BREAD AT $1 16S A LOAF.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15882, 30 July 1919, Page 7

BREAD AT $1 16S A LOAF.

HOW RUSSIANS LITE AND DIE. The following account of the appalling economic conditions prevailing in Russia lias been cabled by Mr John Pollock to the Sunday Express from Helsingfors, Finland. Mr Pollock, who is the son of Sir Frederick Pollock, the famous authority on international law, went to Russia as a delegate of the British fund to relieve Polish refugees, and recently mode a dramatic escape from the country ; Conditions in the large towns of Russia are disastrous wherever tho Bolshevists feel that their power is-solid enough to create artificial hunger and crush out healthy life. In Petrograd, Moscow, and Saratov all the shops have long been shut except hat shops, toy shops, hairdressers’, and similar minor businesses. It is impossible to buy food openly except in starvation quantities by card. The same applies to clothes, fuel, and paper. The results are famine and colossally expensive contraband. In Petrcgrad the prices per pound ai’e : Bread 11 16a to 12 4s. Tea and Coffee £\s. Butter =£7 10s. Sugar £9 Potatoes 16s to £l. Oatmeal £2 18s. Bice .£3 10s. AH these articles of food are difficult to obtain. Beef is £2 6s to £2 14e a pound, horseflesh II Bs, dogs’ flesh 8s to 16s, cats’ flesh 4s to 6s, and smoked herrings IT to IT 10s. In Moscow the price of herrings is £5 per pound. Prices fell somewhat during the latter half of January on rumours that a British force was approaching. Few horses remain., fcomtimes those that die from exhaustion in the streets are cut up by tile hungry people for meat. Wood, which cost II 12s a load in Petrograd and Moscow during 1916, now costs 140, and it is hardly obtainable. The temperature of rooms is often 40deg Fahrenheit,, and 60deg. is considered warm. The poorer people tear .down palings, carry off wood paving, and often demolish wooden houses for fuel. A municipal wood merchant assured me that there will be absolutely no fuel after Easter. There are only half the normal number of tramears; they run at halfpower, and their working hours are restricted to 12. The fare is 2s. On Sundays there are no tramsars at all. In order to keep in good) health it is necessary to spend 150.0 to 11000 monthly. Whole families of moderately well-ijjMlo people have been exterminated by hunger, and actual starvation is frequent. The death-rate is staggering, and the cemeteries are so over-crowded that in .some cases bodies have to wait a fortnight for burial. Spallpox, typhus and Spanish influenza are rampant. ’The population of Petrograd, which was nearly 1,700,000 before the war, has been reduced by death and exodus to less than 800,000. .