V
SLAVERY AND COMPULSORY LABOR
Working men and their organizations suffer not only from the lack of any form of representative government or freedom of press or assemblage, and not only from the persecutions of the Extraordinary Commission, but also from Soviet legislation aimed directly at Labor.
After a year of syndicalism, factory Soviets and anarchy—during which production was reduced to less than one-seventh of its previous level—the Soviet "Government" in 1919 reversed its industrial policy and began to have recourse to one form after another of labor compulsion or enslavement. Compulsion has never, throughout history, produced the same degree of efficiency as freedom, but some of the most extreme disorder was cured and the Bolshevists gave figures to prove that the output of Russian industry had now "risen," though in a few cases only, to as high as two-thirds of its pre-war level—a level which was very low indeed in comparison to that of more advanced countries.
The first completed plan of labor compulsion was that devised by the "Code of Labor Laws." Some of the principal clauses of this slave code, as it was published in the official organ of the Soviet "Embassy" in America, called Soviet Russia, on February 21, 1920, were as follows:
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