THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 245
schedules of consignments covering the period from May to Novem-
ber, 1916, the Union applied for a total of 4,969 freight cars, but
obtained only 1,887, whilst of the 8,702 cars demanded for extraor-
dinary (express) consignments, only 1,683 were provided. The offi-
cials of the Union were in fact reduced to extorting the necessary
permits for cars from the railway officials, by personal appeals, per-
suasions, and protests, and only in this manner did they succeed in
loading about four hundred additional cars a month, outside of, and
often contrary to, all schedules. During the navigation season of
1916, river transport was utilized, so that it was found possible to
send by water 2,345,000 puds of cargoes.
Merely to obtain railroad cars and load them, however, was not
sufficient ; a constant watch had also to be kept on the actual move-
ment of the goods. For this purpose the supply department main-
tained a special force of convoy conductors, of whom not less than
150 accompanied the trains every month. Lost cars had to be traced
and pursued all over Russia, and for this purpose likewise a special
staff of employees had to be maintained. These men succeeded,
among other things, in recovering more than 17,000 puds of copper
worth 800,000 rubles: about 77 0,000 puds of leather worth 8,000,-
000 rubles; 11,000 puds of medical goods unobtainable in the Rus-
sian market, and so on.
The enormous quantity of goods converging from all sides upon
Moscow naturally required correspondingly vast storage facilities.
The depots of the Zemstvo Union, scattered all over the city, were
crowded. It soon became necessary to devote serious thought to the
problem of reorganizing the entire system of storage. The result
was that a piece of land with three sheds was taken on lease at the
Moscow-Windau railway station and eight new sheds were con-
structed providing storage accommodation in the vicinity of rail-
way line itself. The central depot alone cost 300,000 rubles, and
toward the end of 1916, 6,000,000 rubles worth of goods were stored
in these premises.
Supply of Leather and Hides.
It is probable that never previously in the history of Russia had
cattle been slaughtered on so vast a scale as in the years of the War.
The army itself required huge quantities of meat, though only on
Very rare occasions in the past had meat appeared on the peasants’
