Doing Business With the Bolsheviki

I

MY chief requested me, as a personal favor, to go to the Crimea to help liquidate his affairs. So off I went; but if I had known in advance what I was going into, I think I might have turned back.

You see, when the corporation evacuated Batoum, they chartered a ship and took all the merchandise to Sevastopol. Smith was in charge. He had succeeded in selling most of the stuff for roubles. I came along just at the time when they had millions of roubles; but that was only part of the story. To make the final realization in trade in Russia, you had to buy something real with the roubles, which was not so difficult; but you had also to get a government permit to export anything from the Crimea; and nearly everything was forbidden to export. The one product in demand in Constantinople was barley; wheat too, of course, but Wrangel, not having much wheat country, absolutely forbade the export of it. So we made a contract with the government that we would buy barley and ship it, ourselves, to Constantinople, consigned to the representative of the Russian government there. He was to sell it and pay us a fixed price representing about 75 per cent of the market-price. The government made the balance at clear profit, having invested nothing and done nothing. Considering, however, that we were to buy the barley fairly cheap with roubles, it left us a potential profit of about 35 per cent also.

Well, we completed the agreement with the government in Sevastopol, and Smith made the contract with a Jew, an ex-banker from Genichesk, to go with Smith, one of our men, up to Genichesk, the centre of the cereal country, to buy our barley and ship by railroad to Feodosia. We had the old Jew, a trunk full of millions of roubles, and $2500 worth of bailed jute-sacks loaded into a box-car at Sevastopol on the evening train for Genichesk. Smith was to go along to check the Jew, and pay for the barley as he received the railroad bills of lading.

Adams and I motored down to the station to see them off. We broke a spring on the way, so walked down. The station was quite a distance away, and we got there just as the train was pulling out. The train was so long that we could not identify our car, but thought, of course, that Smith was on board. As we walked slowly up the hill, what should we see but a two-horse carriage tearing toward us, with Smith and his ‘Russian Princess’ in it. His farewells had been too long, and he missed the train. The Jew, sacks, and money were gone.

Adams certainly blew him up, but I suggested that we borrow a flivver from the Red Cross; which we did, and sent Smith off at dusk with the chauffeur, and promised him a heavy bonus if he caught the train about twenty-five or thirty miles up the line. He dashed up to the station there just as the train was leaving and jumped aboard in true movie style.

A few days later I went by boat from Sevastopol to Feodosia, touching long enough at Yalta to pick up some exquisite water-colors done by celebrated Russian artists who had a colony there. At Feodosia I got in touch with all the authorities, secured a big government warehouse, and got ready to receive the barley as fast as Smith and the Jew shipped it down. About ten days from that time we expected our ship, the Anna, flying the Italian flag, which we had chartered to bring a cargo of Fords, gasoline, and other stuff, which we sold to the Russian government for cash at Constantinople, to Sevastopol, with just enough coal to take her straight back to Constantinople; not enough to call at Feodosia.

Adams had to raise heaven and earth to get coal by bribery from the Russian government to make the trip to Feodosia. When she left, Adams jumped over to Feodosia in the Chevrolet we had; but all this time no barley had arrived. It seems that the military authorities had forbidden the use of the railroad at that time for moving anything but government freight, on account of a great dearth of good-order cars (all the sidings were full of bad-order rolling-stock, mostly in need of only trivial repairs). I had kept Adams informed, even to the extent of having the resident general at Feodosia telegraph by conversational telegraph (where the people stand at the instrument at both ends and talk direct back and forth) to our Admiral, M-, in Sevastopol, to tell him that no barley had arrived; but Adams had not authorized the buying of barley in Feodosia, hoping against hope that it would come from the North. So he arrived just ahead of the Anna, and we decided to buy in Feodosia.

The first lot we found was held at 2400 roubles the pood (36 pounds). Adams made the error of refusing it, thinking that by acting very independently he could force the price down a bit. But when the small clique of speculators who controlled all the barley in town saw our empty ship standing there, knowing we had to buy, they held a meeting, made a combine, and in twenty-four hours the price went from 2400 up to 4000 roubles the pood, and we were stuck, with the standing-by costing us $300 or $400 per day. So, late one afternoon, after having exhausted every means, we jumped into the car and started the long trek up to Genichesk.

