Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

one is going about stark naked. (In summer we saw children setting a new fashion in garmentless attire. One time, also, a lady secretary brought me two blanks which we required those to fill out who wanted clothes from our central warehouse. “These blanks,” she said, ‘‘were filled out by two young ladies who are in the waiting room and want to speak to you.” I examined the blanks and—was puzzled. “Will you see them?” said the clerk. “Well, I hardly know. The only things they have checked and own according to these blanks is hats and stockings.” But she insisted that they were sufficiently clothed, and I admitted them. Upon further inquiry they stated upon honor, that they had no other clothes of their own, and that they had borrowed all the rest for the purpose of making themselves presentable. I had several such cases. ) We made some mistakes. In gathering the data, for instance, we accepted the well-meant suggestion from one settlement with 34 villages to allow each person to check the three articles he needed most. This offered some ad- vantages, but unfortunately, the people then expected to get those three articles. Thus men in those 34 villages had checked and expected to get over 4500 overcoats; but we had only 1545 for about 150 villages. It was evident qa Gusee is ‘2 E > a) ov as Es [=) Rea ne o's ga q BS b> oO cee id rs ¢ ~ 2ase | coe esl am Oise zie aA > M2 on Aim = ane qnes Leek 5. a & aR Heo S eas ate Boo es DMD nee o aor Smee feo Se AEE: Hees cs a ts) VINAAIS—ONINLOIO WO HLOTO ONLLOATULSIC CLOTHING DISTRIBUTION IN RUSSIA 265 from this that about 6 out of 7 men would be disap- pointed. The same held in other cases. In relief work one learns to avoid raising false hopes because people will grasp at a straw, like a drowning person, and the disappointment is so great. The village lists were first checked over and village ratings compared by our Volost committees and then sent to Alexandrowsk office, where the items after each name were totaled according to a unit somewhat varied from the Unit List of distribution. This was a tedious job. From 8 to 15 persons worked at it for weeks. I fairly dreamed figures. All names showing a total of more units than was the Standard for their respective age were eliminated—they would not be given anything this time. Those showing fewer units than Standard were to be given enough to reach their respective Standard—if our supply proved sufficient. Thus if a man owned only 50 units, he should receive 30 more from us, if we had them. Such “Credit Units” were then entered in red ink in the last— the “Red Column’’—on the “Statistical Lists.” By total- ing these red figures we knew exactly how many units were due each village, and what the total for each Volost and the grand total for all villages was. With this done these lists were returned to our Volost committee for a final re-check,