Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 September 1937 — Page 14

PAGE 14

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

SOVIET SECOND FIVE-YEAR PLAN SHORT OF GOAL

Crops Fail t~ Come Up to Expectations; Plant Production Lags.

Here is the fifth of six dispatches by Webb Miller, European news manager of the United Press, on Russia as it is todav.

By WEBB MILLER (Copyright. 1937, by United Press) MOSCOW, VIA LONDON (Uncensored), Sept. 3.—Creeping paralysis has stricken Soviet industry, seriously affecting fulfillment of the second five-year plan for the time being. This does not mean that industry has collapsed. But in all vital branches it is not attaining the levels set in the plan, which generally were about 20 per cent in excess of last year's production. In many cases, actual output is not even reaching the 13936 levels. This dislocation is marked by recent disastrous drops in the production of basic industries such as

coal, oil, pig iron and steel, which necessarily and immediately affects |

“= & A

President Roosevelt may have mean, but this prize cow simpered

Captivated by F. D.

trouble with some of his Congressshyly and lowered her head like a

all other industry; by decreases in| cqy school girl under his patting hand at the Dutchess County fair, the productivity of labor; by a fall-| Rinebeck, N. Y., when George Rock, the young exhibitor at left, brought two animals to the President's auto for his inspection.

ing off in quality and large waste | in consumers’ goods; and by troublesome increases in labor turn- | over and absences from work. Such a state of affairs was freely admitted to me during my 3600- | mile trip into the interior of the Soviet Union. It even is caustically | criticized and bewailed by the So-| viet press. Despite the impossibil- | ity of the slightest criticism of the | “party line” at any time, there is | no press in the world where actual |

execution of the Government's and |

bought an entire automobile plant in the United States and transported it to Russia, declared in speeches late in May that the majority of heavy industry was lagging behind its plans. He said that there was great confusion due to wrecking activity and criticism, with the result that many directors refused to accept responsibility. About the same time, the Moscow

| sences from work and loafing in the Chelyabinsk coal basin were | “alarming” and the rates of pay “disgraceful.” It said that bureau- | crats had been trying to saddle the | responsibility on the engineers, re- | sulting in the dismissal and fining | of 156 engineers or skilled men in | four months, which disorganized the work still further.

{ The Organ for Heavy Industry

the party's plans are subjected to | newspaper Pravda charged that oil | charged that the plan for the steel more continuous and bitter criti- | production for the first four months | industry for the first six months of

cism than in the Soviet Union.

It | of the year was 965.000 tons less | the year had been only 87 per cent

is upen that point that Soviet claims | than the five-year plan called for fulfilled and that the directors “lost of freedom of the press are based. !|and was even less than in the cor- | their heads.” Figures show that pig

i Do Not Conceal Affairs The newspapers are making no |

attempt to conceal the critical sit- | 975000 tons in the first four months. tons helow the quota. uation which now exists throughout | The newspaper Izvestia states that blast furnace filled its quota.

responding period last year. In the Kuzbass coal district, production fell behind the plan by

in the famous Donetz Basin, production of coal dropped from 214.000 tons daily in January to 197.000 tons daily in July and was 6,000,000 tons

behind the plan. Cement Output Drops The Organ of Heavy Industry in

[iron production in the first four | months was 210,000 tons less than in that period last year and 800,000 Not a single It is | charged that the metallurgical in- | dustry as a whole lost 86.000,000 | rubles in the first four months in-

| stead of showing a 69,000,000-ruble { profit

Coal production throughout the Soviet Union in the first six months of 1937 totaled 60,340,000 tons or 86

which regards increasing industrial | jate July published figures showing | per cent of the quota, compared production as the life blood of the | that cement production was 7.8 per | with 60.974,000 tons in the same pe-

Soviet organism, the

situation al- | cent below the planned quotas; pro-

ready has reached a critical point. | quction of harvesting machines was

Political administration and indus- | trial administration are so twined that they are indistinguish- | able and thus each reacts upon the | other. | Disaffection in the Communist Party helped bring about dislocation in industry. And the crisis in production has widened and accel- | erated the present purge, which has | brought tens of thousands under | arrest, including directors of indus- | try accused of not fulfilling their tasks. The wave of arrests has terrorized directors, subdirectors, and foremen ih ndustsy. They therefore pass | che buck and dodge responsibility | for important decisions. That clogs production all along the line.