You will note on the map the long sand strip about 40 miles long. We followed a country road over this when we were overtaken by night. It certainly is a desert — not a house, and no water; we used salt water in the radiator after our water-feed had broken on us twice. It was a desolate ride in dangerous country. We finally made a village on the main land south of Genichesk, and spent the night in a little hut. Next day we found we could buy barley in Genichesk for about 1500 or 1600 roubles the pood. Before leaving, we had arranged for the Anna to come up there if we found it necessary. The engineer and I together had measured his coal, to be sure he had enough. So Adams started back to Feodosia, and I was left alone in Genichesk, to buy a couple of thousand tons of barley.

II

Genichesk is the last place in creation to be stranded in, especially as I found it after ten occupations — four Red, four White, one German, and one Ukrainian under General Petrula. The place was absolutely flooded and partly in ruins from Denikin’s naval bombardments, lasting over four months during the preceding year. Not even windowglass remained in the windows. I found a little room on the ground floor (nearly all the houses are one-story), in a courtyard, back of a Jew’s café. The one window, without glass and about three feet from the ground, looked out on a deserted field containing the dismal ruins of a huge flour-mill. The population of the town was 85 per cent Bolshevist, and it was full of a floating population of malcontents. This big field was filled with hobos every night.

Being the only American in town, and it being well-known that I came to buy a huge quantity of barley, I went to bed every night for two months, beginning with 300,000,000 roubles under my bed and my army Colt under my pillow, expecting nightly to see a shadow appear on the window-sill to relieve me of my treasure, if not my life. My money, by the way, filled three big suitcases. I had nothing else with me except a toothbrush; no clot hes at all, because the plan was that Adams was to send all my personal luggage up on the steamer Anna. But when he got back to Feodosia, the Anna’s captain had heard of the floating mines, which the Bolsheviki turned loose at Tagansog, and which floated down through the Straits of Kertch, jeopardizing shipping. So, since the Sea of Azov was not stipulated in our charter, he flatly refused to come; and to shut off the ruinous expense, Adams had no choice but to send her back to Constantinople empty. But, unfortunately for me, he inconsiderately sent all my luggage on her, as previously arranged when she was to come to Genichesk; so I had n’t a change of clothes, and all I had on was summer underwear, the little twopiece check suit, and a spring overcoat. During October and early in November up to the time I left, it snowed and I nearly froze.

As Adams liquidated things in Sevastopol, I gradually received more personnel, until, by the time I finally got the last grain of barley loaded, I had a cashier, six assistants, twelve girls sewing and checking sacks, fifteen to twenty teamsters with teams, five weighers and five checkers, and five to six hundred laborers. I had to create this organization out of nothing, find scales (huge affairs and very scarce; I operated six in a line, six men on each), needles, string, shovels, brooms. It was a battle royal from start to finish, and the complete story of the unthinkable obstacles would fill a book.

I began work at five in the morning, with my courtyard full of teams, the scales loaded on wagons,—I had to take them from place to place wherever I bought the barley, — a gang of girls and workmen. Every night, from dark to midnight, my tiny room was full of peasants, middlemen, Jews, Greeks, and what not, haggling about barley. I would buy in my room at night, issue my orders for the morning about how much was to be taken, and from what places, some lying way out in the country. I hired the only cart in town, a tumble-down wreck, No. 7; and as I had gangs operating in several places simultaneously, I drove from place to place, to control the weights and prevent stoppages in the work. At one place a scale would be broken, and I’d back to town, eight or ten miles, to have a blacksmith make some part; another place would have run out of string to tie the sacks; always trouble, rows, and stoppages. Then the teamsters would arbitrarily stop work, paralyzing everything; and when I arrived on the scene, the workmen, who got paid by weight handled (they sacked, tied, and weighed the barley and put it in the teams), would stampede me, barking and foaming at the mouth, demanding a heavy indemnity for the potential pay lost.

I forgot to mention that, when a courier arrived, saying the Anna was not coming, I was in a mess. I had not only bought a pile of barley subject to my taking delivery in from 48 to 72 hours, but I had chartered a fleet of lighters to load the Anna. At Genichesk ships have to st and way out in the roadstead, about eight or ten miles away, and all the barley has to be loaded and trimmed into lighters, then laboriously unloaded in the roadstead, during fair weather only, and trimmed into the steamer. I had to demobilize the lighters, break the contract I had made with the Greek for them, and find warehouses, at a moment’s notice.

