“Notwithstanding that the government of the United States 
has yet to recognize the existing government in Russia, commerce be- 
tween the two countries now amounts to more than $100,000,000 
a year. This is more than in the days of the czars. An official 
delegation of eleven Russians recently made a tour of American 
industrial centers to make purchases including gas engines, steam 
shovels, automobiles and drilling machinery. Farm machinery, 
cotton and other commodities have also been purchased in quantities 
recently. The shipment of gold indicates that the Soviet authorities 
may be planning to maintain an increasing part of their banking 
reserves here for commercial credit 
“The monetary metal is coming from the mines of Siberia. 
After the Communistic upheaval a decade ago, $300,000,000 in gold 
remaining in the old Imperial Bank was scattered and dissipated 
without any regard for its established place as a basis for currency. 
The theories of the Bolshevists included no reliance on this symbol 
of capitalism. But the fixed practices of other nations did not 
yield. So the rulers at Moscow turned toward the Siberian re- 
source. They are mining now about $25,000,000 annually. Out 
of the product a reserve has been built up for the Soviet State Bank. 
The amount sent to the United States will help to settle an adverse 
balance of visible merchandise trade. 
“On the political side what has been done is a renewed sign 
of the gradual recedence of extreme radicalism in Russia. More 
and more Moscow is using the commercial and financial system that 
it once was determined to spurn. The remittance received at New 
York from the Soviet Bank is not the first of the kind it has made, 
but the others have gone to London. The change in destination very 
likely is not unrelated to official resentment of Great Britain's 
severance of diplomatic relations with Russia 
Journal, Milwaukee, Wis., March 5, 1928 
OUR RUSSIAN COMPIEX 
“We read that $5,000,000 arriving in New York from Russia 
to be used in promoting trade lies idle in a bank. Gold is not gold 
in the United States until the government indorses it, and our gov- 
ernment says this gold was stolen. This is one of the anomalies of 
our attitude toward Russia. We might claim a certain logic for 
our attitude, if the navy had not very recently purchased oil for 
its ships in Asiatic waters which the Standard Oil Co. has bought 
from Russia. This oil was stolen by the soviets, if the gold was. 
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