SOVIET COAL MINES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21258, 11 August 1932, Page 8

SOVIET COAL MINES

The Soviet is now employing women as hewers in the coal mines of the Don Basin, which is probably the hardest part of the Russian industrial front. It is stated by the correspondent of the Times that the idea is to "shame" the miners and "shock" other women, for which there can be only one reason —the failure of the mines to produce the amount of coal required under the Five-Year Plan about which it is more easy to generalise than to prove co-ordination among all interrelated activities. According to Mr. H. R. Knickerbocker, author of "The Soviet Five-Year Plan," the conditions in the mines of the Don Basin are appalling. He descended one, and at a .depth of 2000 feet, where the heat is oppressive, found miners hewing in galleries only three feet high. The removal of the slate to give head and elbow-room was considered to be too expensive. For the men there was no lift, and they had to travel to and from the workings by a zig-zag incline a good mile and a-half in length, walking in a crouching position most of the way. Nowhere has it been more difficult to keep men at work, especially with other industrial developments offering an alternative. In the year prior to the author's visit no less than 178,000 men had left for, other employment. The type upon whom the authorities relied to stand the strain of coal mine labour were the youths who had grown-up since the revolution and who, with a fanatical belief in the mission of Bolshevism, the result of endless propaganda, volunteered for the hardest tasks. Now the Soviet has put women, probably of a similar type, into the stern yoke. It is a striking commentary upon the system. The employment of women in such a task and under such conditions is an offence to civilisation. Yet the Soviet system is held up as an ideal, as the means of emancipation for the workers by supporters who overlook the "eliminating" instrument of political murder and such details as have been revealed from the mines of the Don.