All the regular warehouses had been taken over by government for its own grain business. So I located two erstwhile shops, now empty of merchandise, and three empty dwellings, and divert ed my barley into them. One place had been a huge shop, with beams under the floors about 12 by 12 inches, and the landlord had told me I could pile it as high as I wanted to. About a week later, while making the rounds of all my warehouses at dusk, to see that all the watchmen were at their posts (as windows and doors were gone I had to have at least two men sleeping on every lot of barley), I went into the cellar of the shop and saw that the floor was sagging. I could n’t sleep all night for fear that she would go through during t he night, and the Jew landlord would come down on me for about ten million roubles damages. Early in the morning,

I sent a man to pay him a week’s rent and to take a receipt releasing us from all liability, since, I told him, our boat was coming, and we were going to take the barley down to the quay. Then I had fourteen teams working as fast as they could get it out. When the place was empty, the floor looked like a rollercoaster; the huge Russian brick chimney stoves had all been pulled away from the walls, and the flues had fallen in. Needless to say, the owner was wild, but I had his signature. I have gone into this one instance just as an example of the daily fight to save your skin.

The difficulty in securing more warehouse space, and the double cost of handling, and the inability of the teamsters, and the fact that, when Adams found another ship, we would have to rush it into the lighters to save demurrage, decided me to take the long chance of piling all the barley in one huge mountain on the quay. It was a long chance, because the fall rains might break at any moment and make a heavy loss on the pile loaded in the steamers, where it ferments and spoils a whole hold-full. Also, it was forbidden, because all the quay belonged to the government. But I got the big pile started, then went voluntarily to the port commandant myself, and told him that my men had made a mistake and put it there instead of on another vacant space fart her from the quay; but hoped he agreed with me that, since our boat was coming in two or three days, it was hardly worth while to move it. He agreed with me after he trumped up a few storage rules, which made me pay him a nominal fine of about 75,000 roubles ($3 then).

So day by day the pile of barley grew, and to my great relief the pile of roubles under my bed diminished; meanwhile I kept wondering where our boat was. When the Anna refused to come, Adams went tearing off in the decrepit Chevrolet, riding nights all over the Crimea, trying to find another ship. By great luck he picked up the Truvor, about 2000 tons, belonging to the Russian Steam Navigation Company. He chartered her for $30,000 for the one trip to Constantinople, and sent her round to Genichesk. But while she was en route, the Bolshevist navy sortied from Toganrog on the mouth of the Don, and came down to Genichesk roads and shelled the fleet of merchant boats that were loading barley, sinking one before they were driven off by a white destroyer from Kertch. But that fracas caused the government to close the Straits of Kertch for two weeks, before the Sea of Azov was declared safe for ships to enter.

That was a trying two weeks, with the inevitable autumn rains drawing nearer, and the situation on the front, twenty or thirty miles away, growing graver since the Polish peace had released many Bolshevist divisions, which were being steadily concentrated just north of us. Also, another part of our merchandise had been sold to a Russian coöperative society, which was to pay for the stuff in barley delivered to us in Constantinople. All along, the amount I had to accumulate was governed by the amount they furnished. They had sent two steamer-loads to us in Constantinople, and were working on the third in Genichesk, while I was working on our stuff. At the last moment they fell down on the quantity they had guaranteed.

When I arrived in Genichesk about September 1, I commenced buying at 1400 roubles the pood. By this time — October 10 — my buying had run the price up to 3500 the pood; not only that, but the government, which was buying in large quantities, made a fixed price of 1400, so that anything over that was illegal. For the latter half of my buying I had to make out one set of contracts based on the government price, for both sides to show, if necessity arose, while we had another contract covering the real transaction. But I had completed my original purchases before the trouble came. Then, the government, knowing that this business was going on and finding it almost impossible to buy for their extremely low fixed price, and being afraid to requisition because of the passive hostility of the erstwhile Bolshevist population, sent a bunch of officers dressed as peasants out along the roads leading in from the villages. Early in the morning they stopped the peasants driving in with their barley, kicked them off, took the reins, and drove into town as if they were the farmers themselves. They were met along the road in the outskirts by the agents of some of the big buyers, who arrived on the scene after I was nearly through, thank heaven! These chaps offered high prices, paid the money, and were promptly put in jail under martial law. Then the commandant issued an order that anyone caught paying more than the government fixed price would be shot; and I was 10,000 poods short, because the coöperative society fell down on us at the last moment, and arrivals from the country completely stopped, when it was seen that the higher prices could not be had.