Confusion Understandable

The confusion and hesitation are understandable when industrial directors hear that chief administra- | tors of the cotton industry in the | Moscow and Leningrad districts are | under arrest for not fulfilling quotas | under the five-year plan. The chief | of the All-Union Furniture Trust | and the director of the Leningrad | Cotton Trust also are among the! hundreds who have been arrested | for similar reasons. | V. I. Mezhlauk, the new Commissar for Heavy Industry, who ee

10.2 per cent below and of locomo-

Inter- | ives 9.2 per cent.

Pravda in June asserted that ab-

| riod last year. Frustrates Production

| The pig iron shortage frustrated | production all along the line. Pravda

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stated that although agriculture required 80,000 tons of oil, only 37,000 tons had been delivered to the end of June. The Organ for Heavy Industry at the end of July published a sweeping general indictment of the situation, stating: “While production of electrical energy, steel castings, rolled steel, peat and aluminum have increased, not one industry has fulfilled the Government plan. The number of breakdowns at electrical stations is still very large. The rate of steel production is quite unsatisfactory and cannot supply the needs of our economy. “Machine factories continually get Jess metal than they should. One branch of industry gets behind, then drags another behind. Bad work of the coal and oil industry tells harmfully on metallurgy, which in turn delays machine construction.” This official organ of industry computed that in order to fulfill the second five-year plan, industries would have to increase their output in the second half of this year by the following percentages over the first half: Electrical energy, 30 per cent: coal, 35; oil, 24; pig iron, 18; steel, 28; rolled steel, 43; cement, 53; copper, 85. Less Satisfactory

The situation in light industry

| Deliveries

since March has been even less sat- | isfactory than in heavy industry. | According to figures in the official | press, total output in May was 9 | per cent less than in December [and production of sorely needed cotton cloth fell off 18 per cent. of cotton cloth in the first five months this year were 200,000,000 square meters short of the quota; hosiery output was 25,000,000 pairs fewer than the plan called for and shoe production fell short by 2,000,000 pairs. Furthermore, it was charged that some mills, in an attempt to maintain quantity production, resorted to thinning of the fabrics by as much as 25 per cent, with the result that Moscow and Leningrad mills in five months turned out 100,000,000 yards of spoiled goods.

The automobile

the plan because, according to the Organ of Heavy Industry,

materials.”

factors in the partial industrial paralysis—the shortage of basic materials and the fear of responsibili-

industry is in | much ‘better condition, aithough it | is not attaining the levels set in |

‘the | chief board of the industry is un- | able to establish discipline in the | factories and obtain the necessary |

In addition to the most important |

wu FRIDAY, SEPT. 3, 1937

ty, confusion and buck-passing among the directors--there are many contributory elements.

Equipment Abused

Among these are what the press asserts is the “terrible state of equipment” due to abuse and overstraining of machines as a result of the Stakhanovite or speedup system of piece work and the continuous wear and tear of operation by two or three shifts; due also to the unduly large labor turnover because of disproportionate wages; the lack of discipline due to dissatisfaction over differences in living conditions of workers, specialists, Stakhanovites and bureaucrats.

This year’s harvest is claimed to be the best in years and this fact, as I can testify from observations during more than 1000 miles of travel over the North Caucasus and Ukraine regions, provides a large bright spot in the prevailing gloom. Even several weeks ago it was asserted that grain deliveries to the State had reached 4,000.000 tons, or double those of 1933, the previous record year for grain deliveries. Pravda stated that the “rich harvest increases the raw material resources of the food industry tremendously. The prospects are such that it may be confidently asserted that the food industry is guaranteed the materials for over-ful-filling the plan.” But as the Organ for Heavy Industry observed, it is a “gigantic problem” for industry to make up for its present lag in the remainder of the year.

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