is : Our Neighbors. By RAYMOND ARTRUR’ DAVIES i * = . > EAREST of all Russian industrial areas to Vancouver, and yet of course many thous- ands of miles away, is the ten year old mining and industrial development along ts oe headwaters of the Kolyma River in Northern Siberia. #ozen years ago only a few na- EY “ tribesmen lived and hunt- Hi, today a new world has been Pope. Gold and platinum, limesten and antimony, coal lad oil are now being obtained mn a large seale much farther 5rth than anywhere in Canada. ' This gives much food for iought, for Canada, too, is im- Fensely rich at the same lati- ides. Ib, chs Df » The Jeading force in Kolyma y Fmonge the tens of thousands, i Wisssibly hundreds of thousands = a people, now living there in | thousand new settlements is te Gold and Platinum Workers 'nion, Leaders of the union are hie greatest boosters of this S amensely rich and promising Drritory. They are truly na- Fon builders along with repre- ‘sntatives of the government, roSspectors, engineers and ‘ientists employed in this re- » ion. Heart of the Kolyma region is the new and bustling city of Magadan, built on the Sea of Okhotsk and destined to be much in the news during the next period of time. Magadan has factories, schools, colleges and theaters. Its Trade Union - Palace of Culture is one of the best in Russia’s Pacific terri- tories. Magadan is also the ad- ministrative center and is con- nected by an excellent all- weather highway with the Kol- yma River area and its settle- ments and prospector camps, mines and smelters. Last year the Kolyma Re- fion was given the job of ex- pandinge by seventy percent the area available for immediate gold and platinum mining. The problem was excavators. They worked well enough during the summer. Yet to achieve the de- sired production they also had to work in the winter. And BY J. B. S. HALDANE Here, winter in Kolyma Region is like our winter at Fort Nelson or Fort St. John. There were plenty of people who said that excavators could not work in conditions of extreme cold. But the union called a conference of excavator men. Engineers were called in. The problem was solved. With the help of social- ist competition organized by the union the job was done. . By organizing competition, by awarding the Red Banner of the State CGouncil of Defence, by awarding titles to the “best” workers and making them known to, the whole region, by using: the radio for publicizing results of the work, the union was able to help the miners ob- tain excellent results. Last year, for the whole of Dalstroy, which means distant Far Hast- erm construction projects, the year’s quota of gold production was completed on September 29 in an area where a ‘Missing Links’ Fellow of the Royal Society, London, Eng. 3 iFTY years ago most chemists thought that there were about 80 elements, with a > pie more to be "discovered, and that all the atoms of one element were exactly alike. Marx’s colleague Engels 'ever believed that atoms were -ither “eternal bricks of the “= niverse” or created in their S38) resent form. He thought that _verything had a history. | But while Lamarck, Darwin - nd others producéd evidence that animal and plant species ad evolved, it was some time | Baoe any. such evidence was -sroduced for atoms “Missing fas were ‘found between es and men, between reptiles iha mammals, but not between b cajeiinoring elements such as - j-OBRee and silver. n fis) i ee fe eo S of . invariable (was Sale by Rutherford and 'Soddy. They found that radio- caning / light and heat, but changed Soyer into other elements. Sod- dy used extraordinarly deli- cate and ingenious methods for determining their chemical ') properties. ' For example, “Radium .D,” i “one of the products of the be breakdown Oof radium, was | found to be chemically indis- | tinguishable from lead. | Once it has been mixed with ) lead, it cannot be separated ' again by any process at pres- : B ent known, though it differs 'from ordinary lead in that the ) nuclei of its atoms explode, .) and also in being a little dens- Or. ~ A second breach was made ) by Aston, who found that the atoms of an ordinary chemical element were not all of the ) same weight. Thus, chlorine does not consist of atoms | weighing 3542 units, but there are aout three atoms with a ae first breach in the the-)=- atoms} active elements such as. radium. “Hot only gave out energy as - weight of 86 to one of 34. Finally Rutherford showed that new atomic types could be made by shooting very rap- idly moving particles into the known types, and the Curie- Joliot family produced artific- ial radio-activity in that way. During the war this work has been followed up on 4 very big scale in the United States, with the cyclotron, a machine invented for the purpose of making artificially radio-active elements. The result has been startling. Seven hundred and thirty- eight kinds of atomic nucleus are known and doubtless more owill abe. found. Hach has a par- ticulaz number of unit positive charges, on which its chemical properties depend. Thus there are. fiye different kinds of so- dium, call. with a positive charge of i1 units. In consequence each nucleus needs a swarm of just 11 elec- trons im its neighborhood to balance its charge. The chemi- cal and electrical properties of the atom, the amount