I knew there were certain small stocks held here and there in town, and I scoured the place and had to resort to all sorts of expedients to make up my amount. I got 3000 poods out of one man by sending a special courier all the way to Sevastopol, to fetch new shoes for himself and family. I had to promise to take another man to America; but I got the barley, paying the high prices, of course, on the side, trusting that my Yankee citizenship would save my life if I were caught.

III

When we got the official news that the Sea of Azov was opened again for commerce, I waited breathlessly for the Truvor to arrive. But day after day went by, and finally our man,whom Adams had sent on her, arrived overland after three days in peasant carts. He reported that, during the time they were held up in Kertch, while the Sea of Azov was closed, the Kertch agent of the steamship company worked ‘ in cahoots ’ with the Kertch naval commandant. The latter had the coal on the Truvor requisitioned by naval order, and the former sold it all over town at fancy prices, the two presumably dividing up the boodle; but with the tragic result that, when the Sea of Azov finally opened up and other boats flocked in, with the Bolsheviki and the rains getting nearer daily, our fine big boat stood there without coal, the victim of graft.

I sent a man to Sevastopol again (where telegraph and post were absolutely hopeless), and Adams made another of his mad trips over the Crimea in the ear. During one of these trips he ran through the country of the Groan Army (Simon-pure Briggins) at night. A bunch of men jumped into the roads with rifles, yelling, ‘Halt!’ He ‘doused the glim,’ ducked, and put on full speed. They fired, but missed, fortunately.

When at last a steamer full of coal arrived at Kertch, the company replenished the Truvor’s bunkers, and it was one great day for me when I stood on my own mountain of barley, the tallest thing in town, and through my binoculars (which by great chance I had brought along with my gun and toothbrush) saw the Truvor come over the horizon. She was accompanied by a tug and a huge steel barge, which held 50,000 poods at a time.

I could write a book about my trials and tribulations with the Stevedores’ Union of Genichesk. When it came to the job of loading the Truvor, I sent for the president and secretary of the Union, and asked them to make me a flat price per pood, to apply to the whole pile transported from where it stood on the quay and trimmed into the hold of the steamer. I had to have something of the sort, otherwise I should have been lost. From quay to hold there were something like twelve or fifteen different operations, each having a separate price per pood; then a scale of prices for every additional yard of carry from different parts of the pile, all these prices applying from 7 A.M. to 4.30 P.M.; then time and a half, from 4.30 to 6.30, and double time after that. The complications, the unreliability of any agreement, and the impossibility of keeping control with so many gangs working at once, were obvious; so I insisted on a flat price for any time, day or night, from quay to hold. They gave me a price about 40 per cent higher than it came to after adding all the devious operations together. So I took the second long chance and made an arrangement during the night with the officers of a regiment of made-over Bolshevist prisoners, to turn loose the following morning with 500 men. Also, I took on the officers of an armored train, as one gang of 50 or more. The soldiers’ and officers’ lump price, quay to hold, was 100 roubles the pood; the Union’s price had been 480 roubles. That made some difference on 150,000 poods, as our roubles cost us 10,000 to the dollar.

At five o’clock the following morning, Sunday, we turned loose in full force. Since the Union owned all the facilities, such as shovels, gang-planks, etc., I had to scour the town previously and improvise our own equipment out of whatever I could find. All day Sunday I had six endless chains of men running from the barley mountain, through the scales, into t he barge. Night came, and I decided to work all night. Everyone was aghast; there was no lighting, and the port authorities forbade me. But I talked them into it, and got our auto down onto the quay, and cocked the two lights, so that one lit up the row of scales and the other the deck of the barge. It was bitterly cold, and I walked up and down all night, too nervous to eat or sleep.

