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conclusion that the Russians were not honest. He was almost the first person who told me that they had no conception of machinery. They ruined machinery without meaning to. They didn't have that natural mechanical sense which made it possible for you to teach almost any American boy to handle almost any kind of complicated machine. The Russians were anti-mechanical almost. They had no facility for it and ruined good machinery very easily. It was a pain in the neck to instruct them. He had to keep men there to instruct them in the use of these tools after they had ordered and paid for these expensive things to keep them ruining and breaking them.

Also, he said that his firm had had quite unpleasant experience with them, amounting to what he said was almost dishonesty. They would deny that they had received certain things, would refuse to pay, and so on. It was very painful. They didn't have the straightforward honesty of the ordinary American business dealings. He didn't go beyond that, but I gathered that although they had a good trade there they didn't particularly enjoy it. They'd been one of the first people in the market and made excellent tools, of course.

There were others who traded through Armtorg whose names escape me now.

Way back in the late twenties and early thirties the