Moscow newspapers have published the official statistical date concerning the wages received by Soviet workers. From these date it can be seen that in the year 1935 there were 24,700,000 workers employed in the Soviet Union Their average annual wages in that year amounted to 2,271 rubles as compared with 1,853 rubles in the year 1934.

The difference between wages paid to qualified workers and those received by unskilled labor is very great. For instance, common labor receives from 80 to 100 rubles a month, and some of the skilled so-called "shock workers" receive from 1,200 to 1,400 rubles a month. There is no such difference in earning power between skilled labor and unskilled labor in any of the capitalist countries.

The average monthly wages of Soviet workers, according to Soviet official data, are 154 rubles, and since the Soviet ruble on the basis of the official rate of exchange is worth only 20 American cents, it appears that Soviet workers make on the average only $30.80 per month. In reality, however, Soviet workers earn much less because the actual purchasing power of the Soviet ruble amounts only to 5 American cents or less. Even if we assume that the Soviet ruble is worth 5 cents, the real wages of Soviet workers on the average amount only to $7.70 [a month] or $1.92 a week.

Lately the Soviet press has devoted a great deal of space to the lowering of prices on certain articles of prime necessity by an official decree, but this reduction was of no material significance. For instance, at the present reduced price ordinary women's shoes cost from 150 to 175 rubles, and for her entire monthly wages the Soviet working woman cannot buy even one pair of shoes.

If such conditions existed in any capitalist country, the Bolsheviks would 3constantly have been pointing their fingers at it and speaking of the unheard-of exploitation of workers in that country. But since such a state of affairs exists only in the "socialist" state, they do not see anything wrong in it. On the contrary, many Bolsheviks have the impudence to assert that workers in Soviet Russia are having good times, and that workers in capitalistic countries are starving to death!

In connection with the data cited above concerning the wages paid to Soviet workers it would not be amiss to cite some data concerning the conditions of the American unemployed. In this last year the average amount of the government relief to the unemployed was about $29 a month per family, and the average wages paid to those employed on public works amounted to $31 a month. In the industrial States common laborers employed on public works receive $55 a month and qualified workers receive up to $95 a month. And yet the Soviet worker, if we consider the Soviet ruble as worth 20 cents on the basis of the officially fixed Soviet rate of exchange, earns only $30.80 a month, about as much as is currently 4paid by the government for relief to the American unemployed, who according to Bolshevik propaganda, are dying of starvation.