who by threat of punishment or starvation force workingmen to
exchange a day's labor for a bit of food and a piece of paper. In either
case the labor exploiters in the Kremlin exact from Russia's workingmen,
in exchange for a little food and a wad of paper, a genuine value, the
product of hard labor, which these get-rich-quick Wallingfords can turn
into gold, or exchange with the world for anything they want. All that
Russian workingmen get is semi-starvation and the temporary delusion,
conveyed to them in fine speeches, that they are "in the game," whereas
they are only its dupes.

The worthless character of the paper money, which the workmen
nevertheless have to take and spend to keep soul and body together, is
shown by the fact that the peasants refuse it. In his cable printed in
the "New York World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says that "the peasant
twenty miles outside of Moscow ... has more food than he can eat, more
clothes than he can wear," yet "refuses to sell his products for money
except that proportion of them that he is compelled to turn over to the
Soviets at a fixed price. In private trading," Eyre continues, "he will
take in exchange for his foodstuffs only manufactured articles, clothing
and other things he needs." Thus the peasant is fortunate in that he
lives on land where he can at least raise enough to eat; whereas the
"proletarian," in whose behalf the Socialists pretend to have made the
Russian revolution, is most of all victimized by it.

The reason why the Bolshevist dictators are now conscripting Russian
labor seems evident. These pick-pockets have finished exploiting the
Russian aristocracy and "bourgeoisie," squeezed them dry, and squandered
what they stole. The only game left to them now is to exploit labor to
the limit and appropriate the profits.

Two other features of this thimble-rigging arrangement complete the
e