X.
MONEY, PRICES AND WAGES.
As a part of its general plan for Communism, the Soviet Government aims ultimately to abolish money entirely. But so far this has not been done. On the contrary, Russia is now being flooded with an unheard volume of paper money. So great is this that the manufacture of such money has become an important industry, employing 13,000 persons. Last year 3000 tons of rags were consumed for paper money making; and every month from 60 to 70 freight car loads of new paper rubles left Moscow for various parts of the Soviet Republic. It is a literal deluge of money.
In his splendid book, "Social Revolution and Finances," Preobrazhensky, Peoples' Commissar for Finance, cites the following figures to show the totals of money production, year by year, since the outbreak of the world war. From them the monster increase in the volume of money is strikingly apparent:
| 1915 | 2,611,200,000 | rubles |
| 1916 | 3,379,200,000 | rubles„ |
| 1917 | 18,091,200,000 | rubles„ |
| 1918 | 33,951,600,000 | rubles„ |
| 1919 | 163,750,800,000 | rubles„ |
| 1920 | 943,581,600,000 | rubles„ |
| 1921 (4 months) | 754,000,000,000 | rubles„ |
The Soviet Government is the first institution to operate financially upon the basis of trillions. And at the rate its money output is increasing soon its totals will take on true astronomical proportions.
The persistence and vigor of the monetary system in revolutionary Russia is explained very simply. It is because it is really a form of tax upon the large body of independent producers in non-nationalized industries—chiefly the peasants, who make up 85 per cent of the whole population. These petty bourgeois elements, besides really believing in the institution of money, have an actual need for a medium of exchange. Hence the Government issues them enormous quantities of paper rubles adorned with bright revolutionary mot-
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