STATE LABOUR

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 July 1930, Page 9

STATE LABOUR

A BULGARIAN EXPERIMENT

Tiie countries which were defeated in tho Great War and were compelled by the terms of peace to reduce their armies and. abolish compulsory military service took this condition veiy hardly. They found the raising of a volunteer army, so familiar ’an idea to ourselves, an expensive business compared with conscription, and taose countries which were mainly agricultural experienced great difficulty in obtaining suitably recruits for the pay offered. The discipline and training, both physical and mental, which military service imparts, was badly missed, and from Germany in particulai came the complaint that without his two years’ service in the army a young man’s education was in co inpleto (wrote the Halkans correspoudent of the London .“Times'’). ■ Each country has in course of time adapted itself after its own fashion to the new conditions. The simplest and most effectual substitute for military service has been found in Bulgaria, where instead of serving in the army every young man was made liable at tho age of 20 to serve for eight months in a lapour-company. When he is called up he is given about a week’s drill and instruction to accustom him to the idea of military discipline, and is then set to work on any task which tho State requires done. Most of the work is general “navvying.” From 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the trudovaks, as the labour conscripts are called, are employed on the roads and another 10 per cent on the railways and in the ports; -there are also forestry and building companies, and the workers for a State brickyard, State boot and clothes factories, as well as State stud-farms and nurseries, are furnished from the same source. Among the casual work included in the record of the labour-companies for the year 1928-29 is the building of a children’s sanatorium and a geographical institute, levelling of aerodromes, and excavation, on sites of archaeological interest. This gives some idea of the variety of uses to which the trudovaks can be put. '

EMERGENCY RESERVE. The law provides for an annual contingent of 50,000, but in practice not more than 18,000-20,000 are usually called up, and these are not retained in ordinary circumstances for more than the six fine-weather months during which they- can be conveniently accommodated, under canvas or in light huts and shelters. Exemption from service can be obtained by a payment of about £l3 10s to £4B, according to the circumstances of the recruit’s family. Tho remainder, of the contingent provides a reserve of labour on which the Government can draw in case of emergency. Such an emergency occurred during the earthquakes in Southern Bulgaria two years ago. Some thousands of men were then called up and set to work clearing the debris, repairing roads, and building huts for the homeless. After his 20th year every able-bodied man remains in theory on the reserve of the trudovaks and is liable to be called up for work 10 days in the year. Actually the Government delegates its right to the labour to the authorities of the communes in which the men live, and it rests with the mayor to make use of it as he thinks fit to get work of local utility done. Tho system is practically a revival of the old'French corvee. It enables the Government to get a great deal of regular work done at very little cost. . All the road-making and repairing in the country is done by the trudovaks, and one cannot motor very far in Bulgaria in the summer without coming upon a batch of them in their grey blouses and peaked caps shovelling road metal or repairing a damaged culvert. It also enables the Government in a great many cases to dispense, with the services, of a' contractor for public works. For instance, some '2OOO trudovaks are employed at present on the construction of a dyke along the bank of the Danube,- by means of which a large area of land is.to be reclaimed for cultivation. As it has developed the service has gradually become a source of considerable profit .to the State. A PAYING PROPOSITION. It receives 160,000,000 levas (£240,000) from the Budget for running expenses, but fdr the financial year 1928-9 it was reckoned that it had covered expenses and brought in revenue to the extent of 145,883,447 levas, about half of which was furnished by tho sums paid by recruits for exemption. As time goes on there is no reason why the profits should not be considerably enlarged. It provides a source of revenue which any Minister of Finance might envy, and it is not surprising that several inquiries have been made into the working of tho system from countries such as Germany and Hungary, where ■ compulsory service has been dropped. Apart from purely utilitarian value, the system fulfils an educational purpose which is mot to be despised, it gives the young peasant a. sense of bis relation to the State, and of the duties and responsibilities which this relation implies. It opens his mind to some extent by taking.him away from his own village, and by associating him in common work with numbers of other men from other parts of the country. It gives him almost the some prestige as military service used to in the old days; a young man who has done his service as a trudovak is held in tho eyes of lhe village to bo a more eligible candidate for marriage than one who has not. Bulgaria’s neighbours at first suspected the trudovaks of being a camouflaged system of military training, but ’these suspicions have been allayed by the very pacific employment, to which the recruits are put when they are called up. Although it must be admitted that tho system gives the Government a. means of easily mobilising the manhood of the nation, nobody can pretend that the trudovak army would be very dangerous without military training or equip’ment.