evere repercussions to the economy.

After twenty-five years of forced draft economic development, the
country in 1967 was described by a correspondent of a European journal
as a mixture of the fourteenth and twentieth centuries, where oxen and
buffaloes were to be seen side by side with modern foreign-made
tractors, and where a policeman directed traffic in the main square of
the capital city like a conductor waving his baton at a nonexistent
orchestra.

After a visit in the fall of 1969, a specialist on Balkan affairs
reported that austerity and regimentation were still the rule despite a
substantial measure of economic progress achieved during the period of
independence. He also expressed the view that Albania undoubtedly
remained the poorest country in Europe but that the economic and social
advances attained could be envied by the countries of the Near East.

LABOR

Although economic development is still in its infancy, growing concern
has been officially expressed about the adequacy of the labor force to
meet the needs of industrialization and of expanding social services
without adversely affecting agricultural production. The main cause of
the incipient labor shortage is low productivity owing to a lack of
industrial experience, a low level of mechanization, and the survival of
backward traditional methods in agriculture. Officially, low
productivity has been ascribed to poor labor discipline and inefficient
management arising from an inadequately developed sense of political and
social responsibility. It has also been blamed on a failure of manpower
planning and on the relaxation of central controls over enterprise
funds.

At the end of 1969 the Central Committee of the Party adopted a decision
on means for correcting this situation. An important element of the
program is the education and political indoctrination of the workers.
This task is a major function of the trade unions, which are primarily a
political arm of the Party for the control of labor, without any
significant responsibilities in the field of labor relations (see ch. 6,
Government Structure and Political System).

In 1967, the last year for which official employment data are available,
the working-age population comprised 932,000 persons, 739,200 of whom
were actually employed. The number of employed did not include roughly
6,000 peasants working on the private holdings still remaining in that
year. Including these peasants, the partic