It was touching to watch the tattered gray figures of those undernourished soldiers, bent double under the 200-pound sacks, struggling and tottering up the long narrow planks between the quay and the barge. Many collapsed under their burden, but luckily none fell off into the water. To get the maximum load into the barge took careful and continued trimming (shoveling up underneath the decks, so that she was full to the top everywhere, even farthest away from the hatches). This work is the worst of all, because of the blinding and choking dust. The men put down there to do it slacked as soon as left alone, and none of my men would stay down there. So I spent about half of my time in the hold myself, urging the men on, and throwing out handfuls of cigarettes.

Monday morning, the first gang went back to work, and Monday afternoon at five o’clock barge 56 was loaded as she had never been loaded before; all done in thirty-six hours, and the wiseacres had assured me it would take at least three or four days.

Then we had to pick out 50 men to go out to the roadstead on the barge, to load the barley into the Truvor. When the soldiers heard that we were going to supply the bread for those who worked out in the roads, I was nearly mobbed by hungry men begging to go. I put two of my own men on the barge, to superintend the trimming into the Truvor, and keep track of our own sacks. Most of the barley was in bulk, but I had 8000 sacks full, which had been the double bulwarks around my big pile.

During the loading of the barge, I kept asking the barge captain if he was sure we had water enough along the quay to load her to capacity. He told me not to worry; but when our little tug pulled the first time, the barge did not budge. We tried all kinds of manoeuvres until dark, even getting another steamer to help; but she was stuck fast in the ooze. So we gave it up when it was quite dark, and I struggled up the hill to my hole in the wall, sore to be frustrated after I had made all arrangements for night-work in the roads, but quite ready for my first snooze in forty hours.

On the way up I had to pass through angry mobs of professional stevedores, whom I had put out of work by using soldiers. They mumbled all kinds of threats at me, and I kept the old Colt cocked that night, expecting that my open window might be rushed. Early next morning, however, there was a wind off the sea, which drove about a foot and a half more water into our inlet, where the barge was; so we finally got her off, to my infinite relief. Almost half of the barley was on board.

While I was at the house, settling up a lot of accounts, the commandant’s adjutant came in, stating that I was wanted immediately at his office. I was scared to death, because I had bought so much barley above the government price. I was afraid he had decided to get my hide. When I got there, whom should I see, glowering at me from a corner of the room, but Gabriel Ivanovitch, chief of the Stevedores’ Union, and erstwhile Bolshevist Commissar. The commandant told me that he could not sanction my employing non-union labor, and from then on, all labor in port would be under the direction of the Union. If the soldiers chose to place themselves under the orders of the Union, they could continue to work.

I explained that I had wanted the Union professional stevedores from the start, but that the price made for the job was exorbitant. So after a lot of wrangling we compromised on a new price, which was still about a 50 per cent saving over the stevedores’ first demand; so we all shook hands and departed. I had won by taking the long chance, and saved about 10,000,000 roubles; but the incident showed on what thin ice the military authorities were skating; they were absolutely afraid of the local population.

I was congratulating myself all the while that the first barge-load was out in the roads, discharging. I went home to get my field-glasses, to see if I could see the big buckets of barley over the side. To my horror, when I came out on the water-front, I saw my barge aground again on a sand-bar about half-way out. All that day they struggled, and finally got her off at dusk. During the night I went down to the shore, to see if I could see the flares on the Truvor to light up the winch and hatch; but all was dark. The following afternoon the tug came back, and I made her turn about and take me out to see what was wrong. They had been loading all day all right, but the preceding night the men had refused to work, and the officers sent out to command them, finding vodka on the ship, had proceeded to get paralyzed. Both duds were sitting up on deck, allowing the barley t o pile up under the hatches, without being trimmed up against the sides of the ship. So I got the officer out of bed, and I stayed in the holds all night bossing the trimming. I looked in a mirror in the morning. I looked like some gray gorilla — absolutely covered, so that my eyelashes were solid cakes, ears full, and hair like fuzzy wire.

