Mr. Ginsberg & Billions

What Bolshevism's planners think of Bolshevism's executors pungently appeared last week at a Congress of Master Builders in the Kremlin with Dictator Joseph Stalin and most other Soviet bigwigs present. To make the opening speech Russia's cloistered priesthood of planners, the Gosplan, sent their economic abbot, Comrade Valerian Ivanovich Mezhlauk, chairman of the State Planning Commission.

"Last year we meant to reduce building costs by 15%--we reduced them by 1%!" boomed Mezhlauk. "This year we planned to reduce costs by 14.5%--we reduced them by 1.25%!"

"Why?" interrupted several Commissars who were either unable to believe their ears or did not catch the No. 1 Planner's point.

"Why!" roared back Planner Mezhlauk. "Why, indeed? Because you, my dear Comrade Commissars, don't run your business properly!''

A bespectacled Mr. Ginsberg was then produced by Planner Mezhlauk. To his satisfaction Mr. Ginsberg proved to Dictator Stalin & Commissars that in the U. S. building industry one U.S. workman accomplishes as much in a given time as four Russians in the Soviet building industry. In the stone cutting industry, said Mr. Ginsberg, one U.S. quarryman equals ten Russians.

This stiff talk was followed by the unfolding of new Bolshevik building plans on a scale more grandiose than ever before. Commented News Pundit Walter Duranty: "Here they are building-mad. From the Arctic Ocean to the Caspian Sea, from the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific, there is such a fury of building as the world never saw. In the coming year the Soviets will spend 32 billion rubles on a building program which, in the valuation of Russian materials and Russian labor, represents between fifteen and twenty billions of dollars."

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