Foster - Toward Soviet America - The Book the Communists Tried to Destroy (American Communist Mein K

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TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

automobile, chemical, electro-technical and other industries, which have been built from the ground up. Daily new products, never before made in the U.S.S.R., are being turned out, from watches and cameras to gigantic blooming mills and great electrical machines. This year there will be produced $500,000,000 worth of commodities formerly imported. A year ago the construction of a turbogenerator of 10,000 kilowatts was hailed as a great victory; now several of 77,000 kilowatts are being built. The U.S.S.R. is rapidly becoming a great industrial unit practically independent economically of the capitalist world. The great speed with which this industrial development is taking place is quite without precedent. Russian industrial production leaps ahead at an average increase of 22% to 25% per year; whereas the best average achieved by the United States, from 1870 to 1890, was 8.3%. The New York Herald, of Jan., 1930 (Paris edition), says: "The Plan aims to accomplish in half a decade an amount of industrialization which other nations — even one so richly endowed by nature as the United States — took a generation or two to achieve." Brand says: "There was a time when Europe was astounded at American speed, at the rapid growth of towns, construction of large enterprises and skyscrapers. The U.S.S.R. has left American speed behind." E. Lyons says in Current His-


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