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 saving
 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 preceding
 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 description
 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 socleties,
 and so on. At the same time the factory undertook the production
 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.