RUSSIA. 





though certain classes of machinery, such as spin- 

 ning, agricultural, and electric machines, were im- 

 ported in greater quantities. Many orders for 

 railroad locomotives, electric plant, and other ma- 

 chinery, which formerly was supplied by Great 

 Britain, went to the United States and Germany. 

 There was an increase in imports of coal and coke. 

 The exports to France, Holland, Egypt, China, and 

 British India increased, also those to Austria-Ilun- 



6:iry, which were 30 per cent, more, and those to 

 elgium, which gained 40 per cent., and to Rou- 

 mania, the increase being as much as 43 per cent. 

 There was a marked decrease in the exports to Tur- 

 key. Those to Great Britain declined in a like pro- 

 portion, owing to decreased exports of grain, -flax, 

 hemp, and oil seeds ; those to Italy also, on account 

 of the curtailed supply of sugar ; and those to Ger- 

 many, which were checked by the German law pro- 

 hibiting time bargains in grain. 



When 350,000,000 acres of land were transferred 

 to the emancipated serfs it was expected that agri- 

 culture would develop enormously, for the peasants 

 were provided not only with their freedom but land 

 enough to supply their wants, and the landowners 

 received needed capital in compensation for the 

 land sufficient to make the remainder of their estates 

 more productive than the whole had been. The 

 enormous amount of floating capital and of labor 

 set free by these changes drifted, however, into an 

 unexpected course, and the result has been the 

 development of industrial, mining, and commercial 

 undertakings, while agriculture has made scarcely 

 any progress, and the population, which inci'eases 

 at the rate of 1,000,000 a year, finds it harder to 

 live on the land. The landowners are poorer and 

 less enterprising than in the times of serfdom, and 

 the peasantry, lacking horses to till their own land 

 or that of the landownars, unable to meet the pay- 

 ments for land redemption on account of the de- 

 cline in the prices of grain, with agricultural wages 

 also declining, are falling into deeper poverty 

 than they have ever known. At the same time 

 the increase in savings-bank deposits, which has 

 been greatest in years of agricultural depression, 

 shows that the country as a whole is growing richer; 

 that industrial enterprise, favored by the very banks 

 that, were created to facilitate the redemption of 

 peasants' lands, is increasing at the expense of agri- 

 culture. The conditions for mining and manufac- 

 turing industries are indeed favorable, for there is 

 an unlimited supply of labor to be had at wages 

 much below those paid in any other European 

 country. Russian statisticians calculate that, even 

 with the primitive appliances now in use, all the 

 agricultural labor of the country can be performed 

 in 5,000,000,000 working days, which represents only 

 half of the available labor of the country. With 

 the dense population of Europe on one side and 

 that of China at the other end of the empire, the 

 economists and statesmen of Russia expect an im- 

 mense impetus to Russian industry when the great 

 arterial railroad through Siberia is completed. For 

 eighteen years past the Government has directed 

 every effort to the development of native industries 

 as the remedy for the poverty and distress that weigh 

 upon many millions of the Russian people. During 

 sixteen years the production of pig iron in Russia 

 has nearly quadrupled, that of manufactured iron 

 has increased 80 per cent., and that of steel has more 

 than doubled. The textile, engineering, electrical, 

 and other works at St. Petersburg, where the fuel 

 is wood from the neighboring forests, continually 

 growing scarcer, the mines of the Ural, and the iron 

 mills and manufactories of all kinds established in 

 southern Russia within communication with the 

 Donetz coal basin, have been developed largely with 

 French and Belgian capital, of which more than 



$500,000.000 is said to have been brought into 



IJn-sia within ten years and to be earning un u\. 

 of not less than 15 per cent, interest." Tin- beet- 

 sugar factories, of which there were 238, in 1898 

 produced 754,758 tons of sugar. There were 869,881 

 acres planted to sugar beds in 1897. The export of 

 sugar increased from 55,000 tons in 1887 to 117,000 

 tens in 1897. 



In 1898 Kazan, Nijni-Novgorod, Vyatka, Perm, 

 Simbirsk, and Samara, usually fertile provinces 

 in the Volga region, suffered a repetition of the 

 rmp failure of 18 ( J7, and the famishing peasantry 

 had to be fed by means of Government aid and 

 private charity. In the previous winter a large 

 proportion of the peasantry in 19 large provinces 

 in southern and southeastern Russia were only 

 rescued from starvation by the distribution of flour 

 by the Government. In the spring acute distress 

 prevailed in Voronesh. Kaluga. Kursk, Orlojf, Ria- 

 zan, Tamboff, and Tula, the reserve stores of grain 

 having been exhausted. Siberian grain was brought 

 forward by the new railroad and exported to Austria 

 and Germany, but there were not cars enough to 

 transport the stocks accumulated along the railroad 

 nor snips enough to carry the wheat that could be 

 shipped from the ports of the Kara Sea. To facili- 

 tate trade over the northern sea route the Russian 

 Government has granted exemption of duty for salt, 

 coal, agricultural, gold-mining and other machinery, 

 and materials for the fishing industry imported at 

 the mouths of the Ob and Yenesei. English vessels 

 have been engaged in this commerce since the route 

 was explored by Capt. Wiggins, and a German com- 

 pany has been formed at Hamburg to engage in the 

 Siberian trade. To open up the Siberian count ry 

 and relieve the congested parts of central and south- 

 ern Russia the Government has encouraged the mi- 

 gration of peasants, though at one time the rush 

 was so great that it had to be held in check. Cos- 

 sacks and time-expired soldiers have been settled at 

 the cost of the Government in the Amur region for 

 military as well as colonization purposes. In the 

 summer of 1898 the Government transported 200,000 

 peasant families to the wheat belt of central Siberia 

 and gave 40 acres of land to each, together with 

 agricultural implements and employment on the 

 railroad. The railroad, with its eastern termini at 

 Port Arthur and Vladivostok, will by means of the 

 existing lines through European Russia to Moscow 

 and St. Petersburg, have direct communication with 

 a new ice-free port that is being constructed on 

 the northern coast near the Norwegian frontier at 

 Ekaterine Harbor in the Bay of Kola. 



Railroads. The length of railroads in operation 

 on Sept. 1, 1898, was 26.060 miles, and the length 

 under construction was 7,520 miles, not counting 

 the railroads of Finland, which had a total length 

 of 1,535 miles. A large number of branches and 

 feeders of the Russian trunk lines and the new Si- 

 berian Railroad are in progress or about to be begun. 

 For four of these, loans to the amount of 234,325.000 

 German marks, with interest at 4 per cent, guaran- 

 teed by the Government, were raised in Berlin dur- 

 ing the summer of 1898. In 1897 no less than 

 1,860 miles of new railroads were opened. Several 

 strategic railroads have been built in the Caucasus. 

 The Murghab section of the Transcaspian Railroad, 

 running from Merv to the Afghan frontier, was 

 pushed to completion. The Siberian Railroad at 

 the beginning of the year was open as far as Kras- 

 noyarsk and laid to within less than 800 mike of 

 Irkutsk. Rails for the Manchurian Railroad were 

 ordered from the United States, and also locomo- 

 tives. This branch was to be completed within six 

 years and the remaining parts of the Siberian line 

 within four years. The rate of building has been 

 about 450 miles a year. When opened to Irkutsk in 