Next morning I went back to town and got hold of two steam mud-scows, which were engaged in the barleyloading business. The hopper bottoms were of the kind used to be dumped out and were covered with boards; so the barley had to be piled in in sacks. They carried only 10,000 poods each, but that was enough so that the big barge would be able to clean up my pile in one more trip. According to the new labor arrangement, I had to take what labor the Union president sent. He picked his own men for my job, of course, because they could make more money on it, owing to the fine way in which I had laid everything out. I was satisfied, because I had them now at a fair price, and one of the professionals Worked about three limes as fast as the inexperienced soldiers.

They loaded the two scows in the afternoon, and I went out with them. They tied up on the other side of the Truvor, and it did me good to see all four hatches working all night long. I remained in the hold, as with the double flow of barley the trimming required constant attention. It was really awful when the barley got up to within eighteen inches of the under-side of the ’tween-decks. The poor men and myself had only that crack around the edge of the hatches to breathe through, lying flat on our stomachs; they kept scooping it back and up. As each huge iron bucket, full of barley, came down from above, a great tidal wave of thick dust gushed in like an avalanche, with great force, and so thick as to extinguish temporarily the light from the hatch. It was a terrible scene.

IV

The whole foregoing story I had to repeat with a second loading of the barge, with variations of unforeseen difficulties and obstacles. Only we had no more night-work on shore, because Adams had to dash off to Sevastopol again. The time in which we were compelled to export all the barley, according to our contract with the government, had expired, owing to the heart-breaking delays with our steamers. The government had granted an extension before Adams had left Sevastopol. But when we went to see the ministry’s representative in Genichesk, he said he had seen nothing of it, and could not clear the Truvor without it. So off Adams went to see what had happened. He never returned, but went to Constantinople again in a United States destroyer; but he sent me by a courier an official copy of the extension. When I showed it to the local representative, he acknowledged that he could then clear the Truvor. He told a clerk to make a copy of the extension. I followed the clerk into an outer office, and while he was copying it, another clerk looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Why the representative has had that all along; he received it ten days ago.’ So the cat was out of the bag: the ministry’s representative was trying his best to hamstring us because I had consistently refused to bribe him.

I must cut this short, as we are getting into Constantinople. I went out to the ship again, and found scores and scores of sacks full of barley being dropped into the sea, because the workmen insisted on piling slings twice too high, and when they swung over and hit the side of the ship, live to ten sacks off the top would crash into the sea. But they had kept right on in that fashion until my arrival, and my men had not been able to stop them. Moreover, the Truvor’s captain had declined to furnish a big sail-cloth to hang from the gunwale into the scow, so that falling sacks would slide back to safety.

I went back to town, to make the necessary farewell official calls, and found the commandant dying of typhus. I liquidated all the multitudinous affairs, paying off all employees and laborers, returning all rented property such as scales, and the rest, and finally flying from a dozen or more men who were pursuing me for bribes or damages. I locked myself in the cabin of the tugboat captain and threw myself into his bunk. All the documentary formalities on the ship, with various and sundry port authorities, were trying, because any one of them could have held us up under some pretext, and they had to be carefully handled; some had to be bribed to do their routine duty.

Finally the hatches were all sealed; the tug left with the barge, and all the dusty, tired workmen and sack-girls, for Genichesk, and we were all clear, ready to raise anchor the following dawn. When I heard the anchor coming up, I got up and took my last look at that desolate town of Genichesk, with the big shell-hole through the dome of its cathedral. But I found myself trembling like a leaf, and after I fell back in a narrow bunk, I did not know anything more until the gun on a Wrangel destroyer in the Straits of Kertch barked at us to stop.

The other side of the Straits was Bolshevikia, and we crept through at night, all lights out, because the Bolsheviki had placed artillery on their side, to pick off steamers that tried to pass. We had a rough but safe voyage to Constantinople, and it was a great day when we finally dropped anchor off Seraglio Point under Lcander’s Tower. We arrived too late in the evening for the inter-Allied control; so the captain refused to let me go ashore until morning; but I felt my dear ones calling me, and also the twinkling lights of the great city lured me on; so I bribed the boatswain with fifteen Turkish pounds to take me ashore in the dinghy, after the captain had gone to bed.

The man I left behind in Genichesk, to clean up some details about sacks, and so forth, having escaped safely with other refugees, states that the Bolshevist cavalry captured Genichesk, and all and everybody that was in it, exactly twentyfour hours after I cleared the Truvor.