of space it occupies, and so on, depend almost entirely on the elec- trons. The weight depends on the heavy nucleus in the middle of them. jr one of these five kinds ef sodium is found in na- ture. The others are unstable. For example, sodium of atomic weight 22 is four percent lighter than the normal kind. jis nuclei are exploding at such a rate that half of them are gone in three years. There are no fewer than 24 different kinds of tin nuclei. Chemists and physicists have hardly begun to work out the full consequences: of such facts as these. It is, however, clear that existing majtter is built up from those kinds of nuclei which are either quite stable, so far as we know, or at worst break down extremely slowly. Atoms, like animals and plants, are products of natural ~ selection. They are a small selection from the many. pos- sible kinds, the few types which will. stand up to the rough and tumble of everyday existence. : The artificial radio-active atoms may be compared to the races of domestic animals and plants. These may do well enough if looked after, but most of them would die out quickly in na- ture. If a wheat-field is neg- lected, the wheat is wholly re- placed by grass and weeds within a very few years. Hiven less capable of surviyv- ing are fancy xaces, such as bulldogs with their perpetual snuffle, frizzled poultry . which cannot stand cold because their feathers are curled up, or double flowers which set few or no seeds. And finally, mm the labora- tory we produce still queerer animals and plants—-wingless flies, toothless mice, and flow- erless plants which can hardly be kept alive. The artificial radio-active el- ements will probably give us the same kind of clues as to the evolution of matter that Darwin got from our domestic animals and plants for his the- ory of ainmal and plant evolu-. tion. But. we are still waiting for a Darwin of the atoms. J have recently put forward a theory. of the evolution of —Continued on Page 14 May 5, 1945 — Page 11 She and of platinum on ae 25. Winter work was especially dificult and often men and ma- chines had to work in the open in temperatures of forty and fifty below zero. To obtain metals isn’t too difficult if auxiliary industries are up to the mark. In Kolyma everything has to be made on the spot. Last year the smelt- ers, wire works, compressor works, all worked well. A newly built glass works gave suf- ficient glass for the region’s needs. Fish cooperatives con- nected with Dalstroy caught 22,000 tons of fish to feed the workers. The state farms gave more than 20,000 tons of vege- tables. And all this, remember, in conditions of our Fort Smith on the Mackenzie River and even farther north where we have very little indeed. Kolyma is just awakening. Its great need is skilled per- sonnel used to local conditions. To train such men, the Gold and Platinum Workers Union organized evening technical elasses in which future engin- eers are trained. A _ special Technical Council has been set up which assists individual workers, publishes technical posters and booklets and gives lectures. AST year the All-Union £ Council of Trade Unions de- voted special attention to vic- tory gardening throughout the Soviet Union. The workers of the North, despite the fact that Arctic farming is not easy, also took up the challenge. They disregarded the wellknown ad- vice of an old Czarist official who said that “agriculture is impossible in the North for not only people, but even chickens and roosters can find nothing to eat. We cannot change the northern climate.” Last fall Magadan had its annual agri- cultural fair. Among :the best exhibits were huge clusters of potatoes grown by the mother ef a soldier named Jakubitsky-. She obtained 1650 pounds from 200 square yards, an excellent erop for any place even in the temperate latitudes. The aver- age potato yield was three tons per acre. The fair showed cab- bages weighing 17 and 18 pounds, fully as good as those erown in Fort Good Hope along the Mackenzie. The average cabbage yield was 11 tons per acre. At Indigirka in the far North, for the first time Mak- horka, a powerful, man-eating Russian tobacco, was grown. But man does not live by food | alone. The trade union devoted special attention to developing cultural activities. Radios are everywhere. There is a local radio station. There are 223 trade union libraries. During the past year local amateur circles gave 800 performances. There are 100 film projectors owned by the union and serving the whole vast area. Last year they gave 20,000 performances. Magadan projector repair shops even managed to manutacture ten projectors last year, making: each part by hand and only importing the lenses and bulbs: from ‘outside.’ Films are de- livered by reindeer, dog sled, snowmobile, airplane, or on foot. This week the newspapers announced that the AUCCTU had just voted 600,000 xubles towards construction of the world’s first health resort in the Arctic. Kolyma sail area is young. And yet a few months ago the miners of Kolyma sent the miners of the Donets Basin five carloads as a present; Ok- hotsk Sea fish, jam made from northern berries, condensed milk made in Kolyma, books printed at the large Magadab print shop, musical instruments made on the spot. The North has grown. The people think big and do big.