THE ZEMGOR 
dispatched from Moscow to Riga to assist in the evacuation was 
about sixty.* 
279 
The Zemgor’s Own Industrial Undertakings. 
Stores and equipment evacuated from the front could not always 
be properly utilized. The Government remained satisfied with sav- 
ing the machinery, equipment, and raw materials from capture by 
the enemy, and then these stores would perhaps become mere useless 
encumbrances. They occupied rolling stock that was urgently 
needed for other purposes and the Government was only too glad to 
get rid of them. j 
Entirely different was the attitude taken in this matter by the 
Unions of Zemstvos and of Towns, as has been shown in the preced- 
ing pages. Their view regarding the evacuations from localities 
threatened by the enemy was that industries working for the needs 
of the War must be enabled to continue operations. This is why the 
assistance already described was rendered by the Zemgor to the 
owners of evacuated establishments. In those cases, however, where 
owners showed themselves disinclined to resume work in new places, 
the Zemgor tried to purchase their plants and set them to work 
with its own resources. It thus happened that factories and other 
industrial works were often established which had no direct relation 
to the supply of the army. At first, these establishments produced 
only for the general market, but gradually they were adapted to 
manufacture products required by the army. In this way there 
came into existence fifty different factories and other industrial 
undertakings owned by the Zemgor. The following is a brief descrip- 
tion of a few of these establishments. 
The needle factory. This factory had been owned by a German 
firm in Riga and was requisitioned and evacuated to Moscow with 
all its workers and part of the administration. At first the factory 
continued to produce needles, turning out 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 
a month. These needles were sold to the zemstvos, cooperative so- 
cleties, and so on. At the same time the factory undertook the pro- 
duction of a type of needles that used to be imported exclusively 
* The foregoing description of the evacuation of Riga follows almost 
literally, but with considerable omissions, the text of a report submitted by 
N. N. Kovalevsky, a member of the Zemgor Central Committee; see Izvestia 
(Bulletin) of the Zemgor, Nos. 2-3, pp. 58-64.