7 8 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A MUST A NG. 



table press censorship tends to drag them rapidly down 

 to the level of the people among whom they have cast 

 their lot. From the Russian newspapers they learn 

 nothing but what a suspicious and tyrannical govern- 

 ment permits the people to know, and in order to keep 

 on good terms with the authorities it is advisable to 

 receive no foreign publications whatever. It seemed 

 curious to meet intelligent and well-educated English- 

 men, like Mr. Hamson, who had never heard of what 

 the foreign press was full of at the time of my visit, 

 the Century s exposition of the evils of the exile sys- 

 tem of Siberia. And it sounded even comical to hear 

 him ask if it were true that " at the Penjdeh affair the 

 English officers had run away!' Such, it seems, is 

 the story as it had been permitted to circulate in 

 Russia ; where the truth in regard to such matters is 

 never allowed to be published. 



On the subject of cotton-spinning our host was 

 more at home. Tariffs were high, he said, yet they 

 couldn't compete with English manufacturers, owing 

 to the incompetence of Russian workmen and the 

 higher rate of interest on capital in Russia. In Russia, 

 capital was worth eight per cent., in England, three ; 

 and a Lancashire weaver was as far ahead of a Russian 

 factory hand " as a race horse was ahead of a donkey." 

 The Manchester man, he reckoned, would do the work 

 of six to eight moujiks. 



A great future was looked forward to, however, in 

 cotton production and spinning. Everything possible is 

 being done to promote the cotton growing industry of 

 Russia's Central Asian possessions. American cotton- 

 gins were being shipped to Samarkand by the dozen, 



