THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 249 
At the close of 1915 the Army Supply Department decided to 
abandon the primitive method of driving the cattle to the front on 
the hoof; the animals were now to be slaughtered in the interior. 
The result was that the supply of hides to the Union’s committees 
of the front was considerably reduced, whilst in the interior of the 
country there was a repetition of what had occurred at the front 
at the beginning of the War, that is to say, vast supplies of hides 
escaped altogether the control of the army authorities. Negotiations 
were now begun between the Army Supply Department and the 
Zemstvo Union with a view to inducing the latter to undertake the 
whole business of collecting, storing, and distributing hides through- 
out the Empire. In principle, the Central Committee of the Union 
accepted the proposal, but at the height of these negotiations, in 
November, 1915, a new institution, created by the Council of Minis- 
ters and known as the Committee for the Leather Industry, came 
into operation. This body was composed of government officials and 
a small number of representatives of leather manufacturers and 
merchants. Neither the Zemstvo Union nor the Union of Towns was 
represented on this body. The Government hastened to take the 
whole business under its own control in order to prevent the further 
expansion in this direction, of the work of the unions. The Commit- 
tee for the Leather Industry attempted to dispense altogether with 
the services of the Zemstvo Union, but without success, for in April, 
1916, it found itself compelled to appeal to the Union for help, and 
requested it to communicate its plan for the collection, storage, and 
distribution of hides. The Government also desired to know on what 
terms the Zemstvo Union would be prepared to undertake the entire 
work. 
[t is unnecessary to describe here the protracted and tedious nego- 
tiations that followed, during which the Union was left for months 
without replies to its communications. At the end of J uly the Union 
learned from reports in the press that the Government had issued 
on July 7, 1916, a decree relating to the registration and distribu- 
tion of raw hides and leather goods. This left the whole business 
under the general management and control of the government com- 
mittee. All that the Zemstvo Union was asked to do was merely to 
deal with the collection of hides in private slaughterhouses through- 
out the Empire. The hides of cattle slaughtered for the needs of the 
Army Supply Department and of the Ministry of Agriculture, on