128 SIBEKIA. 



arids ol ciui.-i mv amiuiilly loaded. iii(; luiiil >.'ui*dft iraffic over Iho Siberian tract fvi'ij 

 Jiow cnifdoys hundreds of tliousainis ol' horses and tens of thousands of people, alihoii(:li 

 as was said nhove its dimensions at the |iies(;Mi liuie liavt; considerably shrunk, compared 

 with loriner times. At the sauio time tin; revenue tlifMeliom has notably fallen off. While the 

 average payment lor carriii^'e formerly fni examidi; helween Tomsk and Irkutsk, about 1,500 

 versts, was from 2.50 U) :', roiildes per pond id lieij/lit, it does not now ordinarily exceed 

 1.60 roubles to 1.80 roubles, and sometimes falls short of this li^jure. The expenses of tho 

 road on the other hand have not only not diminished, but rather, thanks to the enhancement 

 in the price of ^rain, have even increased. Thus in former times a man with live horses dui- 

 iiig a tiip Iniin Tomsk to Irkutsk and back lastin^' two months earne<l, after covering all 

 expenses, from 200 to 250 roubles. Now the net jtroiit uiidei- avi'ra^'e conditions does not exceed 

 40 to 50 roubles, and in case of misfortune, especially embezzh-ment of goods for which thi; 

 carriers are bound to answer, not seldom huye losst;s ar<; incurred. The peasants continue to 

 occupy themselves with the business of carriers under these circiimstanc(.'s only because, on 

 the one hand, it is important for them to receive at one time in the form of earnest money 

 comparatively large sums, and on the other, they count as pur<.' prolit the maintenance during 

 the journey of man and beast wlinm it wouM utliei wise be ni,'cessary to kei-p during tin,' 

 course of the winter with no return. 



In any case the carrier trade on the h>iberian tract is at ihe pn'sent day far frjjii 

 being what it was formerly ami together with it all the earnings of the population of thi- 

 points situated along the tract have fallen into decline. Among such earnings were the baiting 

 of the caravans, the conveyance from station to station of fast traffic goods, which went by 

 changes of horses, the replacement of tired horses in the trains of carts, the unloading and 

 transhipping, ensuing on the freezing of rivers, or the damaging of roads, passenger traffic of 

 the most various kinds and various occasional earnings. All this now does not yield the 

 fourth part of the former income, and the population of the tract is forced to occupy itself 

 ever more and more with agriculture. 



The preceding diS(iuisition has not exhausted, nay had not in view, the exhaustion of 

 all the kinds of non-agricultural earnings falling to the peasant population of Siberia. The 

 review of these earnings had to keep in view only the most important and to indicate their 

 place in the economic life of the population. This place, speaking of non-agricultural earnings 

 on the whole, is at the present time considerable only for those parts of Siberia which lie 

 without its cultivated zone or on the borderlands of the same. In the agricultural zone non- 

 agricultural earnings now too play a secondary part. The future of the Siberian peasantry is 

 inseparably bound up with the future of agriculture and is therefore In close dependence on 

 the improvement of the technical and especially of the economical surroundings of the 

 latter. 



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