Romanian government's apparent long-term economical plans, that "Bessarabia can only be considered as a reserve of labor and cheap bread for the industry of the rest of the country". In a 1938 review, the Bessarabian Federation of Chambers of Commerce noted that "the decline in industrial production in Bessarabia hinders the rational processing of local raw materials, thereby turning our province into a colony for industry in the rest of the country". According to V.I. Tsaranov, throughout the period, industrial workers in the region faced long working hours (up to fourteen per day), lack of proper safety measures, unsanitary conditions, the perspective of unemployment and a general decrease in the standard of living: the real wage of a Chișinău worker dropped 60% between 1913 and 1937. Education In 1919, Bessarabia became the Romanian region with the highest illiteracy rate. Although the Romanian/Moldovan population was the largest, no Romanian language school operated in Bessarabia before 1918. As a result, among them, only 10.5% of men and 1.77% of women were literate. By 1930, although Bessarabia continued to be the region with the most illiterate people in Romania, the number of literates doubled, to 38,1% of the total population. In the 1920-1938 period, the number of primary schools increased from 1,747 to 2,718, and the number of students from 136,172 to 346,747. In 1940, there were also 24 gymnasiums and middle schools and 26 high schools. Despite a large number of minorities (over 870,000 Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews), education in minority languages was curtailed: private schools were allowed to function after 1925 only if the instruction was in Romanian and, by 1938, there were no state- sponsored Russian or Ukrainian schools and only one each in private hands. In 1939, after the German and Soviet attacks on Poland, the government reverted on its earlier policy and decided to reintroduce minority language classes in state schools and allow a greater degree of cultural expression for the Slavic minorities, in an effort to improve its image among the local population. Also, in the interwar period, the foundations were laid for the first higher education institutions in Bessarabia. In 1926, the Faculty of Theology was established in Chișinău, followed by the National Conservatory in 1928, and the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences in 1933. The two faculties were sections of the University of Iași, in pre-war Romania. World War II The Soviet Union did